As found commonly with several other posts here, my laptop angel 3700 was working fine and all of a sudden, I went to boot it, it would go to the “not shut down properly screen” of which I have already repaired the boot.ini including checkdisk using instructions here: http://icrontic.com/article/repair_windows_xp
and still will not boot.
If I select:
normal boot, the number countdown freezes, hard drive light on for 2-3 seconds, then nothing
safe mode, safe mode with networking, and safe mode command prompt all result in system starting to load drivers only to stop last at aswrvrt.sys, then stop loading
Last known good boot - just goes to a blank screen.
So no way to boot.
I have attached the required FRST.txt log for you to review and appreciate your support and feedback.
Thanks for your support. I successfully restored using your FRST fix (log confirmed) and then rebooted.
I am still getting the same symptoms with system not booting.
I also tried running the Tweaking.com - Repair Windows Safe Mode utility with no success last night prior to the restore, with no success.
Side note, the bios battery is pretty low. I noticed this as it is not keeping the right time and boot order defaults to hard drive, it is off for a short period of time. I did not see any major settings in the bios that could affect it this drastically.
This is a really old laptop/with an older updated bios. Purchased I think 2001.
The Bios shows a primary hard drive and when I select it, there are no setting adjustments, shows it is LBA format, sectors, capacity, etc. but no ide or sata. I think all that was out at the time was ide.
Normal boot was tried after successfully running your FRST Fix taking out Avast, which resulted in the computer hanging or not booting up, the same as what has been happening.
In safe mode, it now stops at mup.sys while starting to boot.
Thanks for your continued efforts thus far. Do you have any other suggestions essexboy?
One of the Techs at another forum devised this fix which sometimes works
The most common cause is the executing PnP (Plug and Play) and ACPI routines issue.
To fix the issue, we need to access the computer from Recovery Console.
If you do have your Windows CD
To start the Recovery Console directly from the Windows XP CD you would do the following:
[*]Insert the Windows XP cd in your computer.[*]Restart your computer so you are booting off of the CD.[*]When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press the R button on your keyboard to start the Recovery Console.[*]The Recovery Console will start and ask you which Windows installation you would like to log on to. If you have multiple Windows installations, it will list each one, and you would enter the number associated with the installation you would like to work on and press enter. If you have just one Windows installation, type 1 and press enter.[*]It will then prompt you for the Administrator’s password. If there is no password, simply press enter. Otherwise type in the password and then press enter.[*]If you entered the correct password you will now be presented with a C:\Windows> prompt and you can start using the Recovery Console.
Type map and press enter.
It will give you the drive letters.
Note down the letter of you CD-ROM.
If it is a letter other than E you should replace the letter E with your CD drive letter when applying the expand command later on if the command is needed to be applied.
Type following commmands, pressing Enter after each one.
[*]ren c:\windows\system32\drivers\atapi.sys atapi.old
(It will returns to the prompt again without notification)[*]copy c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386\atapi.sys c:\windows\system32\drivers
(If you get a notification “1 file(s) copied” you don’t need to do the next expand command and go to exit command. But if you get notification that the file doesn’t exist proceed with expand command)[*]expand e:\I386\atapi.sy_ c:\windows\system32\drivers
(You should be notified that the file expanded)[*]exit
You may remove the CD or let Windows boot normally.
If you don’t have your Windows CD
Please download ARCDC from Artellos.com.
[*]Double click ARCDC.exe
[*]Follow the dialog until you see 6 options. Please pick: [i]Windows Professional SP2 & SP3[/i]
[*]You will be prompted with a Terms of Use by Microsoft, please accept.
[*]You will see a few dos screens flash by, this is normal.
[*]Next you will be able to choose to add extra files. Select the Default Files.
[*]The last window will allow you to burn the disk using BurnCDCC
Then, follow instructions from Step #1 above.
Using my Windows CD, expanded atapi.sy successfully and tried the normal boot start-up and still not booting, doing the same thing also with safe mode stopping at the mup.sys file loading… or at least what is loading next after the mup.sys file.
Very challenging and frustrating, although I appreciate your efforts with this mystery boot evade.
I was looking at my bios again. It is very minimalist with settings and thought with the low battery that maybe something is causing this, but don’t see anything and I am pretty sure this low battery/bios reset to default was already an issue a while back when I noticed my system time was wrong but I was successfully booting with no problems, up until now.
I am really tempted to using true image to grab an image of my current system, then re-image my laptop with a older working image last year as a last resort, as this would confirm the bios concern. What do you think?