XP crashed on me

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:18 pm

I had a CD-RW disc in my LiteOn drive. I went to Nero Info Tool to see the status of my drives, and to my amazement it found no system ASPI layer. I remember installing one before my last firmware upgrade. So I thought I should go to adaptec's site and install one again. I found this page and downloaded the file http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/suppor ... _471a2.exe Is this the wrong one? In the installation instructions, I just used to run the install.bat file but here it said to go to run and type XP32 for my system. I did that and it gave me an error (i forgot what it was). Then I went back to infotool and it said ASPI drivers corrupted. After that I decided to take out my CD-RW disc and do a reboot. The moment I pressed the eject button, I got a stop error from XP :cry:

After that I had to do a cold-restart. And XP never started, it said it couldn't find the C:WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder, use the CD to repair these files by pressing R.
Then I booted from the XP cd and due to the type of cd I had, it wouldn't let me repair it. That wasn't a problem as I just did another installation of XP on the same drive. Now here are my 2 questions after all this talking -
:-: What went wrong with ASPI? Did I download the wrong thing? I am scared even to download any ASPI again. Which way should I do it, without any system crash

:-: Now whenever I start my computer, I have that operating systems choice. The first choice is the one which I installed as C:\WINDOWS2. This is the one I want to use from nowon. How do I get rid of my previous Windows installation. Should I just delete the previous C:\Windows folder? How do I get rid of those choices? I know I can minimize the time it waits on that menu to 0, but I want to completely get rid of that link in the OS menu to the wrong installation of windows.
I know this is long, but I was up till 4 am fixing my crash. Please help. Thanks.

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 12:34 pm

Ouch! I don't know exactly what you did wrong or what went wrong despite you doing everything right. But as for your two questions:

1. Install ASPI 4.60 using ForceASPI 1.7. ASPI 4.60 has a reputation as a good, stable release, and ForceASPI lets you install just what you need and easily remove it if you want. You can get it here:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_s ... rcaspi.cfm

2. Find the boot.ini file in your root directory of drive C:\. It should look something like this:

Code: Select all: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2 [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Delete the line under [operating systems] for the choice you don't want to have available, and make sure the "default" setting under [boot loader] points to the one you do want to boot.

cfitz

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 1:43 pm

I right clicked on My Computer and went to Properties. Then to advanced, then to Startup and Recovery, then to Edit the startup file manually. There I saw this code :

code wrote:[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

So in this case, I delete the WINDOWS = .... to make it look like

code wrote:[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS2="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

? Is that right. I want to make sure everything I do is right now, so just confirming.

by **dodecahedron** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 1:55 pm

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 1:59 pm

Yes, that is right. And even if it wasn't, you could always emergency boot and edit the boot.ini file manually with any text editor to restore it. It is nice that way.

cfitz

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 2:08 pm

Alright, thanks for your help, I'll do that. Now comes problem number 3. I can't install Nero. I put the disc in and it after choosing Nero Burning Rom it says Remove Older Version. I searched the registry using a program called RegCleaner and deleted all keys for Ahead, then went to C:/Program Files and deleted the Ahead folder. Then searched the whol computer for nero and deleted all those files too. It still won't let me install Nero. Any ideas how to get Nero to work now? I can get InCD to install with no problems.

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 2:22 pm

Run regedit.exe manually, and verify that the keys "My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ahead", "My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ahead" truly are deleted.

I'm assuming that you already used Add/Remove programs in Control Panel to remove the old version of Nero.

What was the older version, and what is the version you are trying to install now?

cfitz

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 5:45 pm

cfitz, I found the Ahead key in regedit but that was there because I had installed InCD and Nero Media Player which had no problems. Anyways, I uninstalled InCD and Nero Media Player from Add/Remove and deleted the ahead key in the registry. It's still not letting me install Nero.
You mentioned uninstalling Nero from Add/Remove, but this is a new installation of XP and it only recognizes installed programs as the ones which I installed after this new installation.
I was guessing that some of Nero's files in my C:\WINDOWS folder which I'm not using any more might be causing the problem. I got rid of that folder from my C: and put it on another drive just in case I need it later (i wont though). I still can't install Nero.
Here are some more details as to the installation problem -
I click on install Nero and it says Checking Windows Installer and then it says Older version of Nero found click Remove to remove Nero from your computer. After removal this program will no longer be available for use. I click Remove and it says the wizard was interrupted before Nero could be completely installed. Your system has not been modified. To complete installation at another time, please run setup again. Click finish to exit the wizard.
I had the latest version of Nero installed using updates which was 5.5.10.0. I am not sure which version is on the CD. On the CD however, it says where the serial number of the disc is : nero 5.5.9.2C.
I don't know how it is able to find a previous version of Nero when my whole registry is new(isn't it? it's a new installation!?!?)
I didn't even get a serial number of nero so that I could have used it's demo version and then made it full. Well, the serial number isn't a problem :wink:

