Cannot boot to windows

[tbancroft]

My computer (an ACER laptop running XP Pro) rebooted the other day when my back was turned. It wnated to check the disk, so I let it start. The first thing that turned up was "The \pagefile.sys entry contains nonvalid link.
The size of the \pagefile.sys entry is not valid." The check disk function continuned until it got to about 35% and then the whole boot thing started again. It keeps doing this and never gets to actually boot. I ahve tried to start in safe mode, but after printing a long list of system32 stuff, it just stalls and sits there until I turn it off and away we go again. The result is that I cannot even get started so that I can try some of the solutions that have been suggested in this forum before.

The only rescue disks I have came with the machine and it looks like they reformat the whole drive before installing the stuff that was loaded on the machine when I got it.

Can anyone help? Thanks a lot. Ted.

 

[cchampio]

It sounds like you have some bad sectors on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or some corrupted system files. If you do not already have a backup then I'd focus on trying to backup the important data (by hooking the HDD up to another PC or creating a boot disk (I'd use BART PE); if you need assistance with recovering your data let us know).

If you can boot from the Recovery Disk and manage to go into the Windows XP Recovery Console that would be my next step. I'd try running chkdsk (Check Disk) from Recovery Console and see if it can complete it's test from there. First I'd run chkdsk with no options:
chkdsk c:

Then after that I'd run it again with these options:
chkdsk c: /F /R /X
/F fixes errors
/R locates bad sectors and recovers information
/X forces the volume to dismount if necessary (it probably won't, but I always throw it in there anyway).

Keep running chkdsk with those options until you get no errors, then try to boot the system normally.

If the Recovery disk will not give you the option to boot to the Recovery Console, then I'd find the HDD manufactures web site and download their HDD diagnostic tool for DOS (they all should have one). You'll download the diagnostic software then burn it to a bootable CD. Of course, all this requires you have a extra PC to get on the internet with and then burn a CD with.

If you can't manage to boot to even safe mode, your only options are gonna be boot to a CD and run some diagnostics, or you'll have to hook up the drive to another PC and see if you can access it and run diagnostics.

 

[tbancroft]

Thanks, Cchampio. I will do as you suggest. I did manage to boot by pressing F8 and choosing the "go back to configuration that last worked" or some similar wording. I made a backup of the whole drive using the windows backup utility, but when that was complete it said that it was unable to create a boot floppy and implied I would not be able to use the backup to restore. I don't have a floppy drive (who does anymore?), so don't know what to do about that.

When I checked the computer this morning, it had rebooted again and was sitting stalled after completing the check disk routine it goes through when it has not been properly shut down. I think I am having deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said. I'll try to make a boot disk using BART PE and follow the rest of your advice.

I appreciate your help, Cchampio.

Regards, Ted.

It sounds like you have sme bad sectors on the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or some corrupted system files. If you do not already have a backup then I'd focus on trying to backup the important data (by hooking the HDD up to another PC or creating a boot disk (I'd use BART PE); if you need assistance with recovering your data let us know).

If you can boot from the Recovery Disk and manage to go into the Windows XP Recovery Console that would be my next step. I'd try running chkdsk (Check Disk) from Recovery Console and see if it can complete it's test from there. First I'd run chkdsk with no options:
chkdsk c:

Then after that I'd run it again with these options:
chkdsk c: /F /R /X
/F fixes errors
/R locates bad sectors and recovers information
/X forces the volume to dismount if necessary (it probably won't, but I always throw it in there anyway).

Keep running chkdsk with those options until you get no errors, then try to boot the system normally.

If the Recovery disk will not give you the option to boot to the Recovery Console, then I'd find the HDD manufactures web site and download their HDD diagnostic tool for DOS (they all should have one). You'll download the diagnostic software then burn it to a bootable CD. Of course, all this requires you have a extra PC to get on the internet with and then burn a CD with.

If you can't manage to boot to even safe mode, your only options are gonna be boot to a CD and run some diagnostics, or you'll have to hook up the drive to another PC and see if you can access it and run diagnostics.

 

[mills29]

tbancroft,
My Acer Aspire crashed a couple of months ago and I took it to a computer shop where they checked for bad sectors on my hard drive. I had a lot. My husband was using it one morning and it just shut off. I got to the boot-up screen and no matter what I done, it just shut off, come back on with a blue screen. It stated it couldn't find an OS and the 1st thing that showed right before it shut down was, "It was having to shut down to protect my computer". Nothing I could do. My hard drive had too many bad sectors to recover. I had a 120GB hard drive installed and removed it and bought a new 250GB hard drive at Office Depot and installed it. I followed the instructions that came with the new HD and after booting it up, mine has worked since. Get a new HD. Hope this helps.


Good luck,
Millie

 

[tbancroft]

Thanks for the note, Millie. As it happens, I was able to get booted back up by pressing F8 during the early seconds of trying to boot and selected "revert to last known version that worked" or some such alternative. Once I was up, I ran a RAM checker for 18 hours and found nothing, then check disc and found nothing. I printed out the event log and the mini- dump and found a reference to my Linksys driver W22n51.sys.

There are lots of complaints on the web about this driver, so I upgraded to the latest version from Intel and haven't had a problem since. I got off very lucky compared to your odyssey.

Thanks again. Ted.

 

[mills29]

Your very welcome. I'm glad you were able to fix your's that way. I'm not that lucky. LOL

Millie