Unable to boot - Safe Mode stops after crcdisk.sys

Anonymous
2010-07-11T01:34:05+00:00

original title: Windows Vista 32-bit crashes as system is loading. Safe mode hangs after crcdisk.sys loads.  System restore also fails.

My computer (an HP m9200t) no longer fully boots after installing a new windows update.  When turned on the computer will begin to load windows and allow me sign in.  However, about 30 seconds to 2 minutes after signing in I can no longer interact with my desktop (although I can interact with programs that automatically load upon startup, like windows live messenger).  I sometimes receive a screen that says "kbd.exe failed to initialize properly".  I have tried to restore my system to a point before the update loaded, but I am told my file system is corrupt.  When I run a system diagnostic, I am told there is a problem with one of my hard drives.  I have also tried to boot in safe mode, but the system hangs immediately after loading crcdisk.sys

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-20T16:34:36+00:00

    I suspected that the AHCI setting in the bios had something to to with it, but when I tried changing it to ATA i got an error message saying 'drive not found' or something of the like. I then tried changing the setting from AHCI to ATA and then reinstalling, and apparently this solved everything, because I reinstalled Vista Home Basic without any error messages and it seems to be working fine.

    My Vista started showing blue screen at loading crcdisk.sys during boot and went into a boot loop. Thank you for bringing my attention to this BIOS setting. I changed the setting from AHCI to ATA and it worked for me.

    When I started the machine after several days, I was prompted with an option at boot to load default BIOS settings. I don't know why that prompt came up, but I suspect that caused the BIOS setting to go to AHCI where it should have been ATA.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-21T14:48:29+00:00

    I had the same Vista boot problem even in safe mode: the boot sequence stopped at the crcdisk.sys phase and blue death stuck with error message 7B. Many previously suggested solutions were tried, in vain. The solution came from here: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-change-sata-hard-disk-mode-from-ide-to-ahci-raid-in-bios-after-installing-windows/   . In the windows registry the SATA hard disk mode changed somehow (?) to IDE. So I had to change it in the bios setup to IDE, now the Windows started up normally, I changed the IDE mode manually in the registry to AIHC, and then while rebooting, in the boot menu back to AIHC.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-19T19:10:25+00:00

    It's not the hard drive. I replaced the hard drive and the problem still exist.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-05-25T04:56:24+00:00

    KingTech the optical drive was probably set to boot in the BIOS.

    Rob - SpiritX

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-05-25T04:14:14+00:00

    We solved this problem on a Windows Vista HP laptop exhibiting the following symptoms:

    In normal mode, hanging on the Windows busy bar

    In safe mode, hanging after the CRCDISK.SYS line

    System drive booted fine in another laptop

    Another working hard drive with Windows 7 hung in similar fashion when installed in this laptop

    Answer:

    The problem was a bad optical drive, which we'd identified earlier in the process but didn't think to pull. Instead we had connected a USB drive and attempted to install a clean OS on a test drive; but after successfully loading the clean OS it exhibited the exact same symptoms.

    We replaced the optical drive and the original system drive booted perfectly, no data loss.

    Moral:

    If you think you've seen it all, wait until tomorrow...and don't be in too big a hurry to blame any one thing.

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