Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Raptor on January 30, 2007, 10:23:32 AM
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My computer crashed on Sunday. I tried to restart it and it got an error when loading saying
"the file system32\DRIVERS\isapnp.sys is missing or has been corrupted. Could not start windows. You can repair this error by using the original setup CD and pressing 'r' when booting your computer."
I put in the setup cd and pressed R and it started to load the cd. I was having to reinstall windows. I recieved an error when loading the CD saying that there was an error in another file (dnl.dll I believe) and it would not continue to load the cd.
I messed around with the setup trying to get it to work and it said I there were no NICs installed on my computer..
I called Dell technical support and talked to some guy in india for an hour trying to figure it out, after nothing worked he told me my driver had gone bad and I either had to call a local technician or buy a new driver.
Any possible way for me to fix this or do I need to go buy a new one?
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Well, try this first:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315311
EDIT: as a side note, were I to get 2 errors like this I'd want to reinstall fresh (not reformat, mind you, just install over it again) to avoid any other potential problems.
I'd also wonder why the driver went bad. If/when you get it up and running do a scandisk with a "surface scan" or whatever they call it nowadays.
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Did you try to install a new driver for anything before the computer crashed? If so, did you try booting in safe mode, or did it get that far? If you in fact installed a new driver for any device other than a printer, you can roll the driver back to the previous version while in safe mode. This will often times then enable you to then boot up as usual. That's only going to work if you did in fact try to install a new driver for something and that preceeded the crash.
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I am using another computer for the time being. I did not install a new driver or any other device prior to this. I had been recieving errors when Windows would first load a few days ago. My fear is I got a virus or something that messed up my system files. I had the most recent versions of my anti-virus and ad-aware programs. My anti-virus program made 3 changes in my system files last scan I ran... and my ad-aware scan would not complete. It would get to a certain point and stop, same point every time. Just before that point it would rapidly go from 0 risks found to 50 items.
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Can you slap the drive into the other PC, and scan it from there?
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Hey Rapt pull all unessasary hardware out of the PC's pci slots IE: nic's sound cards , modems. Then try and reinstall XP again , if that doesnt work try swapping out the memory or reducing it to one stick if you have multiples . It could be a hardware failure thats doing it , i worked on a dell that would go 1/2 threw the xp install and blue screen ,after pulling my hair out ,it turned out to be the ram . Good luck
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The link Krusty posted sounds like it should resolve the issue, but also it is going blue screen halfway through windows installation.
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Originally posted by Raptor
The link Krusty posted sounds like it should resolve the issue, but also it is going blue screen halfway through windows installation.
I think the problem is either the drive or a virus on the drive. You need to slap it into another PC as a secondary drive, scan it thoroughly, scandisk it thoroughly, then back it up (to a third drive maybe?) and reformat/reinstall from scratch.
Seems the best way to get a stable OS back on it.
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Originally posted by Krusty
Well, try this first:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315311
This did not work, it would not repair it and got an error saying "stop:c0000221 unknown hard error \systemroot\system32\ntdll.dll"
It wont boot in safe mode.
How do I load it to another computer (like the one I currently have running). Will that put this cpu at risk? and will I be able to save the data on my other comp?
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You basically just hook the drive in, like a secondary drive. As long as your BIOS has the right boot order after you plug it in, you're good to go. It will skip the drive on boot-up, and won't load any of the stuff (drivers etc) from the problem drive. Then when windows is up and running you scan it like you would your D: drive, or a jump drive.
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If I break anything I personally hold krusty responsible:noid
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LOL well if it's IDE just make it the slave. If it's SATA see if you have hot-swap capabilities. The only thing you have to worry about is it booting the bad drive as primary, because then it's just going to screw up (wrong hardware, messed up OS, etc). You pop the drive it, go to BIOS, check the drive settings (I know on this machine any time I put a second drive in it re-orders my boot), make sure you're booting to the proper drive, then you're good.
As XP loads it'll load from the good drive. It won't even read the other drive until it needs to see how many drives to display in Explorer. That's my experience on the matter.
I don't know about infected drives, but I've done this on more than one HD that has failed. It doesn't corrupt the good drive. If the drive is actually bad, you won't be able to complete a full scandisk on it, or copy files from it. Just burn backups for all the important files on the drive, wipe it (format it), and do 1 of 2 things
If you can't even format it: dump the drive, buy a new one, restart with fresh install
If you can format it: pop it back in the original machine and install Windows again fresh.
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Yeah... I am able to find the driver inside the computers... I just dont know how to go about hooking them up to the same PC.
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Nah forget the drivers for the moment.
Accept that your windows is screwed, for the moment. You need to reinstall. The question now is "Is the hard drive itself physically dying, or can I reinstall with no problem" -- if its going south you need a new hard drive or it'll just happen again.
