Wednesday, October 1, 2008

STOP 0x00000024

So I upgraded my machine some 2 or 3 months ago, and have reinstalled XP about 6 times or so. I keep getting a bunch of different blue screen stop codes. I tried getting minidumps and full crash dumps, then opening on WinDBG and tried to figure out what the problem is, but I can't find anything consistent. (I've got all kinds of red herrings, like issues with the antivirus, usb camera drivers, ntfs.sys, etc).

So here are the main specs:
CPU: Intel E8400
MB: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
RAM: 2x1GB Patriot
HD: SATA 500 GB Seagate (OS, Main), IDE 300 GB Maxtor (Backup)

Obviously, latest drivers, XP SP3, etc. I've ran MemTest86 for nights in a row, no issues.

So yesterday Windows Live FileShare crashed on me, and the machine wouldn't boot, showing a BSOD with the STOP 0x00000024 error (yet again). I looked up online, and most references pointed to the ntfs.sys file. So, I booted with my Linux SLAX CD, and tried to rename/remove the file and copy it from the WinXP installation disc. SLAX said it couldn't delete the file (I guess renaming in Linux is a copy-then-delete method).

Crap. (I have a suspicion this is related to BioShock's DRM with the SecuROM method, since my hard drive shows crap even on Linux and can't open some folders where SecuROM is installed).

So I rebooted from XP, see if I could get anywhere, and now I got a "NTLDR is missing" before windows even started.

That's really bad.

So I thought: "ok, let's bite the bullet and either run the recovery console, or reinstall WinXP AGAIN."

So I booted with the XP CD, and it showed my 500GB drive as "free space".

Not good. I didn't backup everything!

So I said, ok, maybe the SATA drive is bad, so let's install it to my trusty 300GB IDE drive. I did and then rebooted.

As the first part of the XP installation finished, the machine rebooted and ran a CHKDSK on the D:\ drive (which now is the SATA, the bad one). It found and corrected a bunch of errors (like 15 or so). Then the second part of the XP installation began.

At this point I thought: "Ok, I don't really want to lose my non-backed files, so maybe the SATA drive is better?!?". So i turned off the machine while XP install was waiting on me to begin the second phase.

I rebooted, and chose the SATA drive as the boot drive...

And it works like nothing ever happened.

The corrupt files on the c:\found.000 folder were MP3 files, so I did have a backup of those.

So we'll see what happens next on this saga...

2 comments:

Edmundo. said...

You have a severe case of "bad computer" ;)

Have you checked your computer for viruses / trojan horses and that kind of crap? Now adays is very easy to get those problems over the internet and some are very nasty to say the least.

About your linux CD, did you checked that the HDD was mounted as RW? usually Linux only mounts NTFS filesystems as RO.

The NTLDR sounds as if you had tried to install linux on your disk and then the boot record got missing.

Maybe you have a faulty HDD, maybe it was the alignment of the moon, jupiter and saturn and bad timing, or you need a "limpia" with a black-hen egg ;)

One question, why didn't you tried the repair console from the same XP CD initially instead of trying everything else?

R Caloca said...

That's the first thing I tried, running the Recovery Console, but the WinXP disk said the NTFS partition was free, so nothing was installed in its opinion, so no Rec. Console...

Yup, got Avast! running with all the protection modules. I actually suspected it of the problems!

I could rename/copy other files with the linux cd, so something was messed up with the HD...