Looking at a dead Windows XP system?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.mediaworkstation.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm">http://www.mediaworkstation.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm</a><br /><br />Ahhh... the lovely Blue Screen. Annoying in Windows 95/98/ME, and downright lethal in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Of course it looks so much more impressive in NT/2K/XP with all of the driver information and bugcheck data. I have seen about 8 Blue Screens since 1996 when I first started using Windows NT based systems. They are far more reliable than Win9x, but when they happen, they happen spectacularly. The absolute first thing you should do though when you get a BSOD like this during boot is to use "Last Known Good" in the startup menu, which you should see after a system crash. If that fails, then try to boot into Safe Mode and undo whatever you just did - usually a driver install.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20020723-bsodfix.jpg" /><br /><br />In my case today though, it didn't work. Somehow installing Roxio CD Creator 5.1 hosed the SAM (\windows\system32\config\sam) section of the registry and my system simply wouldn't boot no matter what I did. Enter <b>Command Line System Recover!</b> This should be part of the Recovery Console, but it isn't. The Recovery Console is a scaled down command prompt with critical commands available like MD, COPY, DIR, DEL, ATTRIB, etc. You can read more about it <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307654">at Microsoft's Support Center</a>.&lt;!><br /><br />You may need your original system administrator password to get into the Recovery Console during this process, so be sure you know what it is. Note that once you are in the Recovery Console, most keyboard shortcuts that command prompt jockeys are familiar with don't work, but the up arrow does, so make use of it to cut down on redundant typing. To make your life easier, install the Recovery Console to your hard drive <i><b>right now!</b></i> Nothing like being on the road without your XP CD or even a CD-ROM module for your laptop and having this happen. Instructions for a local install are at the MS Support center referenced above.<br /><br />You can download an <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20020723-xprecover.doc">MS Word document here</a> to put on your Pocket PC so should you ever need this and you don't have a spare PC to log onto the internet to get this information, you'll have it at your side. It is only 30K after being converted to the Pocket Word format. I recommend you right-click on that link and select Save As and put it in your Pocket PC's My Documents folder.<br /><br />This whole process took me about 20 minutes, start to finish, but I could see where it was going and it made total sense to me having messed with registry hives and the Recovery Console in Windows 2000 before. If you have never done anything like this, it could take up to 40 minutes and you should definitely not be distracted. :)

[tadams]

Ed,

I had the same issue and here is the link to Roxio's site with the way around it:

http://support.roxio.com/roxio_support/ecdc/ecdc_plat_51_updt.html

- Todd

[Ed Hansberry]

Ed,

I had the same issue and here is the link to Roxio's site with the way around it:
Mine wouldn't boot to Last Known Good or Safe Mode. Roxio's "fix" assumes your machine will boot.

[Foo Fighter]

XP has performed flawlessly for me..until today. Earlier I had to run some errands in town. When I came back to my system and moved the mouse (to disengage the screensaver) the "Turn Off Computer" dialog box appeared. I clicked cancel...and it popped right back up again. Click cancel..again it comes back. It wouldn't go away, so finally I selected restart in hopes the problem would be solved by rebooting Windows. It did do the trick, but the next time I went to use this system after remaining idle for an hour (again, at the moment when the screensaver disengages) the Windows Shell was gone! I hit Crtl-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager, and sure enough Explorer.exe wasn't running. Rebooting fixed this problem, but I have no idea why this has happened. Strange. :? 8O

[butch]

Mine wouldn't boot to Last Known Good or Safe Mode. Roxio's "fix" assumes your machine will boot.

I always install the patch just after I've installed CD Creator BEFORE I reboot the computer.
But, now I only use Nero.

[butch]

... It did do the trick, but the next time I went to use this system after remaining idle for an hour (again, at the moment when the screensaver disengages) the Windows Shell was gone! I hit Crtl-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager, and sure enough Explorer.exe wasn't running. Rebooting fixed this problem, but I have no idea why this has happened. Strange. :? 8O

In the Task manager you can 'restart' explore with the File -> New Task (Run) menu, just type Explorer and hit enter.
But, I only do that when I'm out off time or when I know what caused it and I just want to repair it before rebooting.
BTW, what screensaver are you running?