but do you think I should try and download their demo and see if it gives a similar error? I really don't want to screw up more things. :-?

by **dodecahedron** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 5:52 pm

try this:

write down the serial number of your Nero.

uninstall all ahead software (including InCD and whatever, even if they work).
remove all Nero folders from your hard drive. also remove all folders of other ahead software, if they are not contained in the Nero folders.
search the registry for "Nero" and for "ahead" and clean all these keys.

then download the latest nero 5.5.10.0 from ahead's website and try to install it.

does this work?

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 5:58 pm

So what was on there was 5.5.10.0, and what you are trying to install now is 5.5.9.2C? The out-of-order install may be what is causing the problem. I would go ahead, as you suggested, and download the latest update from Nero, install it (hopefully) and then uninstall it. That will hopefully clean everything out and let you continue from there.

Of course, if you are able to successfully install the latest Nero version, you might want to stop there and just leave it as is and enter the key from your CD into the registry manually or via the "Help"->"Enter New Serial Number" menu item of Nero.

cfitz

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 6:04 pm

dodecahedron wrote:uninstall all ahead software (including InCD and whatever, even if they work).

There he goes again, the Great Polyhedral One once more turning his back on his former packet-writing friends... :wink:

cfitz

by **dodecahedron** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 6:23 pm

cfitz wrote:Of course, if you are able to successfully install the latest Nero version, you might want to stop there and just leave it as is and enter the key from your CD into the registry manually or via the "Help"->"Enter New Serial Number" menu item of Nero.

yes, that is just what i had meant.

cfitz wrote:
dodecahedron wrote:uninstall all ahead software (including InCD and whatever, even if they work).

There he goes again, the Great Polyhedral One once more turning his back on his former packet-writing friends...

oh no no no... not what i meant at all... uninstall InCD just to clean up the system to enable the installation of Nero.

after that, OF COURSE reinstall InCD :wink:

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 6:26 pm

The Great Polyhedral One wrote:after that, OF COURSE reinstall InCD

I know. I was just tweaking you. :wink:

I told you I am feeling punchy lately... :-?

cfitz

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 8:34 pm

Alright guys, as I had already deleted all registry keys for ahead and nero, and all files and folders too, I downloaded the latest version of Nero from ahead's site and installed it. It went like a breeze (even though it snowed 25cms here lol). Then I put a CD-Key in and Nero finally works. Then I installed InCD and updated that too.

I also downloaded the Force ASPI which cfitz recommended and installed that, and NO STOP ERRORS THIS TIME

. Then updated my LiteOn to SS0A. It didn't show all write speeds, but after a cold boot, that worked too. Also installed the 27

updates + SP1 for XP. lol. At last everything is fine. Thanks a million times cfitz and dodecahedron. You guys always replied back in less than 10 minutes

If I have any more software issues(I hope not) then I will post them here again.
Again thanks a lot.

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 9:02 pm

Super! I'm glad things are humming along again. Let's hope they stay that way... :wink:

Now go out and enjoy that snow. We had 30cm of snow at my sister's house in the Appalachian Mountains over Christmas - it was lovely. Just the sort of White Christmas I always dreamed about as a kid. I'm not a kid anymore, but I still appreciated it.

On the other hand, living up North as you do, snowfalls might be old hat and something to be shoveled rather than enjoyed...

cfitz

by **coolestnitish** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 11:41 pm

cfitz wrote:On the other hand, living up North as you do, snowfalls might be old hat and something to be shoveled rather than enjoyed...
cfitz

Yup, that's why I like my condominium. No shovelling needed.

by **dodecahedron** on Sat Jan 04, 2003 1:42 am

coolestnitish wrote:At last everything is fine. Thanks a million times cfitz and dodecahedron.

glad to hear it!

XP crashed on me

XP crashed on me

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