re: Suicidal windows: black screen after hardware swap and back again
Friday, July 17, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Posted by C K
(6910 messages posted)
You can do a repair install.. I would suspect the vid drivers aren't your (only)
issue. Corruption of the IDE driver, the registry or the chipset (or other) drivers
is probably the cause so when the IDE driver is loaded to enable DMA mode, it can't
procede (or can't be loaded) and you are stopped cold. Loading in safe mode uses
a generic legacy driver that doesn't enable the DMA modes of the IDE controller so
safe mode will work. Try deleting the IDE drivers in safe mode and restart. Unless
you have more issues than a corrupt driver, it should reload a fresh copy of the
driver and start normally. You can do that with other suspect drivers also.
This is where Linux and Win 9X are the same. The IDE drivers are checked/changed
on every start up if necessary. With NT (NT/W2K/XP and higher) whatever chipset
you have with it's IDE controller is what is used to boot up with. It won't look
for anything different or change it to match a hardware change, so when you change
hardware (to a different chipset or IDE controller), Windows will fail to start normally
and may be damaged if the drive is handled in a different bit mode than the original.
Only generic legacy drivers that are used in safe mode will work (but will hobble
your machines speed pretty seriously)..
You can do a repair install which "should" repair the damage, leave all your apps
and data but then that will effect the Linux bootloader and you will have to repair
that. One reason we don't mix the two on the same HDD. At least I don't after having
spent to much time repairing damage to either system. I dual boot (select the drive
to boot from) from the BIOS. That way, each operating system is kept seperate, but
each system can see the other HDD and if either drive goes down, the other one can
still start, since neither depends on the others bootloader.
Repair install instructions for W2K are all over the net, but make sure you have
the same SP in the install disc as you have on your computer. If you don't, make
a slipstreamed install CD with the latest service pack.
Another warning.. If you have an HDD that is larger than 137 gig, W2K doesn't install
48 bit LBA as does XP SP1 or greater. That means that if you have a drive over 137
gig, partitioned or unpartitioned, you risk corruption of the whole drive if the
BIOS or the operating system doesn't run in 48 bit LBA to access those regions above
137 gig. W2K has to be enabled manually in the registry (SP3 and higher) for 48
bit LBA on large drives, before you can safely use the region above 137 gig. For
most users that means off loading anything you want to save before reloading W2K,
then loading it back on the drive after 48 LBA is enabled and you have your partitions
the way you want them. You can build a CD that has the necessary registry changes
for 48 bit LBA enabling at install if you want, but it is complicated. MS decided
not to update that in the later SP's for W2K. Why I don't know.. It would have
been very simple for them to do.
You might already know all of this, but just in case you don't, in either case, make
sure your data is backed up before doing anything to try and repair Windows.
[Reply or follow-up to this message]
|
re: Suicidal windows: black screen after hardware swap and back again
Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 9:40 am
Posted by Danny
(2 messages posted)
Thanks for the reply.
After much swearing at the computer I finally found out what was at fault. I tried
all the repairs I could think off. What was odd was the event logs did not indicate
a problem, as might be expected if a driver was not being loaded.
I felt the problem lay with the video card so in desperation I swapped out the card
for another (Viper 550), installed new drivers and now W2k in a happy puppy again.
The power cuts and fluctuations that took out the PSU appear to have also killed
the video card. The Linux video driver must do things differently to the W2k driver.
I guess I was too quick to blame Windows. I have moved a hard disk with 98 to another
machine and watched it make a song and dance about finding new hardware. Once bitten,
twice shy. I didn't know that W2k/NT would not adapt to changes of hardware (I can
think of reasons why this would be a good thing.)
Keeping Linux and W2k on different disks is much better, but being an old machine
the BIOS doesn't have that selectable boot option (or at least I've never come across
it!) and I didn't want to spend money on extra disks. The two seem well behaved and
until now I've never had a problem. I use GRUB for booting and it works great. I
think the very first time W2k saw the GRUB bootblock it choked. That was years ago
and I can't remeber how I fixed it now...
I didn't know that about W2k 48 bit LBA. Useful to know. I don't think it'll ever
be an issue for this machine. I have a large disk in another machine that is Linux
only and it handles them quite happliy.
Thanks again.
[Reply or follow-up to this message]
|
