Troubleshooting

The First and Foremost thing to find out in a NO BOOT situation is in which phase of the Boot Process the issue is occurring. The boot process can be divided into 4 main phases: 1. Initial (PreBoot) 2. Boot Loader a. NTLDR b. Ntdetect.com c. Boot.ini 3. Kernel a. Ntoskrnl.exe b. Session Manager, CSRSS 4. Logon

 If the No Boot is occurring in the PreBoot Phase then below are the logical troubleshooting steps to follow. The first step one should always follow if the No Boot is in PreBoot Phase is to use a Boot Floppy Creating a Boot Floppy 1) Full Format a Floppy on a Windows 2000, XP or 2003 machine 2) Copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and modified boot.ini into it 3) Boot the problem server using this floppy

ossible Error messages in a PreBoot Phase

Operating System not found
When booting to the hard drive, the ROM BIOS looks at the last two signature bytes of sector 0 and verifies they are equal to 55AAh. If the signature bytes do not equal 55AAh the system assumes that the MBR is corrupted or the hard drive has never been partitioned. This invokes BIOS Interrupt 18h, which displays an error that is BIOS-vendor specific such as Operating System not found . The MBR searches the partition table for a boot indicator byte 80h indicating an active partition. If no active partition is found, BIOS Interrupt 18h is invoked and a BIOS error is displayed such as Operating System not found .

Invalid partition table

If any boot indicator in the MBR has a value other than 80h or 00h, or if more than one boot indicator indicates an active partition (80h), the system stops and displays Invalid partition table.

Error loading operating system

The MBR loads the active partition s boot sector and tests it for 55AAh. If the boot sector cannot be read after five retries, the system halts and displays Error loading operating system.

Possible Error messages in a PreBoot Phase

4) Missing operating system If the boot sector can be read but is missing 55AAh as the last two bytes of the boot sector, missing operating system is displayed and the system halts.

5) A disk read error occurred If NTLDR is on a bad sector, A disk read error occurred is displayed. 6) NTLDR is missing If NTLDR is not found, NTLDR is missing displays. 7) NTLDR is compressed If NTLDR is compressed, NTLDR is compressed displays. 8) Blank Blinking Cursor or Black Screen This can be caused by errors in MBR or Boot Sector, incorrect hidden sector value can give you a blank screen issue.

Contd .
Once booted to desktop from the boot floppy, use DskProbe to fix issues in the MBR or Boot Sector. If the issue is with the boot files, simply copy them over from the floppy to the system drive. But in-case you are not able to boot from the boot floppy then boot into the recovery console. You cannot boot in any other mode if the failure is in the Pre-Boot phase, so don t waste customers time asking him to boot in any other mode. No Boot scenario.

Steps to follow in Recovery Console to resolve a PreBoot Phase

CHKDSK This may find and fix errors, but may also report Unrecoverable errors . Unrecoverable errors is a hardware issue; at this point you should ask the customer to get his drive checked. For customer satisfaction, you can try a parallel installation. DO NOT FORMAT ANY OF HIS DRIVES. FIXMBR FIXBOOT That s pretty much what you can do from the recovery console, never swap hives or any other file. Do not try a repair installation as a troubleshooting step for No Boot in Pre-Boot Phase.

If the No Boot is occurring in the Boot Loader Phase (Phase -2) then below are the troubleshooting steps you can follow. 1) NTLDR reads the boot.ini and If BOOT.INI is not found:

NTLDR attempts to continue the boot process by assuming that Windows was installed on the same partition. Default is C:\WINNT. If the C:\WINNT directory is not found, NTLDR displays this error message: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \winntroot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe.

Sol: Using a boot floppy and trying with different arc paths will help resolve the issue. 2) NTLDR loads NTOSKRNL.EXE and HAL.DLL into memory.

If the incorrect HAL is loaded, a no-boot willresult.

Errors like, HAL.DLL is missing or corrupt , Need Load Kernel for Dll . Boot into the recovery console and read the setup.log from C:\Windows\Repair folder to find out the HAL type, and then copy the correct HAL from the OS Media as HAL.dll If that does not resolve the issue, the only troubleshooting step left is to run a REPAIR INSTALLATION.

3) NTLDR loads the System registry hive:

\Windows\System32\Config\System, so that it can determine which device drivers need to be loaded to accomplish the boot. If Windows cannot load the registry hive, it ll throw an error.

Boot into the Windows Recovery Console to copy the files from the WINNT\REPAIR folder. This may help you boot to the desktop, if the hive in the repair folder is old then we need to run chkreg on the current hive and try to fix the errors in it. If chkreg is unable to fix the registry then try to copy the registry out from a recent backup. If the customer does not have a recent backup, then we are up for a REBUILD. If you are unable to boot from the hive in the repair folder, perform a parallel installation and try to fix the registry using chkreg from there. You may also try to run a chkdsk to fix the NTFS corruption which may be causing the registry not to load.

4) Any other file missing errors: have to be handled accordingly, first step is to try replacing it from the recovery console.

1) Hanging at Splash Screen: Try booting in safe-mode and see at which file it hangs. ACPITABL.DAT is the file where it would hang in a lot of cases. This can happen due to a lot of reasons, mostly outdated BIOS and Firmware, update them. Check to see if any external devices like SAN, Tape Drive, etc. are attached, detach them and check the behavior. Next you can try is to run chkdsk from Recovery Console as a corrupt file system may cause this issue. Try swapping the registry hives, mainly System and Software. Keep researching on the VKB and leave the Repair installation as your last resort. If the file it hangs at is something else, you may want to try renaming it from the recovery console.