WinXP doesnt Boot after Driver Install

[anguis]

Specs:
WinXP Pro
AMD Socket 939 (AMD X2 4200)
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI - GA-K8N Pro-SLI
2.5GB ram

So I was having problems with connecting to the internet so I decided to reinstall my drivers for my LAN device. The installation didnt seem to have worked successfullly (nForce utilities were not working) so I tried reinstalling the driver again. After installation completed, instead of saying "You must restart your computer now or later" all that came up was "1155: [Okay]"
Then I restarted the computer and now it does not load XP after BIOS initiations. Just kind of stalls with a black screen, but the computer does not reset or shut down, just stalls.
It gets passed the BIOS stuff but does not show any of the XP boot screens.
I looked it up a little and found http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
that for data recovery, and potentially making the drive bootable again?
I'm not sure what to do, any way to get the computer to boot windows again without any loss of data? And a correct procedure of reinstalling the LAN driver would be nice, as it didnt work as I expected (unusual)
Any and all help is appreciated, hopefully I can get my rig back up and running in no time!

 

[Fragrant Coit]

Once it gets past the POST screen, press F8 a few times and see if you can get into Safemode.

If you can, then you could use System Restore to roll the config back before the drama.

 

[anguis]

Would using System Restore (are you speaking of the windows xp disc system restore?) affect any of my data on the hard drive? And is POST immediately after the BIOS things and all.

 

[anguis]

I tried F8 after POST, to no avail. Couldnt get into Safe Mode. I disabled the LAN in the BIOS and still wouldnt boot.
With data recovery, is it possible that I could simply take another HD, install it, make it the Master and the other the Slave, fresh install XP on the new Master, and drag and drop whatever files I want to have safe onto the new HD? Seems like it would be pretty simple, and if I am not mistaken, it would work like a charm (drivers from the old HD would not affect anything since it would be the slave right?)

 

[acongggg]

perhaps you can try to open your current harddrive in other cpu's (by making it become the slave disk in other pc's). Then after moving your data out, i think you should try to re-install your windows, by using clean format (Don't repair, cause the problem would still might re-appear).
And after you finish re-install windows, then before you install the driver again, make sure the source of the driver that you want to install is in a good conditions (CD's is not in scratch of file is not corrupted).

 

[anguis]

Is that not pretty much the same as changing the current HD to slave, and fresh installing XP on a new HD? Then transferring files?

 

[Tmagic650]

anguis,
there's no need to qoute the text right next to your reply

 

[anguis]

Sorry, just used to doing that in other forums

 

[anguis]

Ok so I didn't try too much else to get my windows bootable again. Instead what I did was this:
Next I disconnected that HD, put a brand new HD in, installed XP, and salvaged my files from the messed up HD (was unable to read or write files before doing the following:
Inserted XP disc (w/o the new HD connected) and ran repair mode and did the C:\WINDOWS\chkdsk
which then repaired one problem, but it still wouldn't boot.)

 

[Tmagic650]

..."then repaired one problem, but it still wouldn't boot"

Does the new hard drive boot into Windows properly? If so, the old drive is bad

 

[anguis]

New hd does, yes. And no, the old drive is not bad. The drivers must have corrupted some system files which were making the drive unbootable?
Its plenty bootable now, formatted the old HD and reinstalled XP on it, and its working fine now.

 

[cgrenier]

It may be a good idea to check the SMART status of your harddisk:
using the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (SMART) built into most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks, it is possible to control and monitor storage systems

In the hope of anticipating failures, SMART monitors and reports on various indicators of reliability including temperature, number of reallocated sectors and seek errors.

* Enable SMART monitoring in your BIOS setup. With SMART enabled, if a write operation fails, bad sectors are taken out of service and the data is immediately written to a spare sector. In other words, the bad sector is 'reallocated'.
* Use a software program that reports SMART information, this way you get early detection of physical problems. Some examples are:
o smartmontools — open-source for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Darwin, OS/2.
o SMARTReporter — open-source for Apple Macintosh
* If your hard disk is connected via USB or FireWire, SMART status may not be reported; if that's the case, a direct connexion like IDE, SCSI, SATA... is preferred.

If the HD was good, reformating it was useless, XP cdrom can repair an install.

 

[ahmed ali]

Insert the xp CD boot with the CD select R for repair then come to the command prompt and follow the steps below, I hope this will work for u

o C: CD ..
o C: ATTRIB -H C:\\boot.ini
o C:ATTRIB -S C:\\boot.ini
o C:ATRIB -R C:\\boot.ini
o C: del boot.ini
o C: BOOTCFG /Rebuild
o C: CHKDSK /R /F
o C: FIXBOOT
that's it and then reboot the system

 

[anguis]

Did the chkdsk then was able to get all the stuff I needed from the HD.
My brother was not too worried about it so he just reinstalled after he saved the stuff he wanted to keep.
Thanks for the info though!