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I'm fascinated by a problem I'm having starting just today.

I've got an x64 system running, which with the exception of what I
thought was an occasional glitch with VMWare (manifested only if it an
World of Warcraft were running at the same time), was running beautifully.

When those crashes occured the system would first crash out of World of
Warcraft, which once closed, the mouse and keyboard would fail to
respond, without a BSOD.

This morning I came in to see that the machine had booted on time (I
have the BIOS programmed to boot at 7 a.m., and Windows to autologin to
my main account) but that it was frozen (no mouse, no keyboard) with the
desktop displayed and one of those "send the crash report to MS"
messages on screen. Apparantly the computer had BSOD-ed and recovered.

When I reset to reboot, the machine BSOD-ed, but did not recover all the
way to a frozen desktop.

I rebooted again, and this time tried Safe Mode with the same results.

The next reboot caused an CHKDSK to run, which found about three
screenfulls of errors to fix, many in the WoW64 directory, some in the
AMD64 directory. CHKDSK ran to completion, and the system rebooted.

NOW, the system boots both to safe mode and to regular login, but
Explorer doesn't start. I have a second plain-jane installation of x64
on a smaller partition, which seems to book OK, so I suspect driver
problems, but I'd love to see that crash log before deciding that.

Any ideas?

Rob

Rob Perkins wrote:

> Any ideas?

Oh... In connection with that I should point out that this is running on
the following hardware:

AMD 3800+ Athlon64
ASROCK 939 DUAL-SATA2 Mobo
4 GB RAM

and I noticed that "Cool'n'Quiet" was turned on in the BIOS settings,
but I don't seem to be having problems running in my secondary
installation of Windows. Which I'm now glad I didn't blow away.

The login on the broken installation boots all the way to displaying the
background image, and playing the login sound. Then there is a lot of
disk activity, but no evidence that Explorer has started, and
ctrl-alt-del does *not* produce the process manager.

Rob

from your description, I would do a repair install - there's way too much
that's toasted.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64

Rob Perkins wrote:
> Rob Perkins wrote:
>
>> Any ideas?
>
> Oh... In connection with that I should point out that this is running on
> the following hardware:
>
> AMD 3800+ Athlon64
> ASROCK 939 DUAL-SATA2 Mobo
> 4 GB RAM
>
> and I noticed that "Cool'n'Quiet" was turned on in the BIOS settings,
> but I don't seem to be having problems running in my secondary
> installation of Windows. Which I'm now glad I didn't blow away.
>
> The login on the broken installation boots all the way to displaying the
> background image, and playing the login sound. Then there is a lot of
> disk activity, but no evidence that Explorer has started, and
> ctrl-alt-del does *not* produce the process manager.
>
> Rob

Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> from your description, I would do a repair install - there's way too much
> that's toasted.
>

I was afraid of that.

Any way to read the crash logs before doing so? As I said before, I can
get to the files, I just don't know where the info is stored.

Rob

Sorry, not really my area.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64

Rob Perkins wrote:
> Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
>> from your description, I would do a repair install - there's way too much
>> that's toasted.
>>
>
> I was afraid of that.
>
> Any way to read the crash logs before doing so? As I said before, I can
> get to the files, I just don't know where the info is stored.
>
> Rob

Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> Sorry, not really my area.
>
OK.

I'm betting on the open-source Bt848 drivers, at this point. Or the vid
drivers, also not certified by NVidia. The "installing devices" portion
of the repair install is taking a loooooooooong time to complete.

Rob

A couple of obvious questions - are you overclocking? Have you run a
comprehensive RAM test?

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64

Rob Perkins wrote:
> Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
>> Sorry, not really my area.
>>
> OK.
>
> I'm betting on the open-source Bt848 drivers, at this point. Or the vid
> drivers, also not certified by NVidia. The "installing devices" portion
> of the repair install is taking a loooooooooong time to complete.
>
> Rob

Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> A couple of obvious questions - are you overclocking? Have you run a
> comprehensive RAM test?
>

Not overclocking, and no comprehensive RAM test right now.

And the "Installing Devices" step on the repair install is in its third
hour. I don't know how to bypass it.

Rob

Rob Perkins wrote:
> Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
>
>> A couple of obvious questions - are you overclocking? Have you run a
>> comprehensive RAM test?
>>
>
> Not overclocking, and no comprehensive RAM test right now.
>
> And the "Installing Devices" step on the repair install is in its third
> hour. I don't know how to bypass it.

I suppose what I'll do is restart the repair install at this point, and
refuse to install the detected but uncertified drivers... see if that
helps things along at all...


Rob

I would be very surprised if 'uncertified drivers' were your problem. These
driver versions does not seem to be much different, the only real difference
is that the certified drivers are written to the Hardware Compatibility
list. This, is very expensive for the manufacturer. Of course, it means more
testing is employed, but anything that isn't Beta - the manufacturer
generally has a good idea of what works or not. (Says I!)

I also have an Asrock board, (socket 754!) and this has been inordinately
stable, yet I feel I am familiar with those symptoms, you describe. I would
probably have preferred doing a 'system restore' before trying the 'repair
install' - especially, perhaps, when boot problems are involved.

The first thing I usually do when things, remotely like these, happen is to
ask myself "what was the last thing you tinkered with?"

nVidia drivers are usually very friendly to work with, but most other
things, whenever I upgrade or install/re-install any drivers, I do a
complete un-install first, and re-boot. If I have any suspicion of any kind
of problem or issue, I do it with everything - including nVidia and then
re-boot into a proper mode.

It is a difficult thing to wipe away in a hurry and I can sympathise with
your wish to see the logs. Perhaps you should consult the on-line 'Resource
Kit' documentation, that has wide and far reaching discussions on 'logging'
as I recall.


Regards, Tony. . .




"Rob Perkins" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Rob Perkins wrote:
> > Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> >
> >> A couple of obvious questions - are you overclocking? Have you run a
> >> comprehensive RAM test?
> >>
> >
> > Not overclocking, and no comprehensive RAM test right now.
> >
> > And the "Installing Devices" step on the repair install is in its third
> > hour. I don't know how to bypass it.
>
> I suppose what I'll do is restart the repair install at this point, and
> refuse to install the detected but uncertified drivers... see if that
> helps things along at all...
>
>
> Rob