Won't fully start up; responds to power button and keyboard

[Volatus]

Man, working in the field has shown me ALL SORTS of exotic PC problems I can barely even begin to describe.

This is an interesting one. Booted from UBCD4Win, I found the hard drive plugged up with, literally, every flavor of rogue antivirus and antispyware you can imagine. I cleaned all that out with Autoruns+Runscanner and some file creation time sleuthing. Everything has been removed that I can imagine.

But the root problem still remains. It doesn't jam during startup, but it switch video modes (to the graphics mode) and show the desktop cursor. It gets to the point *right* before the screen usually flickers and shows the cursor and starts up, but... nothing happens on screen. If it was on Autochk (it's a FAT32 partition... I have no idea why), it shows the first "." after finishing, and the screen hangs there. If it was on the Windows logo, the screen goes blank and stays blank. But the hard drive keeps churning, and I'm thinking "Aaaaaand....", like it's about to give me a cursor. No dice.

Now, here's the head scratcher. It responds to keyboard (numlock/caps lock, etc), and the power button brings the computer to a graceful shutdown instead of crashing off. The HDD churns and the power shuts off in about 2-3 seconds, like it really is shutting down. What on EARTH can cause this kind of behavior? Any ideas?

edit: It is definitely running behind the frozen screen. I also tried VGA mode, and installing another video card. I did Ctrl+Alt+Del twice after I gave it about 15 seconds to start up and settle down the HDD activity, then did Shift+Tab, typed "Administrator", hit Enter (this is after using login bolt-cutters off a boot CD, to erase the Admin password so I could get some work done), and the HDD took off again. I had headphones plugged in, but it seems not to be set up to use the onboard adapter (it had a Creative soundcard installed that I removed for diagnosis), so I didn't hear any sounds. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Del to kill Explorer (CAD, "E", Delete, "Y") but I only now remember that the default tab isn't Processes, so that wouldn't've worked anyway, and it screwed up the rest of my sequence.

But it's definitely running in there, just not showing me anything on the screen. In the recovery console I also checked for suspicious services or drivers with "listsvc", but didn't find anything except "mnmdd", which Google tells me is a "frame buffer emulator" - i.e. a fake video card. I disabled that, no effect on the problem. I'm stumped, but I'm going to try to SOMEHOW get remote desktop turned on, and access it from the network. I'll have to set that up blindly... woohoo!

edit edit: Reinstalled the Creative card in its original slot. Did the same sequence - CAD, CAD, Shift-Tab, "Administrator", Enter - and guess what? The XP startup sound blared through my headphones, while the screen was still at the Autochk error screen I caused by renaming the "BootExecute" key to "Bootxecute" (diagnosis). Now I'm certain it's sitting at a Windows desktop that I can't see. Hmm...

edit edit edit: By blindly navigating, much like a blind person, using only my headphones and the default Windows sounds as bumping-points, I managed to squeeze out a screenshot using MSPaint. Check this out: http://hostfile.org/pcblank.png - hmm. This may be interesting.

Edited October 15, 2008 by Volatus

[jaclaz]

edit edit edit: By blindly navigating, much like a blind person, using only my headphones and the default Windows sounds as bumping-points, I managed to squeeze out a screenshot using MSPaint. Check this out: http://hostfile.org/pcblank.png - hmm. This may be interesting.

With all due respect, I don't think that a black 640x480 rectangle can be of any interest , we would have trusted your word for it as well.

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

Try to force VGA mode. The display may have been set to a settings above what the monitor can display and was accepted.

[Volatus]

Tried it. I can't seem to get any output out of this thing. I took another screenshot to the same effect: black 640x480 screenshot (jaclaz: just because you don't understand the significance of something...).

I can start a console and enter commands (blindly), that's easy. I've redirected the output of "ipconfig" to my Flash drive, which showed that it sees no network adapters. How it managed to have 15 tons of Temporary Internet Files and all sorts of viruses... I really can't understand!! Maybe it lost track of the network adapter somehow, which is strange, considering the audio adapter still works fine.

