[byrdman]

Hello, I've got a problem with a pesky computer and I'm in need of assistance. The computer was on and running and it rebooted on its own. I got a blue screen and a stop message of "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL", with ntfs.sys listed at the bottom of the message. The same message appeared when I tried to boot in Safe Mode, Last Good Configuration, Command Prompt, and Recovery Console. I can't even use Recovery Console to fix it... (BTW, anyone know the default password for that? I thought it was blank but it hit enter and the computer reboots!)

I bought a new computer because I thought the MB and/or the memory crapped out. I thought I could plug the HDD from the old computer into the new one as a slave and get the files I need off of there. But the same message appears when I plug the old drive in to the new computer. So, I downloaded NTFS Reader for Windows 98 and plugged the old drive into a Windows 98 computer. That computer wouldn't start up, a "Windows Protection Error" was displayed. However, I was able to run some HD diagnostics on the drive and everything checks out. The BIOS reads the drive but I can't access it.

My next step was to try a DOS-level NTFS reader to copy the files from the old drive to the new computer. The DOS-level reader can see the files on the old hard drive but I wasn't able to copy them. The reader has to copy the files to a FAT drive but I don't have one.

Does anyone have any other ideas that I may try? I'm at the end of my rope here. The files on the hard drive are very important to me and I would like to get them back. It seems like I can almost get them but they are just out of reach. One important lesson I've learned so far is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. Is there a way I can repair the old hard drive? Thanks for your time.

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Windows 98 can't read NTFS and I've never found anything that helped much. Put the hard drive back where it started. You may run into product activation problems if you don't.

If you were able to boot off the XP CD as far as the Recovery Console - even though you couldn't remember the administrator password this site may be of some assistance.

The webpage is very long and you need to read it right to the end. It gives you some of the other options that may be available to you. From what you have said I don't think that your situation is unrecoverable. There is a lot of information about the recovery console but there is also information about a repair install which may be what you need to do.

http://www.webtree.c...p/repair_xp.htm

If you need to do a repair install - you will lose all the service packs you have installed and you will have to update Windows again. If you have an original CD with SP1 or SP2 already on it - it's not such a problem.

Many programs will no longer have registry entries after a repair install and may need to be reinstalled as well. So everything won't work exactly as it did before. But you should be able to recover your data at the very least.

[ilago]

Windows 98 can't read NTFS and I've never found anything that helped much. Put the hard drive back where it started. You may run into product activation problems if you don't.

If you were able to boot off the XP CD as far as the Recovery Console - even though you couldn't remember the administrator password this site may be of some assistance.

The webpage is very long and you need to read it right to the end. It gives you some of the other options that may be available to you. From what you have said I don't think that your situation is unrecoverable. There is a lot of information about the recovery console but there is also information about a repair install which may be what you need to do.

http://www.webtree.c...p/repair_xp.htm

If you need to do a repair install - you will lose all the service packs you have installed and you will have to update Windows again. If you have an original CD with SP1 or SP2 already on it - it's not such a problem.

Many programs will no longer have registry entries after a repair install and may need to be reinstalled as well. So everything won't work exactly as it did before. But you should be able to recover your data at the very least.

[byrdman]

I was able to copy the files to my new computer using NTFS Reader for DOS. The bad thing is the files were copied with the 8 character filenames....it's kind of a hassle to figure out what the files are but at least I still have them. I will try a repair install anyways to see if I can get the old computer up and running again. Thanks for your help.

[byrdman]

I tried the XP repair install option and the computer locked up again with the same stop message. It seems like any time Windows attempts to access the hard drive the error appears. Is there a way to repair it without formatting and starting over?