XP only starts in Safe/Cmd mode, well maybe

micky wrote:
Well, I guess I'm being punished for trying to cheat Toyota out of its
$535 dollars. After installing a different download of Techstream, XP
won't start anymore. This Acer netbook has no CD drive, but I can
probably copy a CD to a flashdrive.

Trying in safe mode, the last line to display is

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows\system 32\drivers\agpCPQ.sys

IIRC, it's not this line that is the problem but the next one, and of
course I don't know what the next one is. At one point years ago, I knew
where the 2 lists that had the files in start-up order were. But I
forget.

Is agpCPQ.sys the problem, or is it the one in the next line?

==== We interrupt this problem to give an important message. After
failing to start 6 times or more, I started in command mode, then used
task manager to restart, then used F2 to go into the BIOS to see if I
could boot from a USB drive (probably), then I exited discarding
changes, and then it booted all the way into windows.

How could that happen? What happened? Am I out of the woods?
I haven't rebooted yet. I'm too scared!

Plus, not positive, but I don't think this had anything to do
with Techstream. This different version starts like the previous one,
but it still won't accept the key that is supposed to work. Even though
the previous version would only run on XP and not on 7 or later, and
that's what I've got, considering that two version have had the same
problem, I'm beginning to thing the problem is me, and not the software.
This version installed with no error messages at all.

Continuing with the problem:
And even when I used XP all the time, when I'd have a problem like
this, I wondered why there wasn't an easy way to skip problem steps.
Was there? Is there?

Anyhow, I'm googling the file name now and there are a lot of hits, but
if you guys know an easy fix, please let me know.

This is interesting. I tried to start in safe mode with command prompt,
and it still stopped on the line above, but after a couple minutes, it
still brought up the command prompt. That was very thoughtful of MSoft

And I can run msconfig with start msconfig . It's amazing that I
remembered this.

Now I think I remember the lists, system.ini and win.ini. No, I went
to win.ini and used the cmd command edit, and it has no sys files. Oops,
now I don't know how to get out of Edit.


IIUC I should get a good copy of agpCPQ.sys, or the one in the following
line** that I don't see, and r-eplace the one that is on this computer.

**I still don't remember where those lists are, and googling keeps
coming up with hits that assume windows is running, like use
msconfig.exe.

Rather than being punished, you should have scanned
the file on Virustotal.com first. As a quick check it's
not an exploit, or salted by Toyota on purpose :-)

And why are you using "suspect" software on a computer
that doesn't have backups ? If I was forced into using
software like that, I'd have my hip waders and rubber
gloves on. It would be backup first. Make sure other
computers are switched off (no SMB hacks). And so on.

If I need to "dissect" an installer, I drop the package
into Linux and WINE, and have the installer create plaintext
for analysis. Once it thinks it has won, by dropping the
goodies into the WINE Program Files folder, I can have
a look at what I got. I might even make a list of WINE
files before and after the install. And so on. I use
the two temp folders in WINE quite a lot, and bring
back partially decompressed content, for analysis back
in Windows.

This is why I can't test a lot of software in a hurry,
because it takes time to put on the rubber gloves.

*******

Do you have a URL for the download you used ?

You'll probably have this fixed, before I'm even
got my WINE fired up.

Paul