Windows won't boot and more

[digi123]

I installed windows over a week ago, and it was working well. I had few more programs to install and did that on Sat. After install I rebooted and at startup, the startup repair began, but could not repair the problem. I tried a system recovery and that did not work. After more checking and trying many things including putting in the windows cd and doing a computer repair, all of which didn't work, I realized that somehow my drive letters had changed. I unplugged all the drives including the DVD ones and those that weren't turned on and still the same problem. I went to the command prompt and checked the drives with the new letters and all directories and files are there. I have a 1TB Hard Drive that I partioned and originally the C: was the OS, and J: the other partition for my files. I assigned the letter J to it. Now D: is the OS, and E: is the partition for the files. C: is the reserved system. When it first ran the startup repair and I sent the information to microsoft as an options the details showed a corrupt file D:\windows\systemwow64\drivers\pxhelp20.sys and error code= 0x2. I believe this could have been from some installs I had just done; Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 repair, or Sony Picture Utility for my Sony Handycam HDR-CX7.I had also installed Video Studio 11.5. I would really like to be able to get my system going again without a complete reinstall (It has taken me a week to get it all going!) I have read somewhere about renaming the pxhelp.sys file to pxhelp.sys.bak.

Here are the session details from Startup Repair:

System Disk=\device\hardisk 0
Windows directory= D:\Windows
Autochk Run=0
Number of root causes=1
All other checks were:
Result: completed successfully error code=0x0

I can provided more information if I need on my computer, just not at it right now and don't know it off the top of my head. Am running Windows 7 Home Premium. I have 2 DVD drives, a Lite On and an LG. Could it also involve a driver for one of them? The LG seemed to hang a little on the last installs of software. Also do a dare boot up from another drive that has my old XP still on it and get my user files off the OS partition so I don't have to recreate those from scratch?
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[Tews]

System repair should be run at least 3 times in order to get it all sorted out... strange, I know but it works...

 

[digi123]

I have run it 20 times! What is my next step?
Right now I would like to know opinions on if it is safe to plug in my old hard drive with XP and then look at the drives that 7 is on and check to see if my files are ok on the partition. I wish I could do an repair install over the first one to keep all my files and programs like they were. I guess that is not a option in windows 7, either a repair that doesn't work, or a clean install and reformatting the OS hard drive partition.

 

[Jonathan_King]

I have run it 20 times! What is my next step?
Right now I would like to know opinions on if it is safe to plug in my old hard drive with XP and then look at the drives that 7 is on and check to see if my files are ok on the partition. I wish I could do an repair install over the first one to keep all my files and programs like they were. I guess that is not a option in windows 7, either a repair that doesn't work, or a clean install and reformatting the OS hard drive partition.

Yes, simply plugging in the drive and booting from it won't hurt.

 

[digi123]

Unfortunately trying to boot from my old hard drive didn't work. Windows XP just kept restarting and bringing up the screen of which mode I wanted to boot into, tried them all and after the windows xp screen, the computer would just restart. I have checked the drive on another computer and it seems to be fine.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Let me guess: the XP drive is from another machine. That description exactly fits what happens when the drivers on the HD are not relevant to the current machine.

 

[digi123]

No, it is from the same machine. My old hard drive was a 250 GB with XP on it. I put in a new 1 TB hard drive. Partitioned it. Put windows 7 on it. Enclosed my old hard drive in a rosewill external enclosure. Also had another internal drive in the machine that had "My Documents" on it. Transferred all my files over the the partition that Windows 7 is not on. Installed several programs and all was working fine for 3-4 days. Installed new software and suddently windows won't boot up or do a repair. Remember, my drive letters were also changed somehow. I had spent alot of time transferring over my Firefox, Thunderbird, Picasa albums etc profiles, databases that are on the operating system partition with the programs and would really like to not have to do them all again. So I plug in the 250 GB drive with xp on it that used to be in the same machine and it won't boot up, just keeps restarting. I checked to make sure all cables, memory, cpu, etc were secure and haven't come loose. Any ideas?

 

[Jonathan_King]

Have you tried booting into safe mode?

