[Tom Plachecki]

While in the middle of cleaning up my Daughter's PC (homebuilt, XP Home SP3 running on Intel P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD) under the direction of Heir in the Malware Forum <http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Spyware-Protect-2009-Koobface-others-I-can-t-boot-into-Safe-t245186.html>, it now will no longer finish booting.

This problem occurs while trying to boot to safe mode or normal mode and booting to last known configuration or reloading using System Recovery Console do not change the behavior.

It completes the OS load process (black screen, XP logo with moving status bar), but on the blue screen with the XP logo center-right and two darker blue bands on the top and bottom it comes up with the hour glass for a second and then goes to the mouse pointer. Mouse movements work, but nothing else works. CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing. This looks like the same screen that comes during statup or shutdown and would normall have white status messages, such as loading network settings. However, no such status messages come up.

Just prior to this happening, Heir had me run a Combo-Fix with a custom script. Combo-Fix restarted automatically and this problem occured.

Thank you for your help.

Tom

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Do you have your original genuine XP installation disk?
If so follow the next steps:

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Hopefully you have already put the XP cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:
"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over.


Click R to enter recovery console

Type the following

expand d:\i386\userinit.ex_ c:\windows\system32
click enter

Once it says 1 file copied
Then type exit and click enter
System will reboot
Make sure to remove winxp cd before it boots up and let it boot fully
Windows should start normally

If not post with result

Edited by rshaffer61, 16 July 2009 - 07:28 AM.

[rshaffer61]

Do you have your original genuine XP installation disk?
If so follow the next steps:

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Hopefully you have already put the XP cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:
"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over.


Click R to enter recovery console

Type the following

expand d:\i386\userinit.ex_ c:\windows\system32
click enter

Once it says 1 file copied
Then type exit and click enter
System will reboot
Make sure to remove winxp cd before it boots up and let it boot fully
Windows should start normally

If not post with result

Edited by rshaffer61, 16 July 2009 - 07:28 AM.

[Tom Plachecki]

No joy.

Booted from XP CD and entered recovery console. Expanded userinit.exe and replaced existing userinit.exe file, exited recovery console and the boot stalls in the same spot.

[rshaffer61]

Hmm ok
Do you have your original XP installation disk?
If so we can do a repair installation and thus save all your data and programs.

[Tom Plachecki]

Ok - I'll follow the repair XP as shown in the guide at the top of the forum. When complete, I'll post the results.

Thank you

[rshaffer61]

Ok thanks for the update. We'll continue to monitor your topic.

[Tom Plachecki]

Repair problem. No issue entering the Repair process. It did take a while to get through the "Installing Drivers"

After entering the CD Key, I received and error that it could not copy CMPROPS.DL_. I tried the retry options a few times, tried removing the disc and lightly cleaning the disc and reinstall. No luck. Tried to find it manually, and it shows up in the window, but the setup froze at that point.

Had to manually restart. Its trying again....

I'll let you know what happens the second try.

[Tom Plachecki]

2nd Try

This time the problem was with:
licwmi.dl_
mmfutl.dl_
servedeps.dl_
cimwin32.dl_

iExplore.ex_

I had to cancel and tell it to install without copying the files. Hopefully, it will either use the existing versions or we can add them afterwards.

Next problem - It finished installing and then came up with a black screen and the Windows XP logo, with the words "Please wait..." below the logo and the hourglass for the mouse pointer. Mouse moves, but its been on that screen for 15 minutes

[Tom Plachecki]

3rd Try. Made a disc copy of the XP SP2 disc and I'm doing an XP repair with the copy.

[rshaffer61]

Genuine Windows XP disk?
Is it scratched up?
Seems like a problem reading the disk.. could be a problem with the disk or the cd drive itself..
Thank you for the update and I will continue to monitor for your results.

[happyrock]

I would try running chkdsk /r
first

Edited by happyrock, 17 July 2009 - 07:23 AM.

[rshaffer61]

Thank you Happyrock and as always a great second set of eyes to have.

[Tom Plachecki]

The XP SP2 disc is a geniune disc. Upon inspection, I noticed that there are some small scratches but nothing major. I tried the disc copy just to try to rule out an intermittent disc problem.

3rd try with the XP SP2 copy. Repair runs ok except for two errors while trying to copy two files. I'm at work and I don't have my notes as to which two files. I do remember that they were different files on each try.

When the errors occurred, I did try to swapping out the CDs (original and copy) and pressing the RETRY button and the error continued. Interesting, when I hit the CANCEL button, it gave me the option to continue without copying the file [Y/N] and on Trys 1 and 2, I selected YES. This time I selected NO (for both files) and it progressed as if nothhing was wrong. I would have thought that a NO would have either returned to the original error or maybe it tried one more time and this time it worked and thus moved on. Your thoughts? Like you, I'm starting to think it I might also have a CD drive problem. The computer has a DVD drive, so I could try swaping things around and using that drive.

Anyway, I let the 3rd try run to completion and last night it was back to the black XP logo screen with the "Please wait..." below. I'm not a computer novice (I used to manage computers at work before I moved into management) and I've never seen that screen before. It was late, so I turned off the monitor and left it run overnight. My daughter was still sleeping when I left for work, so I didn't check the status this morning, but I'd bet it was still waiting.

My plan when I return home is to check the computer and if it is still waiting, I'll boot into the recovery console and try "chkdsk C: /R" first and then a reset. After this I'll post the status and the two filenames it had errors copying.

As a reminder, prior to the problem of this thread occurring, I was in the middle of a Combo-Fix with custom script when the computer reset and entered this state of non-joy.

Thanks again!

[rshaffer61]

How To Run Chkdsk /r from Recovery Console:


How to run checkdisk from recovery console (Windows xp). (Courtesy dsenette)

• Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
  Note:Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted to do so.
• When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
  Note:If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
• When you are prompted to do so, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
• At the Recovery Console command prompt, type the following then press Enter:
  

  chkdsk /r

• Allow this to run UNDISTURBED until completed (45 min or so)
• Report any errors

[Tom Plachecki]

Now able to login.

We had to do a third XP recovery followed by a chkdsk /r. Please note that during the recovery, it had problems copying the cinwin32.mo_ and msconv97.dl_ files.

The chkdsk /r found and fixed more than 1 error.

Heir wants to pick back up on the Malware thread. I'll return here when he is done so we can figure out if we need to do anything with the two files.