[RESOLVED] Upgrading Ultra100 drivers broke my Win2000

[Nix]

I updated the windows drivers for my Promise Ultra 100 card in Win2000.

It said it wanted to reboot and now I get this error

Windows Could Not Start Because the Following File Is Missing or Corrupt: \Winnt\System32\Config\System

and that I need to boot with the Win2000 CD and choose repair option.

Incidentally I updated the Ultra 100 bios and the Win drivers in Win98SE and WinMe with no issue.

Got them all from http://www.promise.com/support/downl...all&os=0&go=GO

[SuperSparks]

That message means that the Registry is hosed

Boot up with the Win2000 CD in the drive, go to the Recovery Console and type:

copy c:\winnt\repair\system c:\winnt\system32\config\SYSTEM

Hopefully that'll fix it.

[Nix]

Thanks I'll give that a go.

Is that a bit like doing SCANREG /RESTORE in Win9X systems ?

Will it mean that the Promise Ultra Drivers I installed will not be installed any more ?

[SuperSparks]

Yep, it's about the nearest equivalent to Scanreg /restore.

I'm not 100% certain whether the drivers will be installed afterwards, but I'd say it's a fair bet that they won't be.

[Nix]

What a disaster.

Did as you said and it started to boot go to the part where it goes from being VGA to nice graphics and the HD just started clunking like it was reading past the end of the drive or something.

Sounded horendous.

Shut it off and decided to reinstall win2000 but just use the new drivers from the outset.

Did this and when it went to do the first reboot, horrendous clunking sound.

Shut off and decided to reinstall win2000 with original drivers.

Started doing that and saw after a few reboots that it had destroyed my XOSL boot menu and also hooked into my WinMe install on a separate partition.

Decided to abort the win2000 install and attempt to repair my WinMe so it didn't have a boot menu.

Booted using a WinMe boot floppy and deleted what I thought were the relevant files on C:

Tried rebooting and it told me that NTLDR could not be found.

Tried SYS C: and it said it couldnt find the windows files in the right locations ??

After numerous attempts to fix I put XOSL back in place and booted into Win98, installed by DSL modem drivers etc so could connect to the net.

Went to MSKB and found and article about SYS C: and error message I was receiving.

Wrote it all down, as printer is not installed on Win98, and then did what it said.

Rebooted and selected WinMe in XOSL menu and was informed that the system disk was invalid and to press any key top start again.

Tried SYS C: numerous more times to no avail.

Thought about doing an over the top install but didn't want to lose my settings / tweaks etc.

I had read an article before about doing a second installation of WinMe by renaming folders etc so...

Booted using WinMe floppy and renamed c:\windows, c:\my documents and c:\program files to c:\oldfolder and then renamed all files in the root of C: to have a suffix of .nix

Reinstalled WinMe and then booted using the winme floppy and deleted c:\windows, c:\my documents and c:\program files and renamed the originals back.

Reinstated XOSL which had been lost again and rebooted.

Miraculously it worked and I managed to get back into WinMe.

All up about 3 hours wasted.

Win2000 still isn't installed yet and I will back up everything else before trying again.

I'll find the articles that I'm talking about and post the links.

As usual always fun and games.

Should have just left the drivers as is because my existing drives are only 20GB, 20GB and 10GB.

[SuperSparks]

Horrendous clunking noises from a hard drive are always a very bad sign. Back up your important data immediately. It would probably be worth downloading and running the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility (they run from floppy, there is no need to boot into Windows). Here are the most common ones:

Seagate Seatools

IBM / Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Maxtor Maxblast 3

Maxtor PowerMax

Western Digital Software & Drivers

Fujitsu Utilities

[Nix]

Thanks.

I reverted the Ultra 100 BIOS back to the previous version and also reverted the drivers in Win98SE and WinMe back to the previous version.

Since my drives are Seagate, Quantum and IBM, I downloaded Seatools, PowerMax and Drive Fitness Test.

Created the floppies(Seatools and PowerMax looked amazingly similar other then branding)

Booted with Seatools floppy and nothing happened ??

Booted with PowerMax and it booted to an interface where I could test the Segate and Quantum disks - quick tests showed no issues.

PowerMax detected the IBM drive but when attempting to run the test sais to contact Maxtor.

Drive Fitness Test recognised all drives and the quick tests all came back ok.

I might do the extended tests for DFT and / or PM when time permits.

I think that since none of the drives are lager than 20GB then installing the drivers to allow for drives larger than 160GB caused something weird to go on with the drive geometry in Win2000 ?

Anyway all now seems ok having reverted back to older drivers.

[Nix]

These are the articles I refered to after I got the message

Cannot find the system file in the standard locations on drive C:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;255220
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314057

This one http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;277648 for the reinstall of windows to a new folder