[Grimm]

my computer has been having some trouble booting lately. its gotten to the windows logo screen but it is shown really dim and frozen and the computer just hangs there forever. wen i restart, it gives me the "windows has encountered a problem and cannot start" message. safe mode works however which makes me think its a driver problem. i used system restore to send it back to june 17, which did not solve it, then i restored it back up to july 2nd, which let me boot. however, i have an idea it will start giving me problems again wen i try to restart.

no idea wut to do...any help?

[Chantelle]

Check event viewer.. see what problems / things were done


Next time it happens before you go ahead with a restore firstly try

Boot to last good known configuration.. This basically boots to teh last config which windows succesfully booted normally , this is stypucally used when a bad driver has been installed.

Maybe you should monitor things for a while.

[Grimm]

ya good config didnt work, same result. ive restarted, shut down and booted up several times now with no problems, so idk wut happened, but it fixed itself....i still have all my drivers that were present at the time of the problem...i think. ill post again if more stuff happens wit this

[Grimm]

its startin to act up again. im in safe mode right now, its the only thing that will boot. i still dont know if its a driver problem or not, is there a system folder where all drivers are kept that i could remove to get the drivers off quickly. cuz ive lost track of them and "add and remove programs" wont help if i dont know wut the drivers are called or which is which etc.

i do have a theory about how this happened tho. i went to a driver scan website becuz my usb ports were not reading my flash drive and i thought that it might have conflicting drivers, bad driver etc. so i went and downloaded about 2 or 3 updated drivers and im sure one of them must have been a bad driver. i dont know where it went tho. i scanned my comp from my other drive and i dont think i have a virus either.....or avast would catch it.

chan or mel, have u seen any of this before? cuz this is new to me....

im gonna try taking some pictures of wut the screen looks like and some of the boot process.

and fiunally: where does the "enable boot logging" mode actually put the log? cuz ive used this with other problems but never found the file.

[Grimm]

ive decided to revisit the possibility of repartitioning again. so heres the main setup again:

300gb hard drive that is used by my sister primerily has all her stuff and old stuff of mine that isnt used. the entire thing including windows is about 40 gb.

underneathe that is a slave 40 gb hard drive which is mine, and the main way to use it is to dig into the computer and unplug the master 300 and force the computer to boot to the second drive.

vista will not run on my 40gb, im certain, and i have alot of crap on here i cant lose. rare programs that took weeks to bit torrent and limewire off the internet and a bunch of setup stuff.

i need to be able to repartition the 300 into one 150 gb volume for my sister, and about 3 smaller partitions for my vista, programs, and files. ive seen a program by acronis or somehting that says it can achieve this without having to move or lose data, which would be preferable as it would be tough to squeeze either my stuff or my sisters stuff onto a 4gb ipod, and 512mb flash drive.

i dont quite know wut to do, but hopefully i can get this done without having to move mass data. any suggestions?

[Chantelle]

Sorry obviously I live in UK so my time zone differs to yours which is why I wouldnt have replied until now.

first off ntbtlog.txt (or something like that) is stored in your system root which will most likeley be c:\.


Your looking in the wrong place for driver removal. It is in the system/ device manager.

a quick way to get there is START | RUN devmgmt.msc. You can add and remove them from there.. THis is split defaul by what it is, so if its graphics cards its in display adapter.

Only get drivers by the way from the manufacturer for most things as you could have downloaded anything!

Which drives did you update.


If your still going to re partition you will need to back up everything as it can be precarious at least! You may lose it all if it goes wrong. it might be worth backing up to a few DVDs or CDRs.

[Melissa]

chan or mel, have u seen any of this before? cuz this is new to me....

You hold me in too much a high regard really. I leanrt alot but still so much to go... Your far better off with Chantelle who is qualified and is well a full time IT managere and administrator..

I am just a student, I do get her help alot though.


One thing I dont get is one minute your computer is screwed up , the enxt you want to partition it without effecting your existing build..

I doubt that will solve anything,

Exacerbate things maybe

[Darko]

Buy a new computer

This one seems to be giving soo much trouble lol.

[TYR]

umm, my 2 cents worth; dump vista & install XP. vista is the devil.

[Melissa]

Wasnt the same view point taken with XP .. stay with 98 I remember..

I guess it wont be long before vista comes de facto... rightly or wrongly of course...

I think in 6 months however there will be a real incentive to move to vista when Direct X 10 comes into its prime..

Already it looks to embarress the PS3 and XBOX with aesthetics

[ShinZagato]

There's no problem with Vista...period. Just the usual "Hate the new microsoft OS" that's been going on since...oh...Windows 3.1.


