Win2000 Continuously Reboots

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don
  • Start date Start date
D

Don

I am working on a Win2000 box for a some friends of mine. Basically, the
machine partially boots, then reboots - in an infinite loop. It gets to the
white start-up screen with the blue progress bar, then reboots. And
reboots. And reboots.

Once I caught a message that said something like "security hive corrupt",
but can't be sure since it was so fast. I've pulled the drive an put it in
another machine as a slave drive. Mounts okay and all files seem visible.
Ran a virus scan on it and nothing (some adware stuff). Put the disk in
another machine and got the same continuous reboot result.

Tried using the 4 disk set of floppies for repair. Going through the
Console option, I can get to c:\winnt. If I pick the manual repair option
and pick Locate, it says it can not find an installation to repair. (Of
course there are no rescue disks!) Unfortunately, my setup disks crapped
out before I got a chance to try the auto repair option.

Any suggestions on where to go from here? Do I just install Win2000 over
again? Or maybe Win XP Pro? Given that it is sort of a re-install, what
are the chances that the data and programs will come through (relatively)
unscathed?

Thanks!

Don
 
If the security hive is corrupt, it may be possible to rename the security
hive found in
%windir%\system32\config\security
to security.old
then try copying the most recent backup found in
%windir%\repair\regback
to
%windir%\system32\config\
If that fails you haven't much choice but to copy/ use the
original-as-installed security hive from
%windir%\repair\security
to
%windir%\system32\config\security

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks. At
the "Welcome to Setup" screen. Press F10 or R to repair a Windows 2000
installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The Recovery
Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do not have
the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Note If the registry is corrupted
or missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery Console starts
in the root of the startup volume without requiring a password. You cannot
access any folders, but you can carry out commands such as chkdsk, fixboot,
and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the password has been validated,
you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access to the hard
disk. You can only access the following folders on your computer: drive
root, %systemroot% or %windir%

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
Dave,

Tried everything you suggested with no success. Everything seems to check
out okay, but just keeps rebooting. I am beginning to think it is a
Registry problem like that described in Q258098. Going to make a new post
on that topic.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Don





Dave Patrick said:
If the security hive is corrupt, it may be possible to rename the security
hive found in
%windir%\system32\config\security
to security.old
then try copying the most recent backup found in
%windir%\repair\regback
to
%windir%\system32\config\
If that fails you haven't much choice but to copy/ use the
original-as-installed security hive from
%windir%\repair\security
to
%windir%\system32\config\security

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup
CD, use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy
disks. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen. Press F10 or R to repair a
Windows 2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console.
The Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If
you do not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow
access to the computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times,
the Recovery Console quits and restarts the computer. Note If the registry
is corrupted or missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery
Console starts in the root of the startup volume without requiring a
password. You cannot access any folders, but you can carry out commands
such as chkdsk, fixboot, and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the
password has been validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console,
but limited access to the hard disk. You can only access the following
folders on your computer: drive root, %systemroot% or %windir%

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Don said:
I am working on a Win2000 box for a some friends of mine. Basically, the
machine partially boots, then reboots - in an infinite loop. It gets to
the
white start-up screen with the blue progress bar, then reboots. And
reboots. And reboots.

Once I caught a message that said something like "security hive corrupt",
but can't be sure since it was so fast. I've pulled the drive an put it
in
another machine as a slave drive. Mounts okay and all files seem
visible.
Ran a virus scan on it and nothing (some adware stuff). Put the disk in
another machine and got the same continuous reboot result.

Tried using the 4 disk set of floppies for repair. Going through the
Console option, I can get to c:\winnt. If I pick the manual repair
option
and pick Locate, it says it can not find an installation to repair. (Of
course there are no rescue disks!) Unfortunately, my setup disks crapped
out before I got a chance to try the auto repair option.

Any suggestions on where to go from here? Do I just install Win2000 over
again? Or maybe Win XP Pro? Given that it is sort of a re-install, what
are the chances that the data and programs will come through (relatively)
unscathed?

Thanks!

Don
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Dave,

Well, the "security hive corrupt" was what I thought I saw flash on the
screen during the continuous rebooting. Something I can not be 100% certain
of. Now I am casting my net wider in terms of trying to ID causes. Ran
Symantec against the disk (in another machine) and it came up clean. Since
I am now grasping at straws, I did a search on "windows 2000 reboot
continuously".

It could even be a strange hardware problem with the drive itself at this
point!

Thanks for the suggestions!

Don









Dave Patrick said:
Just curios, how did you go from "security hive corrupt" to that article?

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Don said:
Dave,

Tried everything you suggested with no success. Everything seems to
check out okay, but just keeps rebooting. I am beginning to think it is
a Registry problem like that described in Q258098. Going to make a new
post on that topic.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Don
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I don't know how much good this will do, but from a parallel install, run
regedt32.exe, then from the Local Machine Hive, choose Registry|Load Hive,
then navigate to the
%systemroot%\system32\config
directory on the other install, and find the system file, then Open, in the
Key Name box give it some temp name, then under tempname, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select
and look in the Reg_Dword value of "Current", this is the current
controlset, then navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00x\Control\CrashControl
Where x = the value of "Current" (found above) and set the values as follows

"AutoReboot"=dword:00000000
"CrashDumpEnabled"=dword:00000001
"LogEvent"=dword:00000001
"Overwrite"=dword:00000001
Then navigate back up to "tempname" and choose Unload Hive, and boot your
original install, Autoreboot is now turned off so you should be able to read
the stop error.

Bug Check Codes
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e..._f55acfed-3296-4e84-8885-c3162fd0ddbf.xml.asp

If nothing else you can at least recover your data from the parallel install
prior to rebuilding the operating system.

This article may also help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266465

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
Thanks Dave!

Don



Dave Patrick said:
I don't know how much good this will do, but from a parallel install, run
regedt32.exe, then from the Local Machine Hive, choose Registry|Load Hive,
then navigate to the
%systemroot%\system32\config
directory on the other install, and find the system file, then Open, in
the Key Name box give it some temp name, then under tempname, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select
and look in the Reg_Dword value of "Current", this is the current
controlset, then navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00x\Control\CrashControl
Where x = the value of "Current" (found above) and set the values as
follows

"AutoReboot"=dword:00000000
"CrashDumpEnabled"=dword:00000001
"LogEvent"=dword:00000001
"Overwrite"=dword:00000001
Then navigate back up to "tempname" and choose Unload Hive, and boot your
original install, Autoreboot is now turned off so you should be able to
read the stop error.

Bug Check Codes
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e..._f55acfed-3296-4e84-8885-c3162fd0ddbf.xml.asp

If nothing else you can at least recover your data from the parallel
install prior to rebuilding the operating system.

This article may also help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;266465

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Don said:
Dave,

Well, the "security hive corrupt" was what I thought I saw flash on the
screen during the continuous rebooting. Something I can not be 100%
certain of. Now I am casting my net wider in terms of trying to ID
causes. Ran Symantec against the disk (in another machine) and it came
up clean. Since I am now grasping at straws, I did a search on "windows
2000 reboot continuously".

It could even be a strange hardware problem with the drive itself at this
point!

Thanks for the suggestions!

Don
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I'm having problems with a P2 Windows 2000 professional machine that
continously keeps rebooting itself. I'm in the recovery console, but don't
know why the computer is having this problem. How would I go about finding
out what's preventing the machine from coming up? I ran chkdsk, but it
didn't find anything.
 
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