Very Urgent, please help - Continuous reboot of Windows NT server 4.0

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Danny - 10 Aug 2004 21:51 GMT

Recently I noticed a problem with adding a printer. Tried
to REPAIR using setup diskettes and the emergency
diskette. Answered 'A' to restore original files. Now the
system reboots up to the 'Begin Logon' display, then
whether or not I try to type <CTRL><Alt><Delete> the
reboot process restarts continuously until I power down
the Dell Server. Thx

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Calvin - 11 Aug 2004 01:23 GMT

Hi Danny,

I wish you had asked these questions BEFORE you attempted running a Repair.

Because of several major changes that have been made to the structure of NT4 by
successive service packs and patches (eg: total change in the way the SAM hive
is dealt with) te repair process (depending on what activities you perform) to
take a salvagable situation and reduce it to total ruins :-(

I suspect you may well have got yourself into an 'ir-redeemable' state now, and
may face a total system reload to restore operation. Do you have full backups
of the system ? It may be possible to restore yourself to the state at the last
backup and proceed from that point - it depends on what you have at your
disposal. I think we will need more detail to be able to offer very much useful
assistance.

Calvin.

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Jiri Tuma - 11 Aug 2004 11:51 GMT

yeah, it is very bad state now, study knowledge base article 196603:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:
80/support/kb/articles/Q196/6/03.ASP&NoWebContent=1

If you have not full actual backup, you can use to restore your system with
minimal loses, your way to get stable system back will be really hard. As
any other repair attempt can cause deeper problems, make image of current
disk state before another repair attempt, to be able to roll back at least
to current state.

I think that you should to start by installing secondary (maintenance)
windows NT OS instance. Preferably to different partition or disk (even
added temporarily) then original OS instance is. If you should to install
secondary OS instance to different folder on the same partition, it will
replace common files in Program Files folder with original OS instance and
this means that you should to install the same version of operating system,
the same version of MSIE and the same servicepack as your original instance
had (which can be useful regardless of secondary instance location to get
right versions of files for replacing).

By this OS instance you can do backups, file replacement and registry
changes in original instance. First try to replace files mentioned on end of
KB arcticle above. If this not help, be sure you have the same lvl of SP and
MSIE as original instance supposed to be and try to replace whole content of
winnt/system32 folder (copy only files, not subfolders!) eventually all .exe
and .dll files in winnt folder itself . Do not remove old files, only copy
and paste them allowing replacing of old ones. Note that you can do this
only in case you used exactly the same version of OS as temporary OS
instance (ie. win NT server of the same language in your case - simply use
installation CD of your original OS). Beware that you can use this method
only for system executables, libraries and driver files (but you need to
install drivers first to temporary instance). Configuration and data files m
ay not been replaced! There are not system critical config files in system32
folder so you can replace all files here instead of filtering them by
extension.

After first login to original instance reapply latest servicepack
immediately, it will repair rest of files to proper versions (in case you
did not lost content of setup.log file, but it will be different problem).

luck

George

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Danny - 13 Aug 2004 00:29 GMT

Thanks all for and advising. I chose to re-install NT in
the same folder. Now I got a different problem:
- NT server 4.0 is on partition C Disk1
- Long ago I created a volume set partition D on the
remaining space of Disk1 and a full Disk2.
I also have partition E on Disk3 and partition F on Disk4.
Well now I have a new NT system but I cannot see the
partition D. Disk Admin shows it as unknown space (not
NTFS) like the others. Help if you can. Appreciated.

>-----Original Message-----
>yeah, it is very bad state now, study knowledge base article 196603:
[quoted text clipped - 42 lines]
>
>.

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Jiri Tuma - 17 Aug 2004 10:55 GMT

Oh. Volume and stripe sets are very dangerous even if you have backed up
registry information and it is not recommended to use them without serious
reason and good backup solution.

All critical info is saved in DISK registry key of system hive. There is
undocummented binary field registry value "information" holding all
information about fault tolerant sets, volume and stripe sets and also
forced drive letters. Partitions are identified by partition pointers
(similar to arc() paths) starting with disk signature written in MBR of disk
by disk admin. Loss of this signature or registry key leads to broken
unaccessible set. This means that if you reinstall system, you will lost
registry key and eventually also disk signature can be replaced.

You can try to dig old information registry value from ERD of original
system, but backup your system registry hive of running system (at least
make actual ERD) before you try to delete DISK key and replace it by
original one (note - broke eventual fault tolerant sets before this
operation). It is one of critical keys!

If this not help, your only chance is to use ftedit.exe from NT resource kit
to reconstruct broken set. You need to know exact physical order of
partitions in set (but you have only two, so you will find right order at
least on second attempt :)).

luck

George

> Thanks all for and advising. I chose to re-install NT in
> the same folder. Now I got a different problem:
[quoted text clipped - 83 lines]
> >
> >.

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