XP Pro won't boot - AGP440.SYS
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Thread: XP Pro won't boot - AGP440.SYS

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
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    Aurora, NE, USA
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    XP Pro won't boot - AGP440.SYS

    I have a Pentium III 500 MHz running Windows XP Professional, with 320 MB of RAM, 60 GB HD (partitioned off 8 GB for XP), Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 video card, etc. (If you need more specs, by all means, let me know.) Now I can't boot, so here's the whole story.

    Yesterday I installed Worldcraft to try my hand at creating some Half-Life maps. I was fiddling around with that for a while, and then I got some OpenGL error. Then nothing that needed OpenGL would work any more. So I tried a reboot.

    Now Windows XP won't boot at all. If I try a safe boot, it stalls at the line "\DRIVERS\AGP440.SYS" before it reboots and starts over. This is the third time this has happened to me with this computer. The other two times it came about when I tried to install CD burning software (I found out that Easy CD Creator 4 on XP is a big mistake), but there was nothing like that this time. I have been able to solve the problem by reinstalling Windows XP, but I'd really like to not have to do that this time.

    So I searched Google for "agp440.sys" and found many pages. Apparently this is a fairly widespread problem, in both Windows 2000 SP2 and Windows XP. The master thread for this problem appears to be http://www.computing.net/windows2000...rum/21602.html

    However, reading through the twenty or so problems that people have submitted, I found that their system configurations have little or nothing in common with each other. The various solutions that worked for people also aren't similar at all (burned-out LAN card, faulty power supply, bad RAM, upgrade BIOS, change motherboard, enable plug-and-play OS in the BIOS, rename AGP440.SYS to AGP440.OLD, wrong cable modem drivers, use CHKDSK /R, etc.)

    I think one of the big problems is that AGP440.SYS is not necessarily the file that's causing the problem. It's just the last file that Windows displays onscreen before it tries to load whatever file actually causes the crash. This is mentioned quite a few times in the above thread.

    One guy said that he looked at the XP boot log to figure out what file was causing the problem, and then he was able to fix it. So, my first question is this: Where in the heck is the Windows XP boot log? I've looked all over the place, but I haven't been able to find it.

    Of course, if you have any solution to the problem I'm having, by all means, let me know.

    [This message has been edited by bkell (edited 04-26-2002).]

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
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    OK, I got desperate and just reinstalled XP, and everything's back fine. I think the problem was with my video driver, but that's basically just an educated guess, going off of the facts that an OpenGL crash caused it, that the driver provided with my card I think caused Windows to complain that it wasn't XP certified, and that another guy on the aforementioned "master thread" has my same video card and had problems. But Microsoft now has a driver that can be downloaded from the Windows Update page, so I'm hoping that will work. No problems so far...

  3. #3
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    Austin, Texas USA
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    Good luck...I've always had bad luck downloading drivers from the Windows Update site. They seened to always cause me more problems.
    "Dreams are born in your heart and in your mind, only there can they ever die." - Art Berg

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2000
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    foster city, Ca. USA
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    bkell,

    There are many drivers for the nvidia video cards. Most of them are not certified or signed but they do work for most cards.

    What you need to do is go to the nvidia site and check out their drivers for your card. Make sure that it is the driver for XP.

    The driver I am using is 28.32 and it has been running fine with XP Pro. Note; the driver that comes with XP is the only driver that is signed. I don't trust the MS down loaded drivers.

    Gl mac


    ------------------
    If computers are so smart, why can't they fix themselfs??
    If computers are so smart, why don't they just fix themselfs??

    Drive like you work---slow

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2001
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    Aurora, NE, USA
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    112
    Thanks pmckinnie, but please notice that I don't have an NVIDIA video card. It's a Hercules card. I've been trying to connect to their site all day, but apparently it's down, so I'm going with the Windows Update driver for now.

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