Cant access second IDE drive under Vista and repair/restore doesn’t work

chrishax

Member
I am posting here in the hope you can help me after 15 hours spent trying to fix this problem.

In overview I have a dual Vista 32 boot setup (with working C drive and locked D drives with separate Vista 32 OSes so no RAID), and after applying nVidia detected drivers (15.25-nforce…) on my secondary IDE drive, I have been totally unable to access the desktop on that drive. No safe mode. No nothing.:frowning:

All I can get for the afflicted D drive (if boot sequence is via the working IDE drive ) is a black screen with mouse pointer and keyboard num lock active, a minute of disk activity before flickering off as if on soft reboot. (I have a lengthy ntbtlog report if anyone wants it but its way beyond my knowledge to understand it ^^)

Although thank God I can use the other drive provided my boot sequence is correct, and therefore have rescued most important docs, I badly need to use the programmes on the drive Im locked out of.

I have no Vista disks and no authentication keys (moral: don’t buy from Dino PC), there is no recovery programme on the HDD drive under F8 options, the ‘last working format’ option didn’t work, restore from within the accessible C drive command prompt only rolled back the C drive and not the D drive.

I was then hopeful the recovery disk on your site would help, and all credit to you it does bring up a recovery console… but the boot repair does nothing to help with all reports being something like ‘OxO’ which means fine I assume.

I then used the system restore option on your disk but that quotes ‘No restore points have been created on your computer’s system disk. To create a restore point open System Protection’ . This surprises me as I have never turned system restore off (Ive had the machine 2 years), and I assume I have to be able to enter bloody windows to get into System Protection and therefore manually restore somehow.

Finally on your recovery disk I tried the Command prompt method using D:….rstrui.exe, but that didn’t work; and under the directory for …\sytem32\restore only the . and .. volume labels show.

So I am now totally locked out of my second HDD (‘D:’) drive on my computer, which contains all my work programmes.

I basically now need your best troubleshooting guidance,

- ideally on how to get into safe mode for that drive despite my problems
- or how to get a recovery/rollback done outside of the main Windows console for the D drive.
- or a selected and correct deletion of the nVidia files that screwed it up again either from simple command prompt or accessed via other working drive.
- or else for people to tell me for sure I’m toast and would have to buy a new OS to get the drive working again. :x

Detailed info on my computer
Intel Core 2 6600 @ 2.40 GHz
RAM 4.0GB
Windows Vista Home Basic 32 Bit, SP1 (2 seperate copies one for each drive with different IDs)
P5N-E Sli motherboard from Asus (with nVidia nForce 650/430i support)
Nvidia 8600GT 512 MB
Driver updates –Nvidia 185 drivers for 8 series (working afaik), Nvidia 15.25… motherboard updates caused problem afaik
 
Hi Chris, welcome to NST.
From your description it seems you're not strictly "dual-booting", but booting independent copies of Vista on different HDDs by switching the BIOS boot sequence ?
Using the recovery disk you downloaded,
disconnect the working HDD, leaving just the broken one connected
boot the recovery disk into the recovery console option, then follow the instructions here.
There's a chance you might get your corrupted system back.
 
And once you got the broken Vista fixed so its booting again by itself, then simply add an Vista entry to whichever BCD you want (either one should work fine), with EasyBCD, so you can boot either Vista from a boot menu at startup (instead of switching the drive order in the BIOS).
 
Hi Chris, welcome to NST.
From your description it seems you're not strictly "dual-booting", but booting independent copies of Vista on different HDDs by switching the BIOS boot sequence ?
Using the recovery disk you downloaded,
disconnect the working HDD, leaving just the broken one connected
boot the recovery disk into the recovery console option, then follow the instructions here.
There's a chance you might get your corrupted system back.

Yes Im booting independent copies.

I will try the approach as the last resort as its a bit 'scary' ! but the post you linked did seem to be set up for XP/NT not Vista and some of the subsequent posters to the thread suggested you would have to get into some part of windows to access the control set and regedit too? Are you confident this wouldn't harm the PC?

Also could someone please confirm if I'm out of options for accessing safe mode, or rolling back/deleteing drivers?

Thanks for all the help so far
 
Last edited:
It's definitely for "Vista black screen of death".
The only alternative I've heard of if you have no restore points, is a reinstall of Vista.
If you'd rather do that (or are forced to), you can at least rescue your user data using the other Vista.
 
Im afraid this is not solved, but in case the total geniuses among you wish to suggest anything more to help me, please read this update on everything Ive tried with results to get KSOD back.

The following is the list of all the things I have tried and that have NOT worked and which still result in KSOD with no windows console options:
- all F8 Windows options (restore, rollback, safe modes, last good config etc)
- all bios options, although for the potential test of video drivers my bios windows list only provides a 640x480 mode(which doesn’t help) and the motherboard appears to have no video drivers to boot out of
- all key options including Ctrl+Alt+, timed manual softboots at freeze point, and Sticky Keys
- all boot disk recovery disk options : repair, restore (says no points exist) etc
- all disk scans incl chkdsk , and windows memory scan
- most sysedit options including the MySystem NTswitch fix, and the NT/current version fix changing cmd.exe switch to explorer.exe
- winevt/logs fix caused by corruptlogs
- running rstrui.exe from command prompts either in ‘dos’ on D, or from the accessible C: drive

I have followed three threads on help forums : the one given above, one on crcdsk driver freezes http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=14775, and a general search under ksod

Notable persistent symptoms are as follows:
- I have KSOD with mouse pointer,disk activity, for about 1 minute before automatic reboot kicks in
- KSOD crash first started immediately after latest 15.25_ drivers asked for system restart
- Restore points on the D drive have probably been wiped by a Vista programming weakness which deletes restore points on the older drive if there are 2 drives managed through bios.
- D drive is accessible and functioning (and reports clear of viruses), when accessed from C, but does not show up at all as a drive to repair under recovery disk UNLESS drive C is first in boot sequence
- D disk access is restricted to command prompt from sys recovery disk, there is NO windows console to work within in this drive.
- on a safe mode load sequence the last files to load before the ksod blackscreen plus pointer freeze are crcdsk.sys, preceded by classPNP.sys and disk.sys
- chkdsk returns the following comments (all fine except…) ‘failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50’, and under the earlier verifying indexes routine : ‘5 unindexed files processed

Overall I have followed three threads on help forums : the one given above, one on crcdsk driver freezes http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=14775, and a general search under ksod
Things I have NOT tried for various reasons are...

A. due to lack of access to the D drive windows console:
- Removal of the drivers installed by Nvidia programme
- Selective setup to disable event collector
B. Due to lack of system disk, and OEM code: complete OS restore or factory reset
C. Due to lack of knowledge: investigation of disk partition repair
D. Sueing Nvidia for the cost of replacing my computer
 
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