odd loop towards end of boot in w2k

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Gswiss

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I have an xp-sp2/W2k-sp4 dual boot system which has been working for years. Now, when I boot into w2k, it first starts out normally. Then, it hangs for a few seconds on "Opening a User Session" (I use no password and it usually whizzes through this part) and then it goes on until it reaches "Recording your parameters". At that point, it starts looping with "Loading your personal parameters" indefinitely. I keep on getting the w2k jingle.

I loaded a previously saved partition in its location and the same problem occurs. I shifted the partition on the disk in case some sectors were defective. No change.

From XP, I ran a chkdsk /R on the w2k partition. No improvement.

Exactly the same loop occurs at the same spot when I boot into Safe Mode.
Something must have gone wrong in the user parameter area.

Please note that I can access all w2k files through my xp on the same pc.
 
The Windows 2000 SP4 install is corrupt. If you can access the Win2K data as you say, back up what you need and delete the Win2K partition. Start with a fresh Win2K install
 
If I can go as far in the boot process as the opening of my User Session, I have difficulty in believing that my w2k is corrupt to the point it must be reinstalled. I have the impression my profile (or something similar) is corrupt. Isn't there something we could try in that area?

I have so many programs installed under W2k, a full reinstallation would be a last resort. I'd like to keep it because it is my day-to-day OS and a much better performer than my xp. It's the first time I had a problem with it in 5 years while I had to reinstall xp at least 4 times during that period.
 
"I have so many programs installed under W2k, a full reinstallation would be a last resort. I'd like to keep it because it is my day-to-day OS and a much better performer than my xp. It's the first time I had a problem with it in 5 years while I had to reinstall xp at least 4 times during that period"...

Your system must be pretty old... You can't blame XP for this. I think it's time to upgrade your hardware and go with XP. If you are not willing to do this... Oh well, good luck :)
 
Deciding to stay with w2k or not is my problem. This is my first time on the site and I was hoping to find people with expertise on w2k and who had enough technical knowledge to help me out on this problem. It is certainly a minor one for somebody knowledgeable in that area. Apparently it's not the case, at least to date.
 
Win2K is over 7 years old. It looks very close to Windows 98 and only has NTFS capability... Your inability to use XP is directly related to your antiquated hardware. We have to drag some people kicking and screaming into XP because they never can let go of the horror stories of early XP use. This is happening right now with Vista. Again, good luck with this issue
 
Gswiss,
I will recommend you to move on to XP but win2k is a stable OS and you should be able to continue working with it.

I will not recommend you to install new hardware on win2k because many vendors do not test new hardware software on win2k as much as on XP/Vista.

I never encounter a problem as you describe. it seems that your system is in an infinite loop in the winlogon process.

this is probably caused by a software that did something or a courruption that I just cant find out without "looking".

there is a way of generate a manual blue-screen to dump the memory and the current context of your machine.

if you want me to take a look , I will need this memory dump that you will trigger when your machine is in the state of a loop. to generate it , you first must logged in to your machine (can you logged-in in safemode ?) and change some registry setting.

here is a microsoft artice about how to do that : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244139

notice that after you enable the dump you will have to also choose which kind of dump you want to generate. the dump should be "Complete Memory Dump".

the file that will be generated will be the size of your memory. so if you have 1gig of memory , that will be the size of the dump. mostly you can compress a 1gig dump to around 150MB or so.

if you will provide me with this dump , I could take a look at your system internaly and let you know what cause this infinite loop.

You welcome to PM me and tell me how can I get this dump from you.

Good luck,
EZ
 
Tmagic650 said:
Win2K is over 7 years old. It looks very close to Windows 98 and only has NTFS capability... Your inability to use XP is directly related to your antiquated hardware. We have to drag some people kicking and screaming into XP because they never can let go of the horror stories of early XP use. This is happening right now with Vista. Again, good luck with this issue
I tend to disagree to a certain point. My pc runs with an Asus P4P800 Deluxe MB and a P4/2.8Ghz. So, it's a bit more recent than the Middle Ages.

