BSOD troubles on WINXP system


Can you folks help me? I'm trying to fix a computer for a college
student.

Background. Machine had Win XP with SP3 updated. It obviously had
some sort of virus or trojan program as any URLs kept getting hijacked.
You could get to some sites, but you could NOT navigate to any site that
contained virus tools (mcafee, kaspersky, trendmicro.) The machine had
no purchased anti-virus software installed.

1) I pinged trendmicro and kaspersky from an other machine to find
static IP addresses. When I tried using static IP addresses to navigate
to those sites I was unable to use the online scan tools. There is
always something that downloads that works off of dynamic addressing.

2) Hijack this scans revealed nothing extraordinary. There were a
couple of things that you couldn't "fix" (I think a PCTools file from
Microsoft...) but overall not much there.

2) I figured no problem, I'll just reboot, F8 and do safemode with
networking. Once I did that I immediately started getting Blue Screen
Of Death errors. Generally the error was "The video driver failed to
initialize"... 0x0000B4

3) I found a posting with similiar issues, which recommended the
following in the Recovery Console:

enter bootcfg / add
...
Enter No Gui Boot for Load Identifier
Enter /fastdetect / noguiboot for OS Load Options.

4) When I booted with this setup, I got good results here. I
reinstalled the VGA drivers using the expand command from the WinXP
disk. I reinstalled other key files which other searches indicated were
suspect to the virus that I believed was kidnapping the DNS system.
(hosts related files were all clean, thhis is a devious puppy.) I was
hoping I had enough to get back to trendmicro for an online virus scan.
When I attempted to do online scan from trendmicro, I started getting
the dns errors again. At next reboot, the machine starts windows, I see
a simple blue screen, see a small window popup, I can see and move the
cursor... but eventually the machine goes into Blue Screen of Death
"fatal system error" C000021A. I've been playing with different
boot.ini options, but things always end in BSOD.

5) current boot.ini
[boot loader] timeout = 30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="No Gui Boot" /fastdetect
/noguiboot <-- This gets "fatal system error"

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /safeboot:minimal /basevideo /sos /bootlog
<-- this gets video driver error.

6) Some of my problems. Hard drive uses NTFS. Administrator PW is now
blank, user password is known. I do NOT know Microsoft WinXP Product
Key. The machine is that ever famous brand "eMachine", so I don't think
I'm likely to obtain the orginal key (which will make wiping the hard
drive and re-install difficult.) I do happen to have an old copy of
WINXP pre SP1... good enough to get me into recovery console.

Couple of questions. Using just the recovery console, is there a way
to erase the contents of ntbtlog.txt file? The thing is nearly one meg
big, and at that size near worthless. I'm trying to understand if any
single file is corrupting the system at a minimal boot. I've renamed
the old (and eventually put it back), but apparently the /bootlog does
not create a new blank file. (? seems odd?)

Any ideas on where to proceed from here? I'm motivated, and I'm
patient. Anybody been here before?

Many thanks.

Zip...


--
zipzit
------------------------------------------------------------------------
zipzit's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/zipzit.htm
View this thread: http://forums.techarena.in/windows-xp-support/1056845.htm

http://forums.techarena.in

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: spoolsv.exe using all CPU cycles
    ... Free Online Virus Scan ... Windows XP Startup Programs Tracker ... > solutions to fix the problem (beyond downloading their recent signature ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Having issues with 3rd party products deleting MSBlaster.exe variant A?
    ... Fix for step #6 on the original send. ... correlate to the symptoms the virus causes. ... displays the initial Windows XP load screen, ... Protect you data for $50 or so. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • Re: Having issues with 3rd party products deleting MSBlaster.exe variant A?
    ... Fix for step #6 on the original send. ... correlate to the symptoms the virus causes. ... displays the initial Windows XP load screen, ... Protect you data for $50 or so. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • Re: reformat hard drive containing a virus
    ... If he is quoting an expensive fix he should be telling you EXACTLY what you ... > to the point getting slower and slower and showing windows at odd times ... >> remove a large number of virus infectionsor a single virus infection, ... >> If you have no recourse, formatting may not fix the problem. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Possible new virus
    ... It seems that we got hit with a new virus today; at this point TrendMicro is ... picking it as the blast.d and nachi.a ... was a Windows XP professional client. ...
    (microsoft.public.security.virus)
Loading