The system was a Dell Dimension 2350 shipped to the client in January 2003. When I lifted the fan housing, I observed that one of the retaining clips, which clamp the heatsink down onto the processor, was no longer holding its side of the heatsink against the processor. I could no longer use the retaining clip to hold the heatsink down on that side, because the plastic heatsink retainer was broken.
Since it was late Friday night when I found the problem and the client needed the system running by Monday morning, I knew I would have to replace the system, since I wouldn't be able to get another heatsink retainer or Dimension 2350 motherboard, to which it fastens, by Monday. I had some other old Dell systems, but none of them had the same retainer for clamping the heatsink over the processor. So I purchased a Dell 4600 at a local computer repair shop. The system had Windows XP Home on it, so I purchased a Windows XP Professional license to go with it.
I then swapped the hard drives between the systems. I made a backup of the hard drive with Norton Ghost 2003 and then rebooted. When I rebooted the Dimension 4600 with the drive from the Dimension in it, I got a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), which is typical for Windows XP when you make any substantial hardware change.
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer. Technical information: *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF8953528,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
Windows XP doesn't accomodate motherboard changes very well. (Linux does much better). In this case, as far as the operating system was concerned, it was now working with a different motherboard. So I started a repair process from a Windows XP Professional installation disc with a Product ID (PID) of 55274OEM in setupp.ini. Attempting to boot into