My reluctance to xp is due to a less stable environment than w2k-sp4 and the fact that it's a lower performer than w2k. Please note there's an SP3 for XP in the pipe-line. XP basically buys you nothing more except better security features. Hyperthreading was very disappointing. So, if you're not in an office environment and you don't play games, you don't need it.

Vista is another problem. It's Microsoft's first step to a Big Brother situation and a total control over Internet access. Just wait and see.

EZ123,
Thank you for your suggestion.

The current defect is probably due to the use of SuperFast shutdown. Probably that my User Profile is now corrupt and eventually there is a way to correct it. Or maybe create a new one.

I cannot log into the system. Safe Mode gets me into exactly the same loop. So I can't modify the registry. However, from XP which I run on the same system and which gives me access to the w2k partition, is there a way to modify registry contents?

I'll have a look at the Microsoft article you mention.

I wonder if including an SOS parameter in boot.ini won't provide some information.

What do you mean by PM?
 
I only have one user profile and anyway I don't get the chance to answer any question. I had set up the boot so that it would streamline into the running phase without any hurdle.
 
Gswiss,
it would have been nice to know your system's specs in your first post here... Of course, you didn't mention everything.

"My reluctance to xp is due to a less stable environment than w2k-sp4 and the fact that it's a lower performer than w2k. Please note there's an SP3 for XP in the pipe-line. XP basically buys you nothing more except better security features. Hyperthreading was very disappointing. So, if you're not in an office environment and you don't play games, you don't need it"...

This argument makes no sence to me... So many millions of people are using XP now, that I can imagine that just about every possible hardware/software combination is running XP, or the incompatible hardware/software issues are well known. From what you have posted, I still see no logical reason for your reluctance to drop Win2K... I do have a close friend that is as stubborn as you with his XP fear. The XP Service Pack 3 will most likely bring XP that much closer to Vista
 
Have you tried a repair install of 2k? Your programs would still be safe, and its a better option than a complete reinstall. I know this isn't really what you are looking for, but frankly I think there are only about 2-3 people on this site that have a chance of fixing the problem the way you are hinting at, and they don't post all that often anymore. I hope someone will come along and prove me wrong.
 
"Please note that I can access all w2k files through my xp on the same pc"...

Doesn't this mean that Gswiss can back up all his important Win2K files and just delete the Win2K partition and start fresh?
 
SNGX1275 said:
Have you tried a repair install of 2k? Your programs would still be safe, and its a better option than a complete reinstall. I know this isn't really what you are looking for, but frankly I think there are only about 2-3 people on this site that have a chance of fixing the problem the way you are hinting at, and they don't post all that often anymore. I hope someone will come along and prove me wrong.
It slipped my mind that w2k also had a repair-install feature. I'll try that. I'm so used to running the xp one ...

Tmagic650 said:
"Please note that I can access all w2k files through my xp on the same pc"...

Doesn't this mean that Gswiss can back up all his important Win2K files and just delete the Win2K partition and start fresh?
That's my last resort.
 
Tmagic650 said:
Windows 98SE has a repair feature too
I appreciate your sense of humour, Tmagic650. But I still maintain my position. Why buy something you don't need just because it's new ? Be selective. Given my environment, w2k is exactly what I need and, as mentioned earlier, it performs better than XP. I have XP (which I use once in a while) and Vista which I will certainly not use.

Did you know that Windows 95 and 98 (2nd edition) are still being used by about 20% of US Companies? Didn't you notice that a great deal of new devices on the market today support all those OSs down the line? That's because there are still naive or smart people out there. The vast majority just wants to access the Web, write letters, prepare invoices and use e-mail.

If you're a techie or you go for gadgets, that's different. I'm a teeny-weeny one and that's why I tried all those OSs. But I never used Windows Me (the worst ever devised) nor NT4 (no plug-and-play). It's IBM I believe who had the motto : THINK.
 
