My Windows XP computer rebooted suddenly when trying to run Windows Update. Since then it has been stuck in a reboot loop. None of the advice in the “broken computer” thread really applies here, but I have read it (and long ago contributed to threads that became its ancestors). My troubleshooting approach so far has been:
(1) Rebooting with Last Known Good, Safe Mode, and Debug Mode had the same results – a reboot – but in Debug mode I was able to pinpoint the file “giveio.sys” as the last file loaded before the reboot. Not sure if this means giveio.sys is to blame, or whether whatever comes next is to blame.
(2) Recovery console commands to navigate through the filesystem all fail, and chkdsk indicates that my two hard disks have “one or more unrecoverable errors”.
(3) Recovery conside fixboot and fixmbr both fail with the same error as above.
(4) Spinrite shows no problems with the actual drives and found no data errors.
(5) A variety of partition tools indicate that the system partitions are intact and correctly-sized.
Ideally I’d like to fix this from within a Windows or DOS prompt environment, as those are what I’m most familiar with, but with the Recovery Console not working, I’m stumped. Can someone suggest a way that I can (e.g.) disable or rename giveio.sys so that I can give rebooting another try?
First, try to get important data off the drive if it’s still accessible. Download Acronis True Image onto another machine, create an Acronis Rescue Media CD/USB, boot from it, connect an external HDD, backup everything you need.
Then, try booting from a Windows recovery CD/USB. Maybe reinstall Windows from a CD/USB. But it looks like you might have to format your drive before you can use it again.
Everything I’ve seen regarding giveio.sys suggests removing all connected USB devices (and if it’s a laptop, removing it from any docking station), then rebooting.
If that works, you should then be able to rename giveio.sys. Apparently it’s usually installed either through a Quicktime update or with a program called Speefan, and it’s a known problem after specific windows updates.
Unfortunately, removing the USB devices did not do anything for me. I have a large hard drive connected to the secondary SATA port, but it too is unrecognized by the Recovery Console. Can anyone recommend bootable CDs that give me read/write access to the files on an NTFS volume? I suspect that copying the big five (system, software, sam, security, default) from a Windows CD to my SYSTEM32 directory and deleting the offending “giveio.sys” file will put me right, but I can’t find a bootable utility that will give me access to the basic DOS utilities and my existing filesystem.
Ooooof. It looks like Windows may be recognizing the wrong installation - an older one from back when I had a RAID - so I’m going to need to find and replace the files that are telling it the wrong info.
Okay, so this was an incorrect diagnosis. I assumed it was seeing a RAID because it showed both of my drives being the same size: about 120GB. Turns out that I was booting into the WinXP SP0 recovery console, which was not recognizing my HDDs because they were over the maximum size allowed by WinXP. This was causing CHKDSK, FIXMBR, and FIXBOOT to fail because they couldn’t issue valid read/write commands.
The correct way to solve this problem was to use nLite to slipstream my SP0 install disc to create an SP3 install disc and do a non-destructive re-installation of WinXP.
My machine was out of commission for over a month! If you installed WinXP from SP0 or SP1 disks, you should consider the following advice:
[ul]
[li]Use a small (under 100GB) HDD for your system partition[/li][li]Create a slipstreamed SP3 install disc and verify that it works before you need it[/li][li]Backup all of your data[/li][/ul]
If I had done either of the first two, I would have been back in business within a day or two. If I had done the third, I could have wiped and reinstalled with impunity at the first sign of trouble.