Re: Help - Can't "Stand By", "Restart" or "Shut Down"
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:23:36 -0400
Confu$ed wrote:
I should start out by saying that I have a very basic knowledge of
computers, so please bear with me. I have an older laptop, HP Pavilion
ZE4610US, with the following specs:
mobile AMD Athlon XP2500+ 1.86 Ghz
704 MB RAM
60 GB HD
OK, here's the deal. About 18 months ago I replaced the factory
installed 40 GB HD, with a slightly larger 60 GB Seagate HD. At the
time, I was planning to do a dual boot with linux partition being the
dominant one, but knew I might have to use WinXP at some point.
Initially I set it up with about 6 GB for the WinXP, a "swap" drive and
about 25 GB for the linux partition. Well, I'm not sure about the last
part, it's been awhile now, so it could have been more (I know I left
some unallocated/free space - but I don't think it was 20-25 GB). Well,
everything was working fine for a while (with the dual boot), but since
I couldn't find the appropriate drivers for the modem (and other
important devices), I ended up using the winXP partition as my primary
one. After some time, I believe the mbr was messed up somehow, because I
didn't get to choose which partition I wanted to log into. That was
really not a big deal, since I wasn't really using the linux partition.
At some point I decided to "canibalize" the Linux partition, to a second
partition (E) in my WinXP setup. As you can imagine, soon I was running
out of space on my small WinXP partition (C;6 GB), and I decided to
merge some of the unallocated (free) space to the C drive using
Partition Manager. That went well, so now I had the following split:
15 GB C Partition
15 GB Unallocated
25 GB E Partition
However, the following day things went bad, the computer automatically
shut down, and when I tried to start it up I got the following message:
NTFS.SYS could not be found or is damaged
Naturally, I immediately thought it must have been due to my recent
actions, but since I couldn't even get it to boot in "Safe Mode" or from
the install disc(s), I couldn't verify this (it kept asking for an
administrator's password even though I'd never - to my knowledge - set
one up, and when I entered "blank" it would simply reboot after three
tries). Eventually it was decided that the error message might be due to
a faulty RAM module (weird coincidence). After replacing the faulty
memory module I was able to get into the repair console, and do a repair
install of XP. Since my original install disc was Win XP Home SP1a, I
had to do the update to SP2 (have disc) and SP3 (from DL) and all
intermediate/subsequent updates were lost too. After having updated to
SP3, I went to MS to check for updates manually (even though I have it
set up for automatic updates), and it found 30+ (about 250 MB worth)
updates. What a pain with dial-up (I know I'm a dinosaur). I can't tell
exactly how long thereafter, maybe 2 weeks max., my computer was no
longer able to "Stand By", "Restart" or "Shut Down" properly. It would
simply hang on "Windows is Shutting Down". I've tried logging in in
"safe mode", but even there it won't "Restart" or "Shut Down".
I've installed the latest versions of the following SW:
AVG 8.5 Free
Lavasoft Ad-aware
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
and I've run scans without any infections being reported. I've tried to
restore the computer back to a point when I knew it was working, and
even though it appears to restore it, the problem persist. I've tried to
do another repair install, but nothing appears to change, so I therefore
conclude that the files that are responsible for power management must
be at a "different level" than a normal WinXP level. Otherwise I would
assume that a repair install would have fixed the problem. I've been
trying to do some more research, and found a site that recommended
dl'ing a small program from MS called dumppo.exe, which I did.
'A7N8X standby (S3) issue - Page 3 - PC Perspective Forums'
(http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?p=1825058&postcount=31)
I changed the min sleep mode from S1 to S3, but again nothing changed.
I should say, I don't know if these changes are made since the pc never
shuts down/restarts correctly (I hae to phusically power it down). I
also read about another program GMER, which I dl'ed, to see if there
were any hidden programs running that prevented a proper shut down, but
I'm not sure what I'm looking for, so that didn't help a whole lot.
'GMER - Rootkit Detector and Remover - Rootkit'
(http://www.gmer.net/rootkit.php)
Finally, I read about the possibility of having a virus in your mbr,
and there is tool that might be able to fix it called "MBRFix".
'Fixmbr - Repair Master Boot Record, MBRFix for Windows 2000, XP etc.,
fdisk /mbr, linux LILO damage MBR.' (http://tinyurl.com/og8af)
I haven't run this yet, as I'm not sure that's what I need to do. I'm
really starting to lose my mind here, so if you have any suggestions I
would be very grateful. Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry about
the length of this post.:eek::redface::rolleyes:
You could give UPHClean a try. On one of my other computers, it
would shutdown, but it took a long time to do it. This tool made
a major improvement in performance. I haven't needed this on my
current system. Your symptoms though, don't sound like an exact
match for this tool. So, I'm mentioning it, so you know it
exists, but I'm not claiming it'll "cure cancer". You could have
a driver problem, or some other, program-related problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837115
"If this method did not work: If you cannot log off Windows, or
there are event messages that indicate that there were user
profile unloading errors, this method did not work. You might
want to ask someone for help, or you might want to try Advanced
Troubleshooting."
I ran an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe and a Mobile 2600+ for several years,
and didn't have any problems with it. In fact, its ability to S3
standby Suspend To Ram, works better than my current VIA based
motherboard. I don't know in your posting above, whether you
have a board like that or not.
Dumppo won't help, if the underlying settings aren't consistent
with what you're trying to do. Similarly, if the computer HAL is
not correct in the first place, then dumppo is not going to be
able to work its magic.
Go to Device Manager and click on the Computer entry. It should
say something like "ACPI Uniprocessor PC". It would say "Multiprocessor",
if you had a dual or quad core, or an Intel processor with Hyperthreading.
But with your Athlon, that is a single core, so Uniprocessor is what
the HAL should be.
In the BIOS, you'd probably want something that mentions S3 in the
BIOS settings. If the ACPI was restricted to S1, that would
prevent Suspend To RAM. The S states, are the various operating
states. S1 is standby with the monitor off, but the fans running.
S3 is suspend to RAM, where WinXP is stored in RAM. S4 is
hibernate, where WinXP is stored on disk, and reloads to RAM
on startup. The BIOS might mention S1, S3, S1&S3 as options.
The S1 only setting doesn't sound too useful, unless you're
having problems with Suspend To RAM and want to prevent it
from happening.
For ACPI to work, you should also have ACPI enabled in the BIOS.
What that setting does, is causes the BIOS to pass "ACPI tables"
to the OS. If ACPI was not enabled during installation, then
your HAL will be something like "Standard PC". And you'll be
in a big mess. When the OS installer sees the tables, it knows
it can do an ACPI install. (Otherwise, you might see a dialog
stating that there is a problem with ACPI.)
Some HAL changes are easy. Changing between "ACPI Uniprocessor"
and "ACPI Multiprocessor", is easy. Escaping from "Standard PC" is
hard.
Once the BIOS is set correctly, and the HAL choice is proven
to be something useful, then you can play with dumppo. And
do an override if necessary. Check with
dumppo admin cap
But to me, it sounds like your problems may be outside
of something dumppo can fix, or UPHClean can help.
*******
With regard to your approach, I recommend stocking up on
IDE drives, if that is what you're using. IDE drives are
becoming less available, and soon they're going to be
hard to find. I recommend installing one OS per hard drive,
and disconnecting all drives, except the target of your
install, when installing a new OS. An 80GB drive can be
purchased for less than $40 right now. Using more drives
will make your life simpler. (My BIOS has a boot menu,
and I can select which disk to boot from, by pressing F11.
Thus, the BIOS is my boot manager.)
Paul
.
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- From: Confu$ed
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