I still remember "Windows 95 is gonna be horrible". In all honosty, i like Vista. I can run literally ANYTHING on it, no problems, the only hinderance to some games is my video card.

[Chantelle]

I am glad to see your going okay, I must admit I was beta testing and it seemed mostly okay to me.. A few driver issues aside.

Personally I am just going to wait just for any final niggles and maybe a few upgrades first.

Yes alot of it is I HATE MS crap.. some of it is deserved like pricing and complacancy etc (a bit more threat from competition I cant help feel MS would pull their weight a bit more)... but alot is from Apple and Linux worshippers ..

I use what gets the job done for me and what does everything I want to do... at the moment XP and Vista are the only ones who do all of that. If linux and OS X did all I want for home and work, id use them.

[Grimm]

well repartitioning the big drive will allow me to fresh start again with a new os, which is kinda wut i gonna need to do cuz right now im NOT in safe mdoe cuz my comp booted normally for some reason.....its really getting frustrating. and now my case cover is starting to get bent out of shape from being taken on and off to unplug the hard drives wenever i wanna go to mine....so im gonna need to go to one hard drive or get a boot manager.

i think im gonna need a new comp anyway

[Chantelle]

well whatever the problem its 80% likeley to be a soft problem and not a hard error..

meaning one way or another the problem isnt terminal and that you can either fix it by establishing the problem (which can be difficult ill vouch sometimes I spend hours sifting through a system trying various things)..

Or you can backup critical files to flash media/ CD or if poss partition the Hard drive copy across files then format and start again.

[Grimm]

i really need another hard drive tho....a place i can put my crap or my sisters crap then fool around with the comp without having to worry about data loss.

ill have to dig up some old computers from the basement or othe rppl. more complication is that ill need a S/ATA drive, so old computers wont help me i guess

[Chantelle]

you sure? are you sure your new comp doesnt still have IDE on? a hell of a lot still do?

also an option is ... network em? copy the data across to the other PC .

How much in GBs of data are we talking.. and remember i mean .mp3s and saved games docuemnts... not programs which can be reinstalled.

[Grimm]

well alot of programs cant be reinstalled, thats the problem. stuff that is cracked like guitar pro, photoshop and akvis sketch and ligthshop. but with all of that plus music movies and pics, id say like 7gb. which isnt too much i guess. i could pass it to my moms laptop.

and im not sure if my comp still has IDE cuz we originally baught an IDE, but couldnt find a way to get it in there ven tho there was wut looked like an IDE port on the mother board. but the IDE belt wouldnt fit into it, so i dont think it is. so we had to go out and buy an S/ATA.

[Chantelle]

Well alot of cracked software is likeley to be unstable anyway..

People do not liek to admit it but , cracked softwar sinc the tested code has been interfered with it becomes compromised along with the stability... and some people embed nasties in there for like spyware and stuff, of course totally transparent to the end user!!

You can simply look at your mother board to see whether IDE is avaialble

but copying ove the network sounds sufficient..


Or just back up to 2 DVDS

[Grimm]

ya ill probably do that. i dont know if there is spyware in my software, avast hasnt caught anything. but w/e, id rather have a full photoshop CS2 and a little spyware as long as my computer can.....somewhat run. i also htink it is the combo of im running on 512mb memory, which i will be upgrading to 2.5gb soon, but i dont know wen. i dont have the money quite yet

[Chantelle]

Avast is anti virus and wont catch spyware..
besides alot of the cracked code with bad stuff in might be embedded by the time you install the software you might have installed it and its beaten past your anti virus.

512 is fine for XP pushing it on Vista

[Grimm]

512s startin to get slow on xp cuz of al the stuff i try to do. would there be any other reason itunes, opera, AIM and guitar pro cant run smoothly at the same time?

[Chantelle]

is your hard drive nearly full?

depends on how much resources they demand each, you can check this in taskmanager in processes

then, check perfoamce and what PFF Usage does it have... or stick a screenie up of each so I can examine them both.

[Melissa]

There's no problem with Vista...period. Just the usual "Hate the new microsoft OS" that's been going on since...oh...Windows 3.1.


I still remember "Windows 95 is gonna be horrible". In all honosty, i like Vista. I can run literally ANYTHING on it, no problems, the only hinderance to some games is my video card.

I know what you mean, At college there is a barrage of Macintosh users saying this and that, well good luck to em, but why do they feel they need to worship a company who is just as evil and make every effort to to dispell Microsoft... if they got over themselves a bit more thyey would rid themselves of the pretentious image.

however I am not too convinced Vista works great... In a short furture maybe... but the driver support is pretty crap at present and it means that gaming isnt performing well on it..

While I havent had a horrendous expereince I cannot say its thumbs up yet... SP 1 is out soon alledgedly.