Right now I'm trying to find a way to redirect the terminal (cmd.exe) output to COM1: in a readable format. On a test computer, I was able to run "mode com1:9600,n,8,1" and proceed to "echo lolol >com1:", and "lolol" would appear on my laptop's HyperTerminal screen. Then I ran "cmd > com1:" and the output would appear over the serial port, but not input. It seems to be one or the other. There used to be a command, "ctty", that would redirect terminal output AND input to the serial port, but there doesn't seem to be an XP equivalent, sadly... but maybe just being able to see the output directly would help. I'm working on that now... I lost reference on the system (didn't know why it wasn't responding as expected to my keystrokes) a minute ago and had to reboot it.

edit: Yay, output! Monitor still shows "\SystemRoot\Windows\System32\Autochk.exe program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK" (the last screen before the login screen would USUALLY appear). Screenshot is from my laptop.

edit edit: More info (methinks that despite this PC coming with a XP Pro license, this is probably a shady XP Corp copy... facepalm.jpg). Note the lack of display driver... but I think that's because the video card I installed isn't known by this computer (no driver, SUPPOSEDLY using VgaSave). I'll try this again in a few minutes, back on the original video adapter.

Edited October 15, 2008 by Volatus

[Volatus]

AAAAAHhahahahahhaha.... I have been driven insane by this computer. Ohmygod. But I finally cracked it. I finally got into the **** thing. 8 hours of screwing with one computer, for purposes of just trying to figure out why the hell it won't show something on the screen...

The reason there was no network connection was evidently because there was no DRIVER for the internal gigabit network adapter installed (wtf!). So, being unable to use "devcon update" to install the driver (which I had on a USB stick), I opted to just install a known natively supported PCI card. That installed blindly and perfectly. Then I found that the DHCP service was disabled, and refused to start. Why, I do not know. But it wouldn't start.

So I used "netsh" to give the adapter a static IP (YOU try typing "set address "Local Area Connection 2" static 192.168.1.159 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1 1" without a SINGLE typo, with no visual feedback). That worked. It had an IP.

I do the Win+Pause, End, Tab x4, Space, Alt+A to turn on Remote Desktop. It didn't do any good, the setting didn't seem to take effect.

I export the Terminal Services key (again, YOU try typing "regedit /e g:\reg.reg "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server"" without a SINGLE typo), change fDenyTSConnections to "0", then re-import with "regedit /s g:\reg.reg". That also didn't seem to work.

It then had the problem of Simple File Sharing (that bastard idea of Microsoft's) enabled, so it denied any network login attempts - simple, my arse. I fixed that with another registry change and reboot. At first it gave me the error again, so I tried "net use \\192.168.1.159 /u:Administrator *" and entered the password (which I set with pspasswd on the blind shell). It worked this time.

Then I fired up compmgmt.msc on my laptop and connected. It worked! For the first time I was able to see the services list, and the reason I wasn't able to connect with Remote Desktop: "Terminal Services" was set to "DISABLED"! Ur, hurr... um... well... I kinda think that may be the problem haunting the screen I'm continuously staring at, and the reason for the blank screenshots. Windows lives on Terminal Services! *facepalm*

So I was FINALLY able to connect with Remote Desktop. It gave me the most unusual screen. See for yourself. More pics to come.

[GrofLuigi]

Why are you bothering so much? Obviously system files are damaged. Rescue the documents (if any) and format/reinstall.

IMO repairing it isn't worth this much trouble - it will never be 'proper'.

And BTW mnmdd is Microsoft NetMeeting Display Driver (a mirror driver for NM ). Legit Windows file (and maybe by disabling it you broke the display chain additionally).

GL

[Volatus]

Hah!

I finally got it. GOT IT I SAY! Driven myself insane to find a solution, and learn some new things... hey, that's how I get experience. Taking the long road.

I'm now staring at the good old XP login screen, without needing to reinstall Windows. It was the display drivers. Evidently the "vgasave" driver got damaged somehow, which is why in Remote Desktop, I didn't even have an "Advanced" button under Display Properties (it was greyed out). Of course this also means I've learned it's possible to run a headless XP system (with _no_ display driver), which is freaking awesome.

After updating the chipset and graphics drivers via Remote Desktop, I rebooted, and instead of even seeing that "autochk" error message (which I also need to fix/revert), I saw the XP login page.

I am happy.

And now I am going to bed.

edit: Ohhhh, this just tops it all. You know what this thing's product code is?

FCKGW-RHQQ2-you know the rest.

*headdesk*

Edited October 15, 2008 by Volatus