strange computer glitch

[Lex]

I came home at lunch today, noticed the microwave blinking. So, we'd had a power interuption. My PC was quit, and it's usually running X 24. So, I turned it on, and it got to the windows boot screen, past the black and white one to the color screen (W2K) the power bar started to fill, and after one square filled in, you heard a click, and it rebooted. I had a new USB device online, that HP printer, so I unplugged my USB devices after going through that same thing several times. Finally after fiddling a bit, I got the blue screen of death:

"Inaccessable Boot Device, Restart if first time this has occured. Unplug any newly connected hard drives, etc. I had connected my new compact USB hard drive at one time, but disconnected it a long time before the machine went quit.

So, the USB based printer had been connected, no software installed. The HP 6310 had been installed with software, was functioning fine as a USB device.

Now, it's done this twice. First time today, to get to a point of total failure, I'd unplugged all USB devices, and though that had something to do with it starting back up. But it turns out, the blue screen of death is what allows it to restart. I did press F8 to see options, and I have the partition setup so it shows Windows 2000 as the only available system, I said boot normally, and wham, it crashed. But then the next time up, it comes up.

The message suspected a virus as well (but what the hell does winblows know?

I'm a little perplexed. It's rebooted now, not sure what happens if I shut it down and come back up again. I'll find out.

Doug

[Vinny]

it could be the kernel is broken as it's running most of the time when the window's on and damaged it upon interruption

If that's the software problem that is. The click sound could be it's hard reboot but not the soft one. Reinstall the windows and see what it can do before claiming the harddrive's dead.

[Lex]

Vinny, reinstalling Windows will be the last thing I do, lol. This system has a LOT of stuff on it, and reinstalling is not as easy as 1-2-3. I'll loose a lot of license reg's that I don't have now, and so on, I do have a backup to a point in time, but even reinstalling that, resets stupid passwords on some stuff that will be difficult to get for me

I don't think the HD is dead, since I am typing on it now. I think it may well be a flakey driver problem, probably my new HP printer created.

I installed some stuff from HP that may have had something to do with this, I'll go check that part out.

[Kevin P]

If you get the BSOD again, write it down and post it here. It may help us pinpoint the cause. But buggy drivers are a common cause, especially if it happens after installing a new piece of hardware/drivers.

[Lex]

I'd say it's not gone for good, but no way I am rebooting again tonight, over it covers it, lol.

[PewterTA]

It's either some newly installed drivers, or more likely something starting to corrupt on the HD. Make sure to do a scandisk on the drive just in case. If you do loose the computer (can't boot it, it can be fixed without re-installing).... But will require another computer to make it easy to do or with the windows boot cd to get into the recovery/repair feature to replace the corrupted boot files.

[JOY DIVISION]

You might have a corrupted RAM, copy a memtest86 to a floppy, then boot from it, that's a good start, see if you'll get errors. Or run Windows cd and do the "/recovery/repair/" Check out "Bootcfg" if anything is in there.If you're getting a "HAL 32" error then definitely a "boot-sector-virus" or a corrupted boot file.If you could boot to Windows maybe just do a "System Restore" set it before the time it started acting weird.

[Lex]

That gets to be a problem, I only have one W2K box now. I have the software disc for it, but no additional computers running it.

I have installed new print drivers for an HP printer, and that is when the problem started. There was an error at time of install, but frankly, I fluffed over it, didn't think to much about it. Then WHAM.

I dunno, not much time or patience for these things now.

[Kevin P]

Are you still having issues Lex? Try uninstalling the printer drivers if you do.

[Lex]

no issues as long as I don't turn it off. If I do, goodluck getting it back on in less than 20 minutes of reboots.

I do have some screen captures of the error message, actually I mean photos, lol.

[Lex]

[Kevin P]

I've been googling, and most instances of INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE stems from moving a boot drive to a new machine or swapping motherboards. It could also be caused by filesystem corruption or a failing drive.

Try doing a repair install of W2K from the CD. If that doesn't work, burn your important stuff to CD, and reformat/reinstall. You should be ok then, unless the drive is starting to go.

[dyazdani]

I've been googling, and most instances of INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE stems from moving a boot drive to a new machine or swapping motherboards. It could also be caused by filesystem corruption or a failing drive.

Try doing a repair install of W2K from the CD. If that doesn't work, burn your important stuff to CD, and reformat/reinstall. You should be ok then, unless the drive is starting to go.

I agree with Kevin. I had this problem recently at a computer here at work. We ended up having to get a new one as the HDD was failing.

[PewterTA]

Lex,

Do you have another computer? Or someone that knows about computers? If you hook your HD up into another computer as a SLAVE (instead of a Master drive), then boot up with it. Most likely windows 2000/xp will detect errors on it and repair it. Then you should be fine. If that doesn't work, connect it up again and do a scan disk (error checking in windows xp) of the drive and make sure that you tell it to "automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors."

Doing this has fixed the problem 90% of the time.

Most likely what happened is when the power went out it was (for whatever reason) accessing something in the boot sectors or in the ntdetect.com or ntldr files (those are what windows boots off of.

You can try booting off of the windows CD and replacing those files from the CD, that's a little more complicated than just plugging the drive into another PC.

Remember to change the jumpers (possibly) on the drive from master to slave.

[Lex]

haha, I used to know about computers, as I am a programmer/analyst, fact is, I just sort of rode the tide for so long on the hardware side, my slowly developed skills from building PCs from the ground up, have slipped a bit in the analysis side. However, basically, I know how to do everything from installing a mobo, to power supply, to drive components, to HDs, I know about jumpers, blah blah.

I have a dual drive setup, and I have my drive ghost copied pre-hangup, thaz a good thang.

Next, since I took those pictures, I rebooted two times, without failure, I deleted something that could have been a problem, and completed verification of the HP software functionality. So, could it be that whatever was wrong, is now mysteriously made right? It's entirely possible since it was hanging every time.

I had plugged up a new USB hard drive, without driver support, it took it just fine though. I also plugged up a new USB hub a while ago.

So, there were a few things new.

[Lex]

2 nights ago, my computer started making this clicking sound, like it was doing previously on boot, well almost. It was not quite as loud or as definitive, but it was doing it ever so often. Suddenly, sure enough it froze up on me. and on boot, started doing the same thing it had been, rebooting on the windows power bar boot screen. I said well, I don't know for sure what the problem is, but I am suspecting a power supply issue. So, I went to CompUSA to look for another high powered supply. I am going to try and get Antec to replace this one, but for now, I needed power.

So, I got a 650 watt , BFG or some such, was supposed to have 24 hour tech support and a lifetime warranty, (yeah right)

Interestingly, it posted lightning fast, and seemed must faster on initial startup, but I was still having problems getting into windows. I tried to do a scan like it wanted me to because it didn't shut down properly last time, and was having trouble making it through. Finally, I did though, and it did ok until it found a file named dizzy.gif. I think it was, said it deleted it. Well, that's interesting, it was like a sector violator or such?

I ran virus scan after finally getting back in, but didn't find anything. Right now, except for freezing up a time or two, it's running better. At least not rebooting on the power bar now anyway. So, maybe the power supply was part of my problem...