Reinstall Windows
Three days ago, I finally finished reinstalling Windows 2000 on our family machine. What a task. Things that went wrong:
- STOP: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error after installing Service Pack 4
- Continued error after “repair installation” from CD
- STOP: KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR error during a full reinstall from CD
I finally ended up making an illegal copy of my Windows 2000 disc (ironically, using a Mac), which sorted out whatever read errors were occurring and worked much better. I also made my father perform the installation from the fresh CD. He seems to have magic IT fingers. I am not sure which was more effective: a new CD or my father.
More problems:
- Service Pack 4 installer’s “update.exe” crashed, because it had “generated errors”
I fixed this by running the following excellent recovery command with the Windows 2000 CD in the drive:
sfc /scannow
This took about half an hour and solved the Service Pack 4 upgrade issue.
Another failure while installing Flight Simulator 2004: Century of Flight:
- Installer caused a system freeze and silent reboot, with no error message
I solved this by running ScanDisk on the destination drive. It’s scary that a bad block can bring Windows down…
My notes and task list appear after the jump.