Also, putting the hard drive into another PC lets you back up your personal files.
EDIT: Wait, did you mean you don't know how to take one HD and put it in another machine?
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Originally posted by Krusty
EDIT: Wait, did you mean you don't know how to take one HD and put it in another machine?
That's what I'm saying. I am able to atleast locate the HDs, I took the HD completely out of my old computer but not sure where to go from there... so I just put it back in. My old HD is a Maxtor drive (if that helps).
I really need to back up data on my old one, for example I was about 1 days work away from completing a midway terrain that was completely representative of the island in 1942... I do not want to lsoe that. Silly me did not upload any of that to another source... I also have files for wake island, several templates for plane skins and a lot of other AH related data that would take a very long time to rebuild from scratch. Not to mention personal data and files that I do not wish to lose.
I see where I can plug the old HD into this system, (there are connectors labelled P3, P5, etc.) but I am not certain that it will load windows from the current HD and not the corrupt one.
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Okay, do they use a 2-inch thick cable (IDE) or do they use a 1/4-inch cable with a L-shaped connector (SATA)?
Power is only half of it. It has to be properly plugged into a cable, and that differs depending on the drive type.
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both use IDE. Both are dell computers; one a 4550 demension and the other a 3000
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Okay the jumpers on the back of the drive need to be changed so that the "screwy" drive is the "slave" and the one already in your other PC stays the "master".
There should be a pin diagram and a positionable jumper. Move that jumper to cover the proper pins for the "slave" option, and plug it into the middle plug on the IDE cable going from your other PC to your other PC's HD (normally each cable holds 2 drives, and normally only the one on the very end is used in single-HD setups).
Then plug power in, then go into BIOS and make sure the proper drive will boot, then start 'er up
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I plugged the screwy drive to the IDE cable on this comp and booted the computer, it did not seem to recognize the bad HD though so I couldn't scan it. I probably connected it wrong though.
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Well you need the screwy drive as the slave and the good drive as the master. If you're not sure, and you have an extra cable (take the cable from the other PC?) you can plug the screwy drive into the "Sec IDE" (your first HD should already be in "Pri IDE". That way you don't have to mess with slave/master and jumper pins.
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ok I've got it working on this computer now. I am going to update the anti-virus programs and scan it.
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Rap and I traded a few PMs.
Fellas, Raptor's got a problem: the HD is in and recognized, but in Windows it says "this drive is not formatted". Both drives are NTFS. Now this is the area where I usually muddle through things trial-and-error, so I suggested he get some other opinions.
My thought would be that the BIOS had not properly set up the drive. I would go into the BIOS and tell it to auto-detect the type of drive (where it says cylinders and heads and all that stuff). Leave your working drive as-is but tell it to auto-detect the second one again. This should happen while still in the BIOS. Then exit saving changes and reboot.
If that doesn't work I'm not sure what to suggest off the top of my head.
P.S. the reason your virus scan was so fast was because it couldn't read the files to scan them.
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Originally posted by Krusty
My thought would be that the BIOS had not properly set up the drive. I would go into the BIOS and tell it to auto-detect the type of drive (where it says cylinders and heads and all that stuff). Leave your working drive as-is but tell it to auto-detect the second one again. This should happen while still in the BIOS. Then exit saving changes and reboot.
sounds about right, after it auto detects, he would automatically know before he exited the Bios......it would pop up how many sectors/heads etc in that slot/section on detected devices on the BIOS screen....
try this 1st as Krusty suggested, detecting it as a secondary/slave IDE drive, if no go do the following:
..I would do this byitself in the working computer TOO....because he does not know if it is the other comp that is causing the problem or not..to also make things safer unplug the good working HD......once he gets the non-recognizable HD to work, reload or repair the WinXP OS only, since it is showing( or is it) as NTFS file structure......hopefully he did not mess up when reloading the OS on the other pc and tryed to reformat accidently....
others thoughts?
I repeat unplug the KNOWN WORKING HD so it does not get messed up, and all ya have to do is pop it back in after you have troubleshooted/fixed the messed up HD.......
btw...I hate IDE ribbon cables, they can become easily pinched ( broken enternally, and cause you all kinds of headaches....
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So far these are the errors I have recieved on the HD:
missing/corrupt isapnp.sys
unknown hard error ntdll.dll
No NICs installed on this drive
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Go to microsoft crash analysis and download memory checker.
My friend had similar problems I could not figure out what was wrong then ran memory test, Bammo fornd i stick of 512 failed test.
Replaced and no more problems
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Originally posted by Raptor
The link Krusty posted sounds like it should resolve the issue, but also it is going blue screen halfway through windows installation.
Blue screen o' death is memory error:aok For hard drive sounds like a virus.... Write 0's to hard drive and go from there:aok