Will Not Boot!! "Stop" error. Help!!!

[gawguy]

After getting quite a bit of advice here and finally doing additional installations that I had doubts about, namely, was I asking for trouble, I finally did the installations in order to run Thai programs and write and spellcheck in Thai. This ended up tying my system up in a knot. It will "knot" run. I go back to America in a few days and don't want to try sorting this out there where I might have to go in for expensive repairs. I hope some of the experts here can help.

 

1. Installed Windows 2000 Thai. If there were options to uninstall the original Windows 2000 I didn?t use them. I also don?t see any indication that this is Thai Windows when it starts up or runs. The fellow who gave it to me told me it was.

2. Installed MS Office 2000 Thai. If there were options to uninstall the original MS Office 2000 I didn?t use them.

3. Installed Switch Office. I?m not sure what this program did for me at all, except caused problems.

4. Afterwards, I had some boot errors, but I was able to restart without an error. This happened a few times. Some MS Office things did not run perfectly, but they ran.

5. When I tried to run my old Word Processor, Lotus Wordpro, which was on the computer before the new installations, the program would lock up on the file selection screen. I could not run it at all. I tried several times since I have vital information in those files. I had to "End Task" manually.

6. The last time I tried, the program locked up. When I tried to restart the computer I got a ?Stop Message? from the operating system. A blue screen, telling me to try to boot in safe mode and remove any software or hardware that might be causing the problem. It will not start in safe mode, it just comes back to this blue screen. AT THAT POINT I WAS 100% SHUT DOWN.

7. xxx Stop: 0X 00000067 CONFIG_INITIALIZATION_FAILED. Refer to Getting Started Manual to troubleshoot stop errors. (Don?t have one.)

8. I then tried to reinstall Windows 2K. I got a message telling me that there was another folder of W2K found and that I would lose all my personal settings and the documents folder if I replaced it. I was given the option to install W2K into a new folder, which I took.

9. When I start the computer now, a screen comes up asking me if I want to run

1. Windows 2000 Professional

2. Windows 2000 Professional

10. ?1? is the new one and it works. ?2? Boots to the blue screen ? Stop error.

11. When running ?1? I cannot run any of my software ? ?there are no programs installed on this computer.

12. I reinstalled MS Word and Excel into ?1? and they run fine.

13. What I really need to do is fix my original installation so I can run my programs and access my files over there. What can I do now? I really don?t want to reinstall all my programs.

14. Point of information: I had installed Internet Sweeper, which was the first thing that booted during startup. I always had to click in a dialogue box to get past it.

 

Gaw Guy

[kamui]

Gawguy,

if I understand your post right you screwed it up completely IMHO.

 

Usually you cannot install two versions of Windows and Office without using additional software (like Partition Magic).

 

When you installed the Thai version of Windows 2000 the western version got damaged. In the western version all software like Lotus was registered in the registry. Thai Windows has it's own registry and does not and will not recognize the software installed before.

 

Anyway. there was no reason to install Thai windows. To install Thai Office and other Thai software, the only thing you would have needed to do was to set the Windows default language to Thai, like described in another thread ::

 

My advice: Forget to try to restore the current settings! Wipe all Windows, Office and what else versions out and start from the beginning:

 

Obtain Partition Magic and with the help of this software wipe out ALL software installed on partition C:. I hope your data and documentes are stored on a second partition like D: or E: or on a CD. There are other ways to do and you could use different software, but Partion Magic is easy to use and safe. You start this software from cd or floppy disk. Even if Windows has its own partition tool I would not use it, because it's use could be dangerous (loss of data).

 

If you have only have one partition like C: on your harddisk I would recommend strongly to create FIRST, before installing windos, two new partitions D: for documents/data and E: (with nearly the size of C:) for to store an exact image of C: later.

 

Then you setup a completely new and clean system.

-There might be other ways to restore the current two versions of windows, office e.g., but for this you should being able to dig deep into Windows and I presume this is asking for trouble and you will prolong the problems ad infinitum. -

Install Windows 2000 (Thai or Western) and Office and other software you need. Do not install software like "Office switcher" (what ever this is) you do not understand.

 

After you set up a completely new and clean system I would recommend the software Drive Image or Norton Ghost to create an image (a exact, sometimes compressed copy of an partition) and store it on the empty partition E: (depending on other devices installed it could have another letter). In case you fuck up Windows or other important software again, it takes only a few minutes recopy the images back to C: and you have a running stystem again.

 

Good Luck!

 

PS: Maybe somebody has a faster solution?

[Guest]

In your situation I would be inclined to give it the big 'F'. Windows never goes smoothly when 'upgrading' from one kernel to another, especially 98 to 2000 if thats how you did it.

 

Formatting with a fresh install should solve all your problems. BE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST, preferably to another drive or CD. Windows 2000 doesnt have a 'Thai' version, it supports multi-language. Office 2000 does have a Thai version but you need the language pack if you want menus in English.

 

You have two versions of the same OS now which is why your boot menu shows "Windows 2000 Professional" twice. It will always look for a previous install (WINNT folder) when you run setup from the Win 2000 CD.

