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Technician

PC help needed

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Ok so last night my computer was shut down prematurely by an accidental disconnection from it's power source (meaning I turned off the switch) When I returned to restart the computer the next morning I was treated by the expected black screen asking how I wanted to boot up. Naturally I chose to boot up normally. The computer shown the usual black Windows XP with the loading bar indicating it is in fact loading windows. The situation begins as the windows loading screen was replaced by a blue screen with writing on it. The computer then restarts and the cycle repeats. Sadly the blue screen flickers on so fast that it's impossible for me to identify what it's trying to convey.

I decided to simply start the computer in safe mode the next time the cycle returns and while you can see the entire command prompt load it says file a347.bus cannot be loaded, Skip? My guess is some system file became corrupt when the system was so rudely shutdown.

So what now? Am I completely screwed and have to reformat? Is there anyway to replace the corrupt file like in scan disk? I have things on here I would really like to carry over but I'm beginning to think I may have to let them go.

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Sadly I have tried last known boot and sadly with same results.

Lololi said:

way to go you corrupted a file


insert xp disc, emergency recovery


DESU!

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Ok, so i slammed the Winxp cd in the try and set the bios to boot from disk. So I got into the winxp install program, pressed R to launch Microsoft Windows XP(TM) Recovery Console and waited. The program doesn't seem tom be doing anything. In fact it's been sitting there for a couple of hours and I'm looking at a blank C:\>. Why isn't it working?

EDIT: Oh and the corrupt file is accually a347bus.sys

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Oh man, this is the kind of thing that, if it happened to me, I'd curl up in the fetal position and weep.

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It might also be possible to do a system restore from safe mode.

You should have several system restore points on there.

to do a System Restore to a point in time prior to the problem. Go to Start\Programs\Accessories\System Tools\ System Restore\ and open the program and restore your computer to a point in time prior to
the problem.

Good luck

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I would do just that but I can't get the system to start up past the windows loading screen before getting the blue screen of death. I'm looking into leileilol's suggestion and if that doesn't work then I'll reformat.

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From my experience, pressing 'r' takes you to a command prompt where you can probably do some stuff if you know what you're doing. If you just let the install CD continue on, you should get the option to install a new version of windows, or repair an existing one. I don't think the repair utility has ever worked for me though, and I've always ended up having to do a reformat.

As a last resort you could try booting from a live linux CD or something before reformating. That way you might be able to get access to any files you need.

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I didn't say Recovery Console. I said repair installation. Choose to install XP, then when it detects your existing install, say you want to repair it.

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Oh, ok I now know what you meant. It's just when I went into the XP installation program it said I would loose all my data when it makes a new partition. Had me a litle scared.

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Of course it says that. But you dont NEED to repartition. Especially if you choose to Repair the old one like BS said in the first place.

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At any rate, if you do a search you'll find that your corrupt file is a virtual driver associated with Alcohol 120%. If you could manage to start in Safe Mode (or selective startup), try removing that file and uninstall the program the first chance you get.

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Technician said:

It's just when I went into the XP installation program it said I would loose all my data when it makes a new partition. Had me a litle scared.

No need to be scared since you've backed up your data in the past month, right?

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Yeah, XP doesn't take hard resets too lightly. My Win98 box I hard reseted all the time without any kind of problem ever. However I did it ONCE on XP and the whole thing blew up. Had to format my computer and reinstall XP (my computer didn't come with the fucking XP disc).

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Tried some more suggestions and tactics and it came down to writting a new partition and re-installing windows. I didn't loose anything that I can't download again but a few photos I feel bad about looseing.

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Technician said:

Tried some more suggestions and tactics and it came down to writting a new partition and re-installing windows. I didn't loose anything that I can't download again but a few photos I feel bad about looseing.

God you suck.

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About a year ago I was faced with a disc corruption problem, induced by a Soundblaster Audigy 4 acting up (too bad of me that I didn't remove it on the first signs that something was going wrong (random BSODs, extremely long delays during normal use etc.), but that's another story).

In any case, I got the worst possible damage you can get on a windows system, besides losing your FAT or MFT: losing your registry files. If you lose them there's no loading. No drivers. Nothing.

So I used a stand-along boot CD (based on Windows, not Linux) which had some file recovery tools. To my surprise, they recovered the whole of the registry, and the system was able to boot again, however not removing the culprit meant that the system just failed a few days later again due to registry file corruption, with a suspicion that actual physical damage occurred on the MB. At that point, tired of restoring lost registry files, I reinstalled windows on top of the old installation without a reformat (and without removing that nasty POS Audigy), but soon after, you guessed, more disk corruption, and something definitively fried on the SATA controller.

I had to change mobo, however if I could selectively restore the registry, I guess you can selectively restore one specific file, as long as you have a boot-cd that lets you browse NTFS disks, and you know where you can find that file. Take heed, after restoring one you may get new errors about other files, but it's a way of moving ahead.

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Once Windows goes belly up the best thing you can do is:
-boot up with a Linux Live CD (say Kanotix) and copy all your files onto some kind of removeable storage(pendrive, usb harddisk).
-format and re-install

It's always quicker in the end.

I have never been able to recover a windows box once some system file goes bongo, at least never with the XP install/recovery CD: replacing the dodgy file(s) in the recovery console doesn't usually help, at least in my experience.

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It wasn't even a system file (see my earlier post, or google "a347bus.sys"). If people are in such a hurry to wipe their disks and lose hours of productivity, they should just go ahead and install Linux.

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Bucket said:

It wasn't even a system file (see my earlier post, or google "a347bus.sys"). If people are in such a hurry to wipe their disks and lose hours of productivity, they should just go ahead and install Linux.


I'm with you bro. I don't know what's up with all those people suggesting a format for every windows problem, small or big as it can be. It's like getting an enema for common cold. It may be fast and easy enough if you have windows on their own small partition and the data somewhere else, but since the majority of users have a single partition (including me), formatting is a VERY bad idea. Backing up before you format? Yeah right, try backing up like 100 GB of data...even on an external HD it's a burden, while DVDs and CDs are totally unpractical.

Typically, just reinstalling windows on top of the old one does the trick. At most, you can manually delete the old WINDOWS and RECYCLER as well as the "System Volume Information" folder if you really need to (it's possible using a boot CD) and keep all of your other data.

A total reformatting is really a last-ditch solution to adopt only if the file system is busted or the disk is physically damaged.

Also, there are windows-based boot CDs out there which IMHO are much easier to use than Linux ones, and even allow you to run some of your programs from the HD, only that it may be illegal to obtain them.

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pritch said:

I'd forgotten just how big a jerk you can be at times.

What's the worst that can happen? Technician is emotionally destroyed?

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