WinXP home hangs on agp440.sys, recovery console not working

PunyHuman

Hi folks

I need some help with this! Machine froze and when trying to boot in safe mode (or last known good config) from XP CD, it hangs on agp440.sys. It's a P4 1.7Ghz that's been working fine for a year, not overclocked or anything.

I've looked around and apparently it's common enough.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324764
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_20846922.html

I got into the console but it did not give me the option of logging on to the windows directory on the hd (E:/windows), only to /windows. So the MS KB article is pretty useless.

After swapping graphics cards to see if this might help, I now cannot get into the recovery console at all...in fact I can't even get to Setup from the XP CD. I have disconnected all extraneous hardware and tried again, but no joy.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It looks ominous. Only possible cause I can think of is a MS service pack we downloaded the other day; could have been dodgy.

Thanks

Tim

Hankster

What you should be getting is something like the below (obviously this is for multiple instances of Windows on your system):

1: C:\WINDOWS
2: \WINDOWS
3: E:\WINDOWS

Which Windows Installation would you like to log onto
(To cancel, press ENTER)?

And then you choose one of the listed numbers.

Seeing a how you're not getting this type of menu, that information is useless to you.

But from reading through the stuff on Experts Exchange, it could be an over heating issue. You say you've disconnected all external hardware from your system. What about taking everything out of your system (including graphics card if you have an onboard version) and seeing if boots up then?

Could potentially also be down to a resource conflict, that's why taking everything out of your system that you possibly can, MAY help the situation.

You could also try getting a boot disk (or your second OS install - I'm guessing there are two versions of XP [or two operating systems at any rate] installed on your system, seeing as how your surprised that the Recovery Console doesn't pick up Windows on your E: drive as you expected) and accessing your Windows installation though this and renaming the offending agp440.sys to something else (agp440.old is usally a good one!).

Sorry I can't be of more help.

LegacyUser

swap gfx card, boot off winxp cd an do a repair install

edit / didn't think bout this but tis worth a go