Got a PC here with a slightly dodgy hard disk - some bad sectors were picked up, but fixed, and after numerous surface scans by various HDD utilities I'm pretty confident it's got no immediate problems on a low level. Unfortunately the NTFS table appears to have been screwed, the system hangs in the same place every time at boot. The file it hangs on was called "agp440.sys", so I booted up an NTFS-compatible DOS substitute and renamed it. It then hung on the file that was loaded before it at boot, "nv_agp.sys". Rename that one and it hangs on the file before... have a feeling it's hitting a corrupted file after these which it isn't displaying, and there's no way to know which as the files aren't loaded in alphabetical order. Basically it's screwed. How do I fix it? All of the most important data on the drive has been backed up, so anything goes, although I'd like to avoid going through a format and reinstall.
check the cable. I ve had similar troubles , and after trying EVERYTHING , the problem was the IDE cable. change it and give it a go.
If it isn't the IDE cable you could try some programs. I strongly recommend HDD Regenerator, like it can physically repair some problems that any other programs can't. I really don't understand how it really does its job but I can say by my experience that I've used it on 2 HDDs and it worked great. Give it a try if you can.
Get the Windows OS disk. Boot up from it. Get into the repair console, where a command prompt shows up. type in chkdsk /r to scan the C: drive. See if that helps. If not, then do a repair installation from booting off the oS disk.
Yep, or possibly fixboot or fixmbr... trouble is, there's only one XP disc to hand, and it's a Dell recovery disc from a different PC, which is (ironically) useless for getting to the recovery console on a normal install of XP. Tomorrow I'm going to try to track down the missing copy of XP, give another HDD cable a go, and if all else fails I'll take it out and over someone else's to try some recovery software (I'd rather not do this as it's obviously pretty fragile). I've found plenty of software that claims to do NTFS recovery, but they all need to be run in Windows Cheers with the input, all.
halting on agp system files is an os corruption, run the windows install disc in rescue mode. You'll need to look up the commands to initiate repair.
Have you changed any hardware? Moving a HDD (and it's OS) to another system can cause issues like that. nv_agp.dll is an Nvidia AGP graphics driver, so maybe you've changed GFX cards?
If it halts and hangs, it's an os issue. A dll corruption. I've dealt with it many times when I was a pc tech.
I'm with ASSEMbler here, but it may be just a case of your Graphics card drivers becoming shagged. It's not necessarily that your hard drive is broken or Windows is dead, just that the drivers may have become corrupted. If you can get into Safe Mode (hold down F8 before the Windows logo starts coming up, select Safe Mode from the menu that appears), then you need to do the following: 1) Go to the Control Panel (Start>>Settings>>Control Panel)) 2) Go to System. 3) Click the Hardware tab, and select the Device Manager button. 4) Click on the + sign next to Display Adapters, and right click on your graphics card. 5) Select 'Uninstall' from the menu, and when it warns you, click OK. 6) Find the driver CD for your graphics card, and reinstall the drivers (note: depending on your drivers you may have to reboot back into regular Windows again - just cancel any drivers that try to install whilst you're rebooting). 7) Reboot. Hopefully that should fix it. If it doesn't, you may have to call in help to get Windows back on it's feet. Good luck!
Nah, you're all barking up the wrong tree Like I said, it was a fucked up NTFS partition. Finally got my hands on an XP CD this morning, and chkdsk /r did the trick eventually, so props to madhatter256 for spotting the right one. Now the wireless on the laptop I was using is acting up, so it's off to fix that... and this is supposed to be my holiday... Thanks for the input everyone, anyway.
Yes, Alchy, but you'd told us you'd repaired the disk already, so I dismissed chkdisk automatically. Sorry!
Ah no, I'd been stuck with only my trusty Ultimate Boot CD, which is full of very useful surface repair tools, none of which appear to touch NTFS in any meaningful manner. Apologies for not being clear.
Yup, I would've gone for (in this order): chkdsk HDD regenerator stick in in another machine and grab essential data repair install of windows HOWEVER..... Your assumption is incorrect. Bad sectors = IMPENDING HARD DRIVE DEATH. I would NEVER trust a hard drive with bad sectors. Yes they are repairable. Yes that drive WILL have problems again.
Nah, I said no immediate problems in my first post, obviously the drive is on its way out. A new one isn't quite on its way (few other things need to be rounded up first, and it's not my call, so the order's been delayed) but it's definitely the next step. Is HDD Regenerator bootable, then?