 

It may be a bit of work for you but a fresh install will have your machine running smooth again (I tend to format my disks every 6 months or so anyway just to clean them out and have fast, clean software again :

[Guest]

I fuck up on a fairly regular basis and often take the easy way out, format and re-install the operating system. End up doing this every 3-4 months. Other than the time it takes to do it's fairly painless as I do regular backups to CD. Agree with Buksida, everything runs better afterward. Good luck.

 

From an official Windows manual:

 

Avoiding Dual-Boot Disasters

We can?t say it strongly enough: Do not install two or more versions of Windows on a single partition! Doing so can cause serious problems with applications, many of which reside in the \Program Files folder on the boot partition (the partition where the operating system is installed).....

 

You might encounter still other problems with multiple operating systems on a single partition. And if you call Microsoft Product Support Services for help with such problems, you?ll be told?politely, to be sure?that you need to reformat your drive and start over. Microsoft does not support such installations.

 

 

 

[adikgede]

Before you fix anything else reboot the computer and select the working version of w2k. Save anything that is important to you, to another computer, another disk or another partition. After that the long process of reformatting and then reinstalling everything you need from scratch will probably give you the best results.

[carlton68]

Hih,

 

I'm with Samui on this. Not sure, in the other thread didn't anyone suggest to make a backup of your system BEFORE you install any funny software where you don't know if it's working.

Samui suggested Drive Image for that. Version 5.0 I got for free in a magazine and it does the job.

 

But never mind, you aren't the only one to setup your system from scratch. Happened to most of us already.

[gawguy]

Okay You Guys,

 

Thank you for the advice. I guess I will have to bite the bullet.

 

I will be back in the USA in a few days. I will save all of my data to my Jazz drive that I keep there and I will reformat drive C.

 

I do that by??

 

Right clicking drive C and choosing Format?

 

And you guys are telling me that you do this every few months AND you reinstall ALL of your software!? I must have 10 or more programs - ACDSee, Palm Desktop, a few Thai programs. That is a lot of time, beyond the reformat business!

 

I'm not exactly sure what a "mirror" is, but I get the sense it is a copy of the hard drive at a certain point. When I get my drive setup again, can I make a mirror of it so I can restore it? I suppose not, or you would have told me already.

 

BTW On the newly installed Windows 2000 Professional (which I now acknowlege is not Thai) I do not have "Hibernate" as an option in shut down box. Why is that? It was my main shutdown option before.

 

Gaw Guy

[kamui]

To format your partition C: you could use FORMAT, or Partition Magic, the result will be the same.

 

As I said, if you have more than one partitions on your harddisk it is no problem to reinstall your system, because if the importatant data are stored on a second partition, like D:, the data are almost secure and won't get deleted with FORMAT C:.

 

There are two ways to install a new system:

 

a.) the hard way: reinstall all software (it take 6-8 hours for me with all the tools, ISDN, ADSL e.g.)

 

b.) the speedy way: copy an 1:1 image of partation C: back on the formatted C: partition. This takes only a few minutes.

I recommended this before:

first make different partitions on your harddisk and second make an image of C: (using Drive Image) after you have installed an clean system with all software needed. This image should be stored on an empty additional partition, and if you want play safe on a series of CD-roms.

[carlton68]

You have to enable hibernation,

 

with Win 200 it is in control panel - power options, click advanced and enable hibernation.

Then it should be available.

 

With the image of the system as samui suggests it is that you install your OS and all the software. When this is ok and running you make an image of that partition. Using Image drive you need at least a second partition on your HDD or a second HDD. You can split the image in parts of 700 MB so you can burn it on CD and recover the space on your HDD (and if you only have one HDD you should burn it because after a HDD failure you wont have access to the image on the HDD anymore.

So when you have to set up your computer again you take the CD and the panic floppys from drive image and restore your system to the exact status when you made that image. Takes less than 30 minutes.

 

Of course you still need to backup your working data and at least the Docu+Settings folder where Windows stores a lot of data usually, if you are using standard directories for documents and pictures and outlook. If you only have one HDD you should save this data to CD on a regular basis.

 

Happy Installing!!

 

[Paillote]

Says kamui:

---

Gawguy,

 

"Usually you cannot install two versions of Windows and Office without using additional software (like Partition Magic)."

 

Yes you can, supported out of the box.

 

"When you installed the Thai version of Windows 2000 the western version got damaged. In the western version all software like Lotus was registered in the registry. Thai Windows has it's own registry and does not and will not recognize the software installed before."

 

When you install W2K over a previous copy of W2K the old settings in registry that are not touched are still intact. If he was able to get his new version of W2000 to boot he would most likely be able to run his old software. Then again, something totally messed up his files so without knowlegable help he might have to say goodbye to that installation. If you install Windows into two different folders you will end up with two registries, but only then.

 

"My advice: Forget to try to restore the current settings! Wipe all Windows, Office and what else versions out and start from the beginning:"

 

Before you do that try to install W2K over your first installation again. That will most likely restore it to a working version, and you will have a good chance of recovering your files. If that is not working at least your old files are still on your hard-disk. Copy them out of your previous windows installation, (if that is where you had them) before wiping your old installation using your second installation.

 

In my opinion all talk about Partition Magic, hibernation, formatting your disk etc. is totally misleading at best. He don't need any of those. He asked for advice on retrieving his files, not wiping them off his hard-drive.

 

Paillote