0x000000e: A True Story

[BetaMan]

0x000000e
A True Story
Written and edited by BetaMan
​

Prologue
Alright, so I've got Ubuntu, XP, and W7 all installed and the Ubuntu grub loader is the king of all of them. Well, was. A few days ago, I was trying to delete the Ubuntu partition to free up space since I never use it. I couldn't delete the main 65GB partition, but there was a smaller 4GB partition that I could delete. I thought twice about it and decided that it shouldn't to much harm at all, seeing as it was probably just a swap partition. That deleted, but then I couldn't extend my W7 partition. Fail. Anyway, as a side note, I had a 160GB SimpleTech external drive plugged into my computer.

Day 1: The Crash
I was talking on a Skype call with a few of my friends when I suddenly got BSOD'd. I laughed a bit, got somewhat annoyed, and noticed that the error mentioned the external drive. I didn't pay much attention to it, but when I restarted, the grub wouldn't load.
Panic ensures.
It gave me the grub rescue console; I tried a few commands, yet none of them worked. At this point, I was very annoyed and so I searched through my DVDs and CDs and found my Ubuntu 9.10 CD, booted up into the live session and searched until my eyes bled. I called my friend and he told me to reinstall Ubuntu, so I deleted the Ubuntu partition (It actually worked this time) and reinstalled, however it still gave me grub-rescue. I found out how to make the Windows bootloader king again using bootrec.exe and a W7 install disk, so I did that, but it still offered no consolation. There was a new error this time. "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible". I was happy because I thought I could fix this (I've had it before), but I couldn't. I searched and searched, but none of the solutions worked. The next day I was busy and had no time to work on it.

Day 3: The Solution
Today is day 3. I've found a program that will hopefully work called easyBCD, however it's an in-OS program. I tried to install W7 on a small partition that I made, but the disk was corrupt (I also tried startup repair). I burned a new disk and that one presented more errors yet. I restarted, and just to my luck, I don't even see the boot screen anymore. It's just a blank black screen.

Help! I want to finish this today.

 

[WindowsGeek]

0x0E is a kernel exception. Upon BSODing, you may see a message like "KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" indicating hardware compatibility issues or hardware failures in general. You may wish to try updating drivers or updating your BIOS.

Another message that you may see is "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" indicating a memory failure. I used to get these all of the time, don't worry it's easily fixed by re-seating your RAM sticks.

 

[yodap]

So, can you get into windows?

If you can, you can just install Easy BCD like a regular program and then set your boot order.

 

[BetaMan]

No, I can't get into Windows. Sorry I didn't mention that. That's why I tried to install a copy of W7 onto a smaller partition. I'll try resetting my RAM sticks- which drivers exactly would I need to update?

 

[Core]

I had a great deal of difficulty getting Windows to boot itself on its own after I removed a Linux distro that had been calling the shots with grub. I "recovered" Windows God only knows how many times and always it said it fixed everything, yet Windows never loaded.

Eventually what I had to do was boot into Paragon's recovery disc (although you can probably just do this from a live cd gparted) and make sure the Windows boot partition had a boot flag on (as in, set active). Linux had apparently set it inactive.

I don't know if that helps at all. I will tell you one thing, though... Paragon's Recovery Boot Disc has saved me from a lot of stress, sweat, and tears.

 

[BetaMan]

Hey guys, I just took out the RAM and put it back in and it's now telling me that it simply doesn't have a boot record. This is good. I'm burning a new Windows 7 DVD at the moment, so we'll see where we are after doing startup repair and bootrec.exe commands.

 

[catilley1092]

Thank God that I learned to backup regularly with a decent program, Macrium & Acronis has gotten me out of a couple of jams. Even the default Windows 7 Backup saved the day once for me, my problem with it was that it's too slow.

And the full version of Acronis has a recovery option at bootup.

If one is going to be making a lot of changes to the system, it's best to backup regularly. That way, you can start over where you left off at.

Cat

 

[Nibiru2012]

This is one reason why when I do screw around with a Linux distro I put it on a separate hard drive and change the hard drive boot first options in the motherboard BIOS.

That way I have no issues with incompatibility. Just takes about a 30-45 seconds in the BIOS to switch to a different hard drive and boot to the OS of my choosing.

 

[Core]

This is one reason why when I do screw around with a Linux distro I put it on a separate hard drive and change the hard drive boot first options in the motherboard BIOS.

That way I have no issues with incompatibility. Just takes about a 30-45 seconds in the BIOS to switch to a different hard drive and boot to the OS of my choosing.

That's a good idea. I have three hard drives in my PC and yet I am always cramming the OSs on the same drive, and paying the price later in time wasted.

