07-23-2002, 07:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Looking at a dead Windows XP system?
http://www.mediaworkstation.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm
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.
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 Command Line System Recover! 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 at Microsoft's Support Center.<!>
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 right now! 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.
You can download an MS Word document here 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.
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. 
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