I've been tasked to investigate a win7 32bit system that is
failing to load. It's an Acer Aspire 7715Z

I tried using a windows repair disk (created with another win 7
32bit system) ..but it doesn't get past the "select
language:US"

I can enter the Advanced Boot Options menu (via repeated F8
hits until it pops up).

I can select "Disable Restart" from that list and the system
enters BSOD with STOP code 0x000000ed

I've researched that stop code and the common strategy is to
get to the point where one can run CHKDSK /X /R /F ..but "Safe
Mode with command line) doesn't take me there either - the
system just stalls for a while, and then restarts. The last
driver loaded/reported is "disk.sys".

Selecting "Enable bootlogging" doesn't seem to write to the
ntbtlog.txt file in \Windows\System32 like it should.

Does anyone here have experience in sorting out this issue?

I can boot the pc with a linux live-cd (the Acer supports
64bit, so I chose antiX x64 Base) ...and that looks great.

fdisk -l lists the partitions fine. /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 and
/dev/sda3 look good.

sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt ..works great and allows me to look
around on the Windows partition.

The driver files in /mnt/Windows/System32/drivers are viewable.

Should I just place all the matching driver files with the ones
from my good win7 32bit system?

Or.. should I only replace disk.sys first?

Common wisdom seems to indicate that the problem driver is
usually the one *after* disk.sys. But.. I can't be sure what
that next driver it was trying to load. If I could be sure
what that one is, maybe I could rename it so that it wouldn't
load?

If I look at \Windows\System32\ntbtlog.txt from my good win7
32bit machine, the next file after disk.sys is Classpnp.sys

So.. any ideas on how to resolve this mystery? Appreciated.







--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.64
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointface (618:250/1.9)

Hello Tiny!

26 Mar 25 06:16, you wrote to me:

I'm sorry for posting my findings with it. It won't happen again.

I'm surprised you haven't rage-quit Micronet yet. I know why you're flaring up like a hemorrhoid, Shawn. It's time to let it go. Keeping a grudge and being angry is not good for you.

The next time you want to be immature, do it in netmail and not publicly.

-- Sean

... "Relax! I'm only here for your hamster!" - Death
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Hi Sean,
On <Fri, 27 Mar 25>, you wrote me:

The next time you want to be immature, do it in netmail and not
publicly.

Take your own advice goo goo.


Shawn

--- Grumble
* Origin: Dirty Ole' Town (618:618/12)

Re: win7 boot stops at disk.sys
By: Tiny to Sean Dennis on Sat Mar 22 2025 07:50 am

Why fight with a bsd when you already know linux? (I am asking)

The port system you get on any of the three big BSDs blows the package management of most Linux distributions if you ever need to deploy custom software (this is, you want to use your own version of a certain package with your own patches).

I think only Gentoo, CRUX and KISS (and close derivatives) come close, but those are very unwieldly to use for other reasons. Slackware can kindda do it but you need to build your full repository of binary packages with slackrepo, which is out of the scope of what a regular desktop user is willing to do, unless you want to build and install your custom packages *manually*.

Then there is also the fact that the Linux security frameworks (SELinux, AppArmor and the like) are not out-of-the-box ready for most desktop applications, and if you need to adjust them to your needs they suck balls. With OpenBSD you can just launch Firefox and it is integrated with the OpenBSD security framework by default.

That off the top of my head for actual practical reasons.






--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (618:250/24)

On 20 Mar 2025, August Abolins said the following...

Common wisdom seems to indicate that the problem driver is
usually the one *after* disk.sys. But.. I can't be sure what
that next driver it was trying to load.

If you can boot into to a command prompt on that actual machine you can try running the System File Checker utility:

sfc /scannow


If you can't get that machine booted into a command prompt, you can try taking the HD out and mounting it into another Win 7 machine. If the drive letter was E: then you can run:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=E:\ /offwindir E:\Windows

That'll check all of the Windows system files and replace any corrupted versions. Failing that booting to a Windows 7 CD/USB and doing an installation repair could also work.


Jay

... Sure, I drink brake fluid. But I can stop anytime!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Northern Realms (618:400/23)

Hello Warpslide!

21 Mar 25 06:50, you wrote to August Abolins:

That'll check all of the Windows system files and replace any
corrupted versions. Failing that booting to a Windows 7 CD/USB and
doing an installation repair could also work.

Would a Windows PE disk help?

I'd love to get my hands on a W11 DART ISO. I moved my personal machine back to Windows 11 (I tried FreeBSD but it isn't quite up to snuff for my personal needs but I'll try again in six months) and from professional experience, a DaRT USB stick is a valuable thing to have.

-- Sean

... Shout out to old people as we can't hear that well.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Tiny wrote to Sean Dennis <=-

Why fight with a bsd when you already know linux? (I am asking)

For me? Nostalgia. I ran BSDs before Linuxes were stable for production
- first BSD/OS running mail servers for a software company, then later
running Apache and WS/FTP for a gaming company web site.

I kind of like the idea of running Net/OpenBSD, something that's basic, rock-stable, and doesn't lend itself to eye-candy and twiddling. I get distracted making Windows and Linux look just so. I might actually get
some work done with a basic window manager!


--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
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