 

[digi123]

Oh yea one more thing to mention, I hadn't installed any new hardware on the machine, just reinstalls of all hardware that was being used before. In bios setup on the main screen, my old hardrive doesn't show as either a primary or slave ide. Should it? also, both hard drives I am using are sata. One DVD drive is IDE and the other is SATA.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Oh yea one more thing to mention, I hadn't installed any new hardware on the machine, just reinstalls of all hardware that was being used before. In bios setup on the main screen, my old hardrive doesn't show as either a primary or slave ide. Should it? also, both hard drives I am using are sata. One DVD drive is IDE and the other is SATA.

No. There is no Master and Slave with SATA.

 

[digi123]

Yes I tried safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, all of them and just after it leaves the windows screen it shuts down and restarts, then asks again what I would like to start windows in. It seems to happen just as the DVD drive light comes on. Could this be an issue with it, but even when it is unplugged I still have problems.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Still sounds like a driver issue to me. Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[digi123]

If it is a driver issue, how do I get rid of it when all my drives are unplugged and still no luck. I don't understand how neither OS would load up at all if there was a corrupt driver.

 

[SIW2]

Did you delete pxhelp20.sys ?

When you say the Drive letters changed - did you see the change from within windows, or is that how Diskpart sees them?

Drive letters viewed from WinRe are not necessarily the same as they appear in Windows.

 

[digi123]

Not sure how to delete from the command prompt, but was going to try that. The last time I went to the command prompt, that even seemed to be giving me problems and I had trouble viewing some directories. I was able to find the pxhelp20.sys file, now I am having trouble getting to that directory. The drives show up that way in the windows repair screen that comes up ever time. Is that winre?

 

[SIW2]

Yes, that's WinRE.

You might be better using the Paragon Rescue Kit Express (RK9) - it's free and burns itself to cd ( don't format the cd )

Boot that, select Normal Mode , then File Transfer Wizard - browse to the locaton of pxhelp20.sys, and rt click and delete.

Free data recovery: Paragon Rescue Kit Express - Overview


You can also see if it shows the drive letters as you expect - you will see them as windows does.

If they are different ( I think you tried to change them already) - then you can use the boot corrector on Paragon to change them back to how they should be as you remember them in Windows.

There is a Boot.ini corrector on there - works only the XP installation, and a bcd corrector - that will correct a Vista entry, but won't affect the 7 entry. ( I am sure RK10 will correct 7 entries, when it comes out).

 

[digi123]

Have downloaded the paragon rescue kit, booted up with the cd I made and am first doing a file transfer to copy my picasa albums, firefox and thunderbird profiles and just few files on my partition that I hadn't yet backed up. Thanks for the info and will report on the outcome. If nothing else I have those files now if I have to do a clean install. I just wish I new the problem for sure so I could avoid it in the future.

 

[nossie]

I installed software that came with my Sony Handycam HDR-SR8 and ended up with the same symptoms - W7 would not boot. Here's what I did.

Use command prompt to rename pxhelp20.sys to pxhelp20.bat
Now it should reboot but it might be that you don't have any CD drives working so...
Edit the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Rename the line "LowerFilters" to "LowerFilters.bak" if it has pxhelp in it. Reboot and that should be you sorted.


Visit my site.
www.topfoto.ie

 

[digi123]

SIW2's solution worked for me. Paragon Rescue was just what I needed to first make sure all my files were safe a backed up. Then I deleted the pxhelp20.sys file and voila, windows loaded up and all was just as it was. Thanks for the help and for the tip on a great free rescue program. I believe the culprit was Roxio Easy Media Creator 9. I ordered Creator 2010 and hope it will work for me. My Sony Software works just fine without that file

 

[SIW2]

Hi digi,

Thanks for posting back your results.

I hope Creator 2010 works better for you.

Probably worth making a backup image - just in case. Or , in fact making one regularly is a good idea - you never know when you might need it.

This Paragon Freebie works very well for that:

Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition

How to Create an Image with Paragon B&R 10

How to Restore Data with Paragon B&R 10