BSOD - Unable to boot...

[banuffin]

Hi there, first time forum user here. I'm running Windows XP Pro, SP 2, on a Lenovo T60 laptop. 2 gigs of ram, not sure of my disk space, but I believe it's 60 gigs. I use this laptop at home and at work.

Yesterday I returned home from work (where my computer had been working fine the whole day) and powered on the laptop to do a bit of quick e-mailing. I VPN'd into the corporate network, fired up Outlook, sent my e-mail, and everything was good. I initiated the shutdown and remembered there was something else I'd wanted to do. In my haste I forced a cold boot while Windows was in the middle of shutting down (not the brightest idea, I know). Now, upon windows startup, I receive the BSOD (after the initial Windows screen) with the following error:

SESSION5_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

A problem has been[...]

<...>

<...>

STOP: 0x00000071

After that happened the first time, subsequent startups presented me with a boot menu since Windows did not startup properly. I can choose from the following options:

Safe mode

Safe mode with networking

Safe mode with command Prompt

Last Known Good Configuration

Start Windows Normally

I've tried all 5 options multiple times and still receive the BSOD (there are some different STOP codes for some of the options, though). In safe mode, the machine goes through the lists of drivers it's trying to load, hangs when loading Mup.sys/Wup.sys (can't remember which it is) and then gives me a BSOD.

I did not have a Windows XP Setup disk at home to try Windows Recovery, so I grabbed my Knoppix CD and attempted to boot from it. Knoppix would boot, but it couldn't load KDE (Knoppix's desktop environment, its equivalent of Windows Explorer, for those who aren't familiar) because it did not have enough memory (it needed at least 82 MB). The interesting thing is that Knoppix creates a RAM disk out of free hard space and tries to load KDE from it, but apparently it was unable to allocate the necessary disk space.

Now I'm back in the office and have tried to run Windows Recovery from an XP Pro installation CD. However, when I try to do this, I receive a message that Windows could not find any hard disk devices. Now I'm really scratching my head here. The "Hard disk drive diagnostics program" that comes with my BIOS works just fine - it identifies the hard disk and runs a successful diagnostic.

I'm not sure where to go from here. It seems that there's apparently a problem with hard disk access, but I'm not really a windows wizard. The only software change I made yesterday was to install greasemonkey (a Firefox add-on), which I did at work (prior to shutting down the computer and successfully booting up back at home once more before the BSOD's started). Any suggestions would be lovely. I've checked out some Windows knowledgebase articles for the given error, but they all seem dependent on being able to load the Windows Recovery Console, get into Safe Mode, or use the Last Known Good Configuration, none of which are an option for me. My only other thought is to get a really basic recovery CD made from a co-worker and try and boot into it to run chkdisk from command line.

[-pops-]

This error is described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815021/en-us (scroll down the page for WXP).

It may be best to try a Repair Installation but this does require an XP disk. See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h...ips/doug92.mspx

[banuffin]

This error is described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815021/en-us (scroll down the page for WXP).

It may be best to try a Repair Installation but this does require an XP disk. See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h...ips/doug92.mspx

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, this won't work for me. Trying a windows repair install does not work, as I receive an error that says there is no hard drive installed. I've tried popping my hard drive into another laptop (same model) that we have here in the office, and I'm able to enter the Recovery Console and even begin a windows install. Unfortunately, chkdsk immediately responds that there appears to be one or more unrecoverable errors in the volume, and selecting a windows install does not offer the option to do a repair install. The installer does not recognize that there are any Windows/NTFS partitions on the drive. I only have the option to do a fresh windows install.

I suppose this means I'm pretty much done for and will have to do a fresh install, unless someone's got another idea.

[Alan2273]

As you can get Knoppix to boot, why not try Puppy Linux, this is better for older machines with less ram installed.

http://www.puppylinux.org/home/overview

At least you should be able to get your files off ther hard drive in case you have to do a fresh install.

[banuffin]

As you can get Knoppix to boot, why not try Puppy Linux, this is better for older machines with less ram installed.

http://www.puppylinux.org/home/overview

At least you should be able to get your files off ther hard drive in case you have to do a fresh install.

Knoppix will boot, but it can't load KDE. I'm left with command-line tools, and they can't seem to find the drive. When I try running cfdisk, I receive a fatal error about being unable to access/read it (don't remember specifically what the error is).

At this point I think I'm probably left with trying to copy the disk to a backup (data should still be on there, so I'm hoping that will work) and then re-installing over my current disk. I've contacted a data recovery group to see if they have any suggestions, so I'll wait to hear from them before doing anything brash.

[banuffin]

Okay, I've been reminded of a very important fact.

PointSec is installed on this machine, meaning the drive is encrypted. Any attempts to do a repair install, use the recovery console, access remotely from a Live CD, etc., will fail. I'll copy the encrypted data to another machine and see if I can wrestle the encryption key from the corporate IT team. If not, I'll have to ship the machine to them and have them deal with the problem.

[Alan2273]

Oh dear, no wonder it would not work.

Best of luck with the retrieval.