One of those "XP hangs/freezes on boot"

[technoid]

Hi folks,

Ok this is a boot error I have never encountered before. The system is a 2.3GHz Pentium4 HP Pavilion ze5501US notebook, Windows XP/Home SP3.

Everything was going alright today until suddenly the next time I turned it on (cold boot), it hangs right before anything else loads up, sometime before the boot logo. It's an empty black screen. I tried one of those Safe modes (and everything else on that list) and all I can see is it hangs right at ACPI.SYS. I did a little bit of research (not much) and some old posts say it may have something to do with the CD/DVD player. I played around in the BIOS, like rearranging boot devices, but to no avail.

This is strange, I didn't install or change anything prior to this issue. I don't think it's a virus, but I can't be sure. I wasn't even connected to the Internet, unless it's one of those hibernating time-activated virii. Or it could be a hardware issue since my laptop can sometimes overheat, although I do use a laptop cooler. The only thing I could think of that has changed is that I was connected by LAN to my 98SE PC via a hub, but again no Internet anywhere on the network at the time.

There were also some other ways I read on how to solve things, but it needs an XP CD, of which I unfortunately do not have. Everything comes on restore discs with this system. There is also something about XP boot disks from Microsoft that I've heard about and might try. How many disks is that and how big in bytes? I'm on dial-up right now, so I'm concerned how I might obtain it. Anyway I'm not much more knowledgeable on getting this fixed, so any help is appreciated, thanks.

[submix8c]

Check your BIOS again (Power Management section) - If XP was installed with an ACPI HAL and your somehow turned it OFF in the BIOS then you won't boot ("wrong HAL" and hangs).

Edited April 6, 2009 by submix8c

[technoid]

Check your BIOS again (Power Management section) - If XP was installed with an ACPI HAL and your somehow turned it OFF in the BIOS then you won't boot ("wrong HAL" and hangs).

Sorry there is now power management section in there. HP notebook BIOSes are limited in features, at most. I played around with the keys of the notebook during the boot up to see if there were anything other than F8 that would access XP and one of them happened to show a little message: "TRAP 00000006 EXCEPTION". I did some net surfing and found that this message may be something about a corruption of the disk NTLDR. Looks like I'm going to probably need to boot floppies. Is it alright to make an XP boot disk off another XP/Home machine and use it on this laptop?

[Ponch]

Tome it looks like corrupted data or HDD going bad. You should find a way to test your disk (chkdisk or hardware tests). Other possibility is overheating.

[technoid]

Tome it looks like corrupted data or HDD going bad. You should find a way to test your disk (chkdisk or hardware tests). Other possibility is overheating.

Looks like you're correct. First I tried an XP boot disk and that didn't work, so I thought it must've been a deeper problem. I took the drive out of the laptop, converted it into an external usb drive and hooked it up to an older slower XP computer (with only usb 1.1 unfortunately). I was able to look around in the file structure and things seemed alright. However, I did a scandisk (took forever) and it found about 10 file record errors, ~20 index errors and corruption to volume and MBT. These got fixed by the scandisk eventually. I put it back into the laptop and it was able to boot a little bit further until it gets to some kind of BSOD that lasts a second on screen, so I'm going to have to film it with a camera so I can see the error. But it Looks like I'm gonna bite the bullet and reinstall XP on a different drive and keep this drive until I can backup whatever hasn't been corrupted. Hard to say what went wrong, but it's very most likely overheating. Then maybe a destructive virus, if not overheating. I'll be back with the conclusion!

[jaclaz]

If I were you I would download the Recovery Console floppies, make a bootable CD from it:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2254

or a USB stick:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5316

and run CHKDISK on the computer instead that through the USB external case.

Download from MS is about 4.5 Mbytes and the batch is 300 Kb.

jaclaz

[technoid]

If I were you I would download the Recovery Console floppies, make a bootable CD from it:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2254

or a USB stick:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5316

and run CHKDISK on the computer instead that through the USB external case.