"Did you know that Windows 95 and 98 (2nd edition) are still being used by about 20% of US Companies? Didn't you notice that a great deal of new devices on the market today support all those OSs down the line?"

20% might be a little high, but then again there are many mom and pop companies that don't even need a computer on a daily basis. They pay for someone else to do the computing. In my repair buiness, all the Windows 95 systems that couldn't be upgraded to Windows 98SE, were scrapped. I have loaded about 10 computers with Windows 98SE, and only one with Windows 2000 pro. Of the 300 or so, all the rest have been loaded with XP.

Have you taken care of your "Opening a User Session" problem?
 
I've been away for a few weeks and shortly after my return, I couldn't even get my xp to work. It must have been the 5th or 6th time I ran into this situation over the past 5 years although I only use it once in a while. I hadn't even installed their latest fix which required another fix to fix it.

Just before leaving a few weeks ago, I tried a repair-install on my faulty W2k and the process just died away at some point after running a while.

Away from the pc, I wondered whether the W2k corruption had not been caused by Ad-Aware or Spybot when they deleted the spywares. I recalled that I had run them before running into this mess.

Once I've reinstated my fallback XP, I intend to investigate W2k Winlogon and if that doesn't work, try the repair install again and lastly reinstall W2k completely.
 
I got involved in something else and thus had to set aside my w2k problem temporarily. I would like to thank you all, including Tmagic650, for the suggestions you provided all along.

I will certainly report back if I manage to solve this mess without going through a clean install. It might be of help to somebody else.
 
You can load the registery hive from another computer

Start regedt32, select load hive. Your registery will be under "C:\WINNT\system32\config" on your win2k harddrive

The real issue is that your NTUSER.DAT file has become corrupt. It is common practice to have a backup account that you can log into. This is even more common on Windows XP, the file becomes corrupt due to too much spyware/crapware plus incorrect saving of the file when shutting down the computer

Failing all else you can delete the file, a new one will be created but you will loose allot of your settings (this file is part of your registry)

And to the Win2K bashers, stop it, it's tiering. I use Win2K too
XP brings nothing at all to the table that is worth having IMO (and I guess the OP has the same feelings)

Comparing it to Windows 98 just prooves your lack of understanding of the Windows core

Windows 2000 is based on Windows NT v4.0, Windows 2000 is Windows NT v5.0 Windows XP is Windows NT v5.1

Here is a small bat file I wrote to backup the whole registry, normal backup leaves out NTUSER.DAT and UsrClass.dat

regback C:\WINNT\repair\Backup
regback C:\WINNT\repair\Backup\NTUSER.DAT users S-1-5-21-1957994488-725345543-839522115-500
regback C:\WINNT\repair\Backup\UsrClass.dat users S-1-5-21-1957994488-725345543-839522115-500_Classes
pause

You will need to have the dir C:\WINNT\repair\Backup\ created beforehand (or add the md command if you like, it's also possible to make it nicer by using an IF statement to get the current date and create a folder with current date...)

RegBack.exe is located on the Windows 2000 or/and XP resource admin pak
 
If you mean loading the hive from regedit under XP which I have in dual boot on the same pc, the option is grayed out.

I have several NTUSER.DAT files which I had backed up in the past under W2k through jv16 and the sort. I used them to replace the current one but was unable to go any further than the w2k jingle loop. However, at that point I got a message telling me I had insufficient space for the pagefile. w2k occupies 3.9 GB in a 6.7 GB partition. The message is then odd. Before running into this situation, I did use the option whereby I could choose the location of that file (on a separate disk). Anyway, I thought that w2k would create the file in its own partition if it could not succeed otherwise.

I found no trace of a pagefile in the w2k partition.

Most w2k bashers are either naive or have a particular interest in prompting people to move on to the latest Microsoft products, especially the useless Vista. PC manufacturers had a bad year in 2006 and the availability of Vista helped them boost their sales. Changing systems always leads to additional expenses.
 
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