Repair Install

Hello,

This is pertaining to windows xp but i thought i would ask here anyway.

I have a Dell Optiplex gx260 with windows xp home that locks up at the splash screen everytime i try to boot. When i try to boot into safe mode it locks up at the same file. The file starts with agp so i was thinking video file corrupt maybe?

Anyways i first tryed "last known good config" after safemode didnt work for me, that was also a no go. I then went ahead with a repair install with the oem disk the computer came with.

Boot from disk, enter (set up xp), f8 (agree to terms), then hit R to repair on the selected partion. It then tells me to hit "enter" again to upgrade? (i thought i was repairing?). I hit enter and let it do its thing, at the end it says completed successully. It reboots and i get the same problem.

I should also mention i ran the dell diagostics cd that came with it and it passed all tests.

Is there something im doing wrong?

Or does anyone have any ideas? mbr maybe?

Instead of safe mode try the "Enable VGA Mode" that is in the same F8 menu. If its your graphics driver that is crashing your system this will load just the basic windows driver. Then if you get in you can re-install or repair your graphics driver and try a normal boot. Your procedure for doing the windows repair sounds correct. I've only ever done it once or twice and its been a while, but I don't remember seeing an upgrade message. I'd have to look at a good online tutorial though to confirm it. One thing I do remember is if it was successful all your installed programs should still be there and you'll be looking at doing windows update again, so there should be a big, long list of updates pending. 80+ I think even if you have SP3 applied.

It does sound like a graphics problem, either the chip-set driver (AGP Buss) or the actual video card drivers. Your on-board video may use an AGP bus. I have one desktop here that does even though it doesn't have an AGP slot on the motherboard. It sounds like the actual driver file for the AGP bus has been corrupted. If doing a repair didn't fix it and VGA mode doesn't work you may have to re-install windows. If you go that route I would back up any data you want to save and do a clean install. I can't think of anything else to try. Assuming its not actually a hardware fault that should fix it. Do you have a spare video card you could put in that PC?

Hi

XP Recovery Console:

Option 2: Starting the Windows Recovery Console from the Windows XP CD-ROM

If you have not preinstalled the Windows Recovery Console, you can start the computer and use the Recovery Console directly from your original Windows XP installation disc. If your computer is already in Windows and you want to add the Windows Recovery Console as a startup option, go to the next section "Adding the Windows Recovery Console as a startup option."

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your CD drive and restart your computer. If you are prompted, select any options required to start (boot) from the CD.
2. When the text-based part of Setup begins, follow the prompts. Select the repair or recover option by pressing R.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiboot system, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
4. When you are prompted, type the Administrator password.
5. At the command prompt, type Recovery Console commands, and then you can refer to the commands that are listed in the "Available commands within Windows Recovery Console" section.
6. At any time, you can type Help for a list of available commands.
7. At any time, you can type Help commandname for help on a specific command. For example, you can type help attrib to display the help on the attributes command.
8. At any time, you can exit Windows Recovery Console by typing Exit at the command line.

Recovery console Commands

Regards

1) Appears to be a bad video driver. MS has a support page for XP startup hanging at agp.sys. Basically, it says disable installed video drivers and use the default VGA drivers.

Problems when Windows XP tries to load the Agp440.sys service

Try changing out the driver, look up your motherboard's website.

2) Regarding that "upgrade" option, I've seen it mentioned on a couple of sites (Pop in the XP cd and choose Install->Upgrade) but frankly I dont remember seeing this option myself. But what it would have done would be to install XP on top of itself, similar to an in-place upgrade. Are you using an ancient version of XP? Best to install the SP3 and the post-SP3 hotfixes.

Sorry for the slow feedback, I went into the recovery console and disabled the agpcpq.sys service that it was freezing on at boot. Tryed booting into safemode again and it stoped at teh amdagp.sys this time. I dont want to get carried away with making changes in recovery console but i may try disabling a couple of these and noting them down to see if i can get this thing to boot.

Thanks for the advice everyone