Download from MS is about 4.5 Mbytes and the batch is 300 Kb.

jaclaz

Ok, using a webcam recording, I was able to capture that 1-second BSOD screen during the boot, that I mentioned in my last post, before the PC restarts itself. It is a STOP error, 0x0000007B. It tells me that it could be a disk problem, whether as a hardware failure or a virus. I have downloaded the XP setup/boot floppies, but Microsoft stops the setup floppies at the XP SP2 version, not SP3. Of course, the system that crashed is SP3.

So the big question now is... will using the SP2 setup floppies' CHKDSK /F (and-or CHKDSK /R) be a problem if my OS is at SP3? If not, there's really no way I have time to find a way to 'slipstream' XP3 components into those SP2 floppies. It is still uncertain whether this was a overheating or viral problem.

I really need to get this notebook back up and running again as it will be needed for an event in the next week or so. I am starting to lose patience. I think HP did not design this notebook very well. The CPU can get very hot (Mobile Pentium 4) and the memory sticks (DDR) sit right above the DVD drive, making that drive hot and unstable. The only way I've been able to keep it more stable is using Notebook Hardware Control, supplemented with a notebook pad cooler, heh. Whatever the case, the personal contents of this drive are crucial as I have amassed a lot on it (I don't have USB storage at the moment), so I hope whatever repair I try to do will not mess up the rest of the drive (that is what I fear the most). I will be reformatting and reinstalling another drive while I try to fix this one (and then hopefully rescue my personal stuff off it).

[kingsc]

If I were you I would download the Recovery Console floppies, make a bootable CD from it:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2254

or a USB stick:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5316

and run CHKDISK on the computer instead that through the USB external case.

Download from MS is about 4.5 Mbytes and the batch is 300 Kb.

jaclaz

Ok, using a webcam recording, I was able to capture that 1-second BSOD screen during the boot, that I mentioned in my last post, before the PC restarts itself. It is a STOP error, 0x0000007B. It tells me that it could be a disk problem, whether as a hardware failure or a virus. I have downloaded the XP setup/boot floppies, but Microsoft stops the setup floppies at the XP SP2 version, not SP3. Of course, the system that crashed is SP3.

So the big question now is... will using the SP2 setup floppies' CHKDSK /F (and-or CHKDSK /R) be a problem if my OS is at SP3? If not, there's really no way I have time to find a way to 'slipstream' XP3 components into those SP2 floppies. It is still uncertain whether this was a overheating or viral problem.

I really need to get this notebook back up and running again as it will be needed for an event in the next week or so. I am starting to lose patience. I think HP did not design this notebook very well. The CPU can get very hot (Mobile Pentium 4) and the memory sticks (DDR) sit right above the DVD drive, making that drive hot and unstable. The only way I've been able to keep it more stable is using Notebook Hardware Control, supplemented with a notebook pad cooler, heh. Whatever the case, the personal contents of this drive are crucial as I have amassed a lot on it (I don't have USB storage at the moment), so I hope whatever repair I try to do will not mess up the rest of the drive (that is what I fear the most). I will be reformatting and reinstalling another drive while I try to fix this one (and then hopefully rescue my personal stuff off it).

I would think chkdsk is chkdsk and should be fine to run however you can do it.

You can also try running SFC /scannow and crossing your fingers if you can boot into the system in one form or another.

[jaclaz]

CHKDSK with SP2 will be fine.

NTFS didn't change.

Though it is possible that just fixing the filesystem won't be enough.

jaclaz

[technoid]

Thanks guys, I will try the Chkdsk repair then, but as mentioned, it will probably be hopeless (i.e. to make it boot normally again). I tried the SFC before (with the floppies, changing dir where SFC resides), but it didn't work. The harddisk seems to be ok electronically when I browsed inside it when it was temporarily converted into a USB external drive. Just as long as the Chkdsk will not frack up the rest of the drive and also as long as I will be able to get into my own profile (changing file/folder ownership) where my contents are, I'm ok with it. The reason I keep saying that is I once had a problematic hard drive on 98SE (FAT32), where doing a scandisk every time progressively kept messing up sectors, thus losing files and folders, so I stopped chkdsk'ing it and salvaged what was left. Anyway, cross my fingers, will Chkdsk tonight.