Can't load Windows after driver update

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NetSquirrel

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I just got my new computer a few days ago and I've been downloading the usual drivers, updates etc. for it. The graphics card is GeForce 6800 GT, so I downloaded the latest driver (61.77) from www.nvidia.com. This worked perfectly until I found out there were further "updates" - and the stupidity of what I did should become apparent now - located here: http://3dchipset.com/drivers/beta/nvidia/nt5/index.php.

Following the flimsy advice that I found on another forum site, I went for the 62.20 download. I can't remember precisely when things went wrong after this, but I think the next two or three restarts were successful.

The current situation is: I switch on the computer - it gets as far as the screen where it says Windows did not start successfully. There is a 30 second timer counting down, and the options are:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Last Known Good Configuration
Start Windows Normally

The first three options start a series of lines down the screen which read "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS\" and then after "DRIVERS" there will be a *.sys file, e.g. ACPI.sys. After the last line the computer freezes.

"Last Known Good Configuration" makes the screen go black and it stays like that. "Start Windows Normally" freezes the screen, including the timer, and it stays like that. The only options from here are the power on/off or reset buttons.

I'm perfectly happy to erase all data on the machine and start again, but I can't seem to do that either. It came with XP Pro already installed, and I have an XP Home disc. Putting the XP Home disc in and pressing the reset button brings up the option to boot from CD. After a minute of "Loading..." various things in the bar at the bottom if the screen, it says "Loading Windows" and freezes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If it helps, the CPU temperature is reported on the screen as rising to 65°C, which strikes me as very hot but I wouldn't know.




P.S. I admit that I only registered on this site to get my question answered. This is very selfish and I should apologise for this - unfortunately, I don't know enough to be able to contribute to others' questions. :(
 
Well, if this is a result of your driver installation then you need to uninstall it. You can select Safe Modem W/Networking and uninstall the driver that way, after that everything should be okay. If not, since its a new install, I'd reformat and start over.

Cheers!
 
Well I would contact the comptuer manufact for a windows xp pro cd. Do you happen to have a windows 98 boot up disc if so I would format the drive that way and then try to install windows xp home
 
Gabe, I wish I could follow your advice all the way through, but when I select any of the first three options (Safe Mode / SM with Networking / SM with Command Prompt) I get the "...WINDOWS\System
32\DRIVERS..." messages (I have taken a photo of this but I don't know how to attach the file to this post). In short, none of the on-screen options fails to freeze up the computer at this stage.

Mre30, luckily my friend has a 98 disc which I should be able to borrow tomorrow. I will try that as the next step - hopefully it will have a better chance of working than my XP Home disc.

As a long shot, I went to www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and followed the links to creating boot discs for Windows XP Pro, XP Pro + SP1, and XP Pro + SP2. These link to areas of Microsoft.com where I downloaded the three respective boot disk-making programs. Six floppy dscs are required for each, which, once written to, I inserted one at a time into the broken machine as required. None of the three sets of six discs worked (system froze twice, and complained of a corrupt disc once). I was hoping this method would have let me format c:\ at least, but no luck.


Edit:

P.S. Mre30, am I looking for delpart.exe on the 98 CD?
 
Using a downloaded Windows 98 boot disc, I have now formatted the hard drive, but this hasn't solved the problem. On booting up, the screen eventually displays:

Primary Master: SATA Device Not Found
Primary Slave: Device Not Found
Secondary Master: SATA Device Not Found
Secondary Slave: Device Not Found

No RAID Install!

I have a floppy disc that came with the computer labelled "Sis180 RAID Controller Driver". Pressing F6 during the setup sequence of my XP Home CD prompts me to insert this disc in order to install the RAID drivers (or something like that). This doesn't work - it still comes up with "Setup is Loading Windows..." and freezes up. So I'm back to square one.
 
So it won't let you use the raid drivers either this is starting to sound like a comuter maufactures mistake. I would say try a different windows xp cd if you have one
 
is your HDD a SATA? I believe you have special drivers needed for this (motherboard chipset). When during the install press F5 (I think thats the function key number)
 
Pressing F5 brought up a new screen that looks promising:

Setup could not determine the type of computer you have, or you have chosen to manually specify the computer type.

Select the computer type from the following list, or select "Other" if you have a device support disk provided by your computer manufacturer.

• Standard PC with C-Step i486
• Other

I selected "Other", which causes:

Please insert the disk labeled

Manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk

Into drive A:

This time, it is rejecting the SIS180 floppy disc ("The disk you have supplied does not provide any relevant support files"). Would it be a good idea to attempt to download and create a suitable disc for it to use, or perhaps even ask for one from the manufacturer?

P.S. I do not have any other XP discs, but I might possibly be able to borrow one in the next few days.
 
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