[butch]

...To make your life easier, install the Recovery Console to your hard drive right now! ...

BTW all, the x:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons to install the recovery console also work for W2K !!! :D

[tadams]

Ed,

I had the same issue and here is the link to Roxio's site with the way around it:
Mine wouldn't boot to Last Known Good or Safe Mode. Roxio's "fix" assumes your machine will boot.

Sorry, in my haste to report, I guess I didn't read your entire message carefully.

[Chairman Clench]

Mine wouldn't boot to Last Known Good or Safe Mode. Roxio's "fix" assumes your machine will boot.

I always install the patch just after I've installed CD Creator BEFORE I reboot the computer.
But, now I only use Nero.

I have found Easy CD Creator to be VERY unstable even with the patches installed.

I bought Nero and have had NO problems with it. It is fast, reliable, and doesn't crash or bring Windows down with it.

You can find OEM version of Nero online for about $15... definately worth it.

[Ed Hansberry]

BTW all, the x:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons to install the recovery console also work for W2K !!! :D
Yes - Win2K introduced the Recovery Console, but since it has no System Restore feature, the stuff in this thread are almost worthless. :(

As to all of the other suggestions - I suppose I need to give Nero a shot, but you can bet I'll have this article handy.

[DrtyBlvd]

Sorry for perhaps stating the obvious, but no one's said it yet - Roxio CD Creator doesn't work with XP ...or at least not from my attempts or reading groups etc - I believe it has something to do with the fact that XP has Roxio drivers already for doing the drag and drop CD burning that is built in - and works rather well.

[Ed Hansberry]

Sorry for perhaps stating the obvious, but no one's said it yet - Roxio CD Creator doesn't work with XP ...or at least not from my attempts or reading groups etc - I believe it has something to do with the fact that XP has Roxio drivers already for doing the drag and drop CD burning that is built in - and works rather well.
Uhm... no. All OEM computers we buy (Dell) come with XP Pro preinstalled and a Roxio 5.1 CD.

I can burn a CD from WMP, but don't think you can drag and drop using File Explorer.

[hfann]

Nero is way better than Easy CD Creator, I never waste a CD with Nero. :)

[Venturello]

Roxio is a very unstable piece of software, after the experience me and my clients had with it, I wouldn't recommend anyone to even try to install it, much less on XP. The latest version of a great program is bloated, full of bugs and will never work quite well. They released a beta IMHO and are testing the product with costumers.

Go for Nero, it is a great, stable and fast product (most of the time). Also, excelent support.

[marlof]

Just want to chime in with the Nero fans. Gotta love it!

[DrtyBlvd]

Ed -

Strange - Perhaps it's a corporate set up? I have XPP and it drags and drops 'em fine - but I have never been able to get Roxio Platinum to work with it - and when I was trying to do so, I found lots of people with the same problems - the roxio website had a few contrasting suggestions as well, leading me to conclude they didn't really understand the problem either - don't quote me but one of the 'solutions' was akin buying a voodoo doll and praying - at that point I just gave up!

[Jason Dunn]

Sorry for perhaps stating the obvious, but no one's said it yet - Roxio CD Creator doesn't work with XP ..

Sure it does - I've installed it on my XP Pro machine, and Ashley's Dell came with it. 8)

[Mr. Anonymous]

Ah, Windows XP..what a love/hate relationship I have with it. On my homebuilt machine it's very stable, unless I happen to unexpectedly power the computer down (like a power outage). Then it's registry corruption city.

I've reinstalled XP about 6 times this year until I took the hint and made a Ghost image of my base XP install and favorite applications. In addition, I regulary backup my system registry with ERUNT (http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/), which has saved me a couple of times.

