Hi all,
I can't get my XP system to finish booting. BIOS is ok, everything is
recognized, the initial black Windows XP screen comes up, then, the two-tone,
striped blue Windows screen comes up. Normally the system just logs me in
after this screen. Now, however, the system just hangs. The hard drive lights
turn off and the system is frozen -- it won't even respond to me pressing the
cycle power button.

The background is that this drive was ghosted over from a working hard drive
using Norton Ghost 9. I did the backup from the Windows application, not from
a floppy. I got no errors, and it looked as if everything was fine. Then, I
went ahead and installed a RAID controller, and set that up. As it turns out,
it copied the crappy version of the hard drive onto the working one, and now
I'm stuck with two hard drives that won't boot!

I've tried booting in safe mode; it gets me to the exact same point and then
freezes the same. I've tried restoring to the "last good" configuration, and
that also gave me the same results. Following some other suggestions I found
online, I made backups of each of:
C:\Windows\System32\Config\System
C:\Windows\System32\Config\Software
C:\Windows\System32\Config\Sam
C:\Windows\System32\Config\default

and replaced them with:
C:\Windows\Repair\Config\System
C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Software
C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Sam
C:\Windows\Repair\Config\default

This didn't work either.

Any thoughts on what the heck is going on and how I can fix this problem?

Thanks in advance!

Did you try removing the Raid Controller and connecting the hard drive to
the Primary IDE channel?
"Man From The Moon" <ManFromTheMoon@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:13465334-400F-46BA-81BF-2C83123DC5D4@microsoft.com...
> Hi all,
> I can't get my XP system to finish booting. BIOS is ok, everything is
> recognized, the initial black Windows XP screen comes up, then, the
> two-tone,
> striped blue Windows screen comes up. Normally the system just logs me in
> after this screen. Now, however, the system just hangs. The hard drive
> lights
> turn off and the system is frozen -- it won't even respond to me pressing
> the
> cycle power button.
>
> The background is that this drive was ghosted over from a working hard
> drive
> using Norton Ghost 9. I did the backup from the Windows application, not
> from
> a floppy. I got no errors, and it looked as if everything was fine. Then,
> I
> went ahead and installed a RAID controller, and set that up. As it turns
> out,
> it copied the crappy version of the hard drive onto the working one, and
> now
> I'm stuck with two hard drives that won't boot!
>
> I've tried booting in safe mode; it gets me to the exact same point and
> then
> freezes the same. I've tried restoring to the "last good" configuration,
> and
> that also gave me the same results. Following some other suggestions I
> found
> online, I made backups of each of:
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\System
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\Software
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\Sam
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\default
>
> and replaced them with:
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\System
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Software
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Sam
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\default
>
> This didn't work either.
>
> Any thoughts on what the heck is going on and how I can fix this problem?
>
> Thanks in advance!

Hey,

This is a long shot but might work. I had a similar problem on my computer
and this seemed to fix it. Try booting from your Windows XP Setup CD and
using the Recovery Console. Run CHKDSK with the /R switch.

Might work might not. Hope it's of some help all the same.

Cheers,
Dan

"Man From The Moon" wrote:

> Hi all,
> I can't get my XP system to finish booting. BIOS is ok, everything is
> recognized, the initial black Windows XP screen comes up, then, the two-tone,
> striped blue Windows screen comes up. Normally the system just logs me in
> after this screen. Now, however, the system just hangs. The hard drive lights
> turn off and the system is frozen -- it won't even respond to me pressing the
> cycle power button.
>
> The background is that this drive was ghosted over from a working hard drive
> using Norton Ghost 9. I did the backup from the Windows application, not from
> a floppy. I got no errors, and it looked as if everything was fine. Then, I
> went ahead and installed a RAID controller, and set that up. As it turns out,
> it copied the crappy version of the hard drive onto the working one, and now
> I'm stuck with two hard drives that won't boot!
>
> I've tried booting in safe mode; it gets me to the exact same point and then
> freezes the same. I've tried restoring to the "last good" configuration, and
> that also gave me the same results. Following some other suggestions I found
> online, I made backups of each of:
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\System
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\Software
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\Sam
> C:\Windows\System32\Config\default
>
> and replaced them with:
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\System
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Software
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\Sam
> C:\Windows\Repair\Config\default
>
> This didn't work either.
>
> Any thoughts on what the heck is going on and how I can fix this problem?
>
> Thanks in advance!