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My friend's been having a weird XP problem. After a defrag XP wouldn't boot. The recovery console wouldn't work either because the WinXP setup CD would hang at "Setup is starting Windows." This means that a reformat and reinstallation won't work either.
His system specs:
Athlon XP 2600+ (333FSB)
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev. 1.04
512MB of Crucial PC2700 (2 x 256MB)
WD 1200JB (partitioned into a 25GB system drive; the rest is data)
WD 600BB (another data drive)
Pioneer DVD-106S
Lite-on LTR-48246S
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (BBA)
SB Audigy
The WD drives are on the primary IDE channel and the optical drives are on the secondary IDE channel.
The first thing I tried was safe mode. XP locked up at mup.sys. I figured some system files got corrupted in the defrag, so I tried the recovery console. As I said, WinXP setup also fails at "Setup is loading Windows." I put the drives into another PC to get to the recovery console. I did chkdsk on them and repaired some errors but XP still failed to load at the same point.
At this point I decided to reformat the system partition and reinstall XP. I figured that XP setup would work this time, but it still locked up at the same place. I then put the drives back in the other PC and did the first stage of XP setup on that PC (before the GUI phase of the setup comes up). After putting the drives back, XP still would not boot to complete the second phase of the installation. I did this assuming that the first phase only copies files to the drive and that system-specific configuration isn't done until the second phase. I know that you can select different HALs and SCSI drivers in the first phase, but neither PC needed SCSI drivers and both should've used the ACPI HAL. If I'm wrong in assuming this, let me know.
I tried a number of things after this. These include:
-Different BIOS versions. The original 1001G didn't help, and neither did 1002A or 1004.
-Swapping the HDs and optical drives (putting the HDs on secondary and the optical drives on primary)
-Another IDE cable for the HDs
-Testing the RAM with Memtest86 and Simmtester
-Removing the second HD
-Disabling extra stuff in the BIOS, including onboard 1394, USB, LAN, audio, and serial/parallel ports
The other PC didn't have any problems reading the HDs, and it started WinXP setup without any problems, so I'm assuming there's something about his system that WinXP doesn't like. Kind of weird though, that a defrag would bring this problem up.
So, anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
His system specs:
Athlon XP 2600+ (333FSB)
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev. 1.04
512MB of Crucial PC2700 (2 x 256MB)
WD 1200JB (partitioned into a 25GB system drive; the rest is data)
WD 600BB (another data drive)
Pioneer DVD-106S
Lite-on LTR-48246S
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (BBA)
SB Audigy
The WD drives are on the primary IDE channel and the optical drives are on the secondary IDE channel.
The first thing I tried was safe mode. XP locked up at mup.sys. I figured some system files got corrupted in the defrag, so I tried the recovery console. As I said, WinXP setup also fails at "Setup is loading Windows." I put the drives into another PC to get to the recovery console. I did chkdsk on them and repaired some errors but XP still failed to load at the same point.
At this point I decided to reformat the system partition and reinstall XP. I figured that XP setup would work this time, but it still locked up at the same place. I then put the drives back in the other PC and did the first stage of XP setup on that PC (before the GUI phase of the setup comes up). After putting the drives back, XP still would not boot to complete the second phase of the installation. I did this assuming that the first phase only copies files to the drive and that system-specific configuration isn't done until the second phase. I know that you can select different HALs and SCSI drivers in the first phase, but neither PC needed SCSI drivers and both should've used the ACPI HAL. If I'm wrong in assuming this, let me know.
I tried a number of things after this. These include:
-Different BIOS versions. The original 1001G didn't help, and neither did 1002A or 1004.
-Swapping the HDs and optical drives (putting the HDs on secondary and the optical drives on primary)
-Another IDE cable for the HDs
-Testing the RAM with Memtest86 and Simmtester
-Removing the second HD
-Disabling extra stuff in the BIOS, including onboard 1394, USB, LAN, audio, and serial/parallel ports
The other PC didn't have any problems reading the HDs, and it started WinXP setup without any problems, so I'm assuming there's something about his system that WinXP doesn't like. Kind of weird though, that a defrag would bring this problem up.
So, anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
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