It's a shame, because I really like XP. I guess the flame that burns twice as brights burns half as long :)

[Ed Hansberry]

Ah, Windows XP..what a love/hate relationship I have with it. On my homebuilt machine it's very stable, unless I happen to unexpectedly power the computer down (like a power outage). Then it's registry corruption city.
I've never had registry corruption due to a power outage with XP/2K/NT4, but it sounds like if you have, the solution presented in this thread is perfect for you. Just plop the registry from the most recent checkpoint in your system32\config folder. :)

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I used to depend on EZ CD Creator back when it was marketed under Adaptec. I used to have all kinds of problems with the system locking up and toasted CDs.

The CDs not burning correctly was fixed with my Yamaha Lightspeed CDRW and the since using the Nero software that was bundled, I have yet to mess up a single CD burn and I have yet to crash my system (and I use Win98SE!!). I never went back to EZ CD Creator after Roxio took over from Adaptec, but from the reports I see, not much has changed.

Nero all the way... simply stated, it's a rock solid product.

Ekkie

[Take1]

Dittos again. Get a VeloCD and Nero 5 and you'll not need anything more...

[DrtyBlvd]

Interesting - but it won't work for me at all - or at least, 6 months ago when I spent two weeks trying to get it to do so, on three different machines running XP Pro - two it wouldn't work on at all, and one it works when it feels like it - and these were clean installs, with nothing else on them at all - I should go find the URLs to support my case, I know, but I really can't be bothered, it annoyed me that much - let me put it a different way; it annoyed me that much and frustrated me so much more that I have quite happily foresaken the price I paid for it as a a lesson - and it cost, what, $75? (£50) - I now consider it money spent on a lesson that I check what eveyone else says about something before I buy it...let alone the cot of my time spent 'faffing' with it trying download after download to get it to work - when XP will do it for me anyway!!!

On a separate note, how unlucky have I been to have two Athlon chips that have 'given up the ghost' when I have rebooted? If I were in Tech Support, I don't think I could have lasted 35 years - the force is strong with that person. (Forget which thread that is in!)

[rfischer]

One of the fantastic features in XP (that works too) is the System Restore utility. I completely hosed my networking components of XP after I installed an incompatible VPN Client. System Restore set my PC back to the state before I installed the software.

[Jason Dunn]

One of the fantastic features in XP (that works too) is the System Restore utility. I completely hosed my networking components of XP after I installed an incompatible VPN Client. System Restore set my PC back to the state before I installed the software.

Yup, that's actually what this thread is about. :-) The article tells you how to use that tool if Windows won't boot, which is the biggest problem with it. If you can boot windows, you can System Restore your way back to a good place. But what if you can't boot Windows? You're screwed. Until this article... :-)

[Janak Parekh]

Strange - Perhaps it's a corporate set up? I have XPP and it drags and drops 'em fine - but I have never been able to get Roxio Platinum to work with it - and when I was trying to do so, I found lots of people with the same problems - the roxio website had a few contrasting suggestions as well, leading me to conclude they didn't really understand the problem either - don't quote me but one of the 'solutions' was akin buying a voodoo doll and praying - at that point I just gave up!
Nope, Easy CD 5 works with XP pretty well, as long as you do the patching process perfectly.

a. Don't install Take Two when you install the software. If you do, you're going to toast your machine.

b. Install the patch. If you don't install Take Two, your machine shouldn't have problems booting up, so you can do it after the reboot (although in certain cases Roxio recommends before). No guarantees from me though :D

Believe it or not, we even have it working with .NET Server Beta 2, although it took some tweaking to get the patch to run.

Having said that, without a doubt the quality of the software has degraded over the years. I caught a misspelling in the first version of the Project Selector applet in Easy CD 5. How much worse can it get? 8O

--bdj

[DrtyBlvd]

Thanks for the advice bdj - sounds simple right? By simple I mean difficult to get wrong anyways - but despite efforts, still to no avail - it just wouldn't have it. I ended up doing a clean install and following the instructions to the letter - and I do mean the letter - but no joy. So it sits here as an expensive coaster. I have no need to produce covers, one of, I thought, the coolest things EZCD did, and XP does the rest absolutely fine - so nutz to it :wink:

Re the networking screwing up the PC - boy did I have a simillar with the install of a wireless network - shut it down, restarted, and whoosh; all it did was keep restarting without actually making it; still haven't figuered that one out....