 

[WindowsGeek]

BetaMan, I can reset your boot records for you if you have the time to come by. No need for a re-install. I have a bootable disk that lets me do it in about 30 seconds.

 

[catilley1092]

This is one reason why when I do screw around with a Linux distro I put it on a separate hard drive and change the hard drive boot first options in the motherboard BIOS.

That way I have no issues with incompatibility. Just takes about a 30-45 seconds in the BIOS to switch to a different hard drive and boot to the OS of my choosing.

That's how I have Mint 10 installed on my desktop, through the Caviar Black drive that I bought earlier in the year. I have 600GB of it partitioned as "Backup", the rest goes for Mint, and a final 4GB "swap" partition. I believe that it serves the same purpose as the "pagefile" does in Windows, but that may not be exact.

Anyway, I can run Mint through USB this way, it's a little slower, but far faster than my notebook runs. Plus I have 6 Windows VM's within it, so actually I have the best of both worlds in one.

Cat

 

[BetaMan]

Okay, the Windows 7 DVD burned, but didn't boot. Along with three others that I tried. I checked the files inside and they seemed fine. I also found a guy who had made a Windows 7 x64 recovery iso (OMGYAY!), but I burned that and it didn't boot either. I also managed to install Ubuntu and boot to it. From there I used Lilo to attempt to reset the MBR on Windows, which put me back at the beginning. I restart and... blank screen. I can't boot into anything now.

I feel like this is a puzzle, like a Rubik's Cube. By the way, when I tried to do Startup Repair inside the W7 install DVD, it gave me the following error.

ROOT CAUSE
Boot Configuration Corrupt
Action: Partition Table repair
Error code: 0x490

That's not word for word, but it's what happened.

Halp?

 

[clifford_cooley]

HI BetaMan

Looking up 0x490 at MSDN Search, the only relevant topic seems to be this one.

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows

You can use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) to troubleshoot and repair the following items in Windows Vista or Windows 7:

• A master boot record (MBR)
• A boot sector
• A Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store

 

[Nibiru2012]

First of all I'll assume you're setting the DVD drive as the "First Boot Device" in the motherboard's BIOS>

Second, I am sure you burned the Windows 7 ISO image to the DVD using something like ImgBurn to where you can verify the burn to make sure all went okay. Plus you also burnt no faster than 4-8X burning speed to get a good accurate burn.

 

[BetaMan]

First of all I'll assume you're setting the DVD drive as the "First Boot Device" in the motherboard's BIOS>

Second, I am sure you burned the Windows 7 ISO image to the DVD using something like ImgBurn to where you can verify the burn to make sure all went okay. Plus you also burnt no faster than 4-8X burning speed to get a good accurate burn.

Yes, I set it as the first boot device, but no, I used the default Ubuntu 9.10 DVD/CD burner at the time. I'm going to retry it now with the Apple Leopard default burner because that one verifies and I'm sure is works. While that's burning, I'm going to try "bootrec.exe /rebuildBCD". It sounds like it might help;

The /RebuildBcd option scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, this option lets you select the installations that you want to add to the BCD store. Use this option when you must completely rebuild the BCD.

 

[BetaMan]

GUYS! I managed to get Windows to attempt to install, and it got through all of the stages except "Completing Installation", where it told me that the directory "C:/boot" was corrupted. SADNESS! However, once I closed that window and went to startup repair, it told me that it discovered a partition that was broken and could recover it, so I clicked yes, and it restarted and booted. My heart was beating, until I didn't even get an OS selection screen. The BIOS dumped and the my screen looked like the following.

H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H

<double rainbow guy> What does this mean?? </double rainbow guy> Hmm, I assume it's because of the corrupted boot folder on the installation disk. So basically, I need the /boot folder of someone's W7 x86 install disk.

I can has pl0x?

Also, the recover CD might just do the job, so we'll see.

EDIT: Alright, I'm burning the disk right now on 10x and verify checked. We'll see how this goes down.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I hope it burns okay at 10X, I recommended no faster than 8X. I myself burn install ISOs no faster than 4X. Thrax disagrees with me on this one, but it has never failed me. It may take 12 minutes or so, but I just go have a cigarette and when I come back it's done.

I have always found that using a windows-based application to burn windows software with is the best way to go.

 

[BetaMan]

Okay, here's the update.

I've managed to install Windows 7 Ultimate x86 on the 64GB partition that XP was on, but the 337GB main partition is corrupted. I ran a checkdisk and I'm going to run another, but I can't even browse it in explorer. I get the following message.

E:\ is not accessible.

The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

Where do I go from here?

 

[BetaMan]

I'm bumping this because I don't think anyone has seen it. I've Googled for answers, but that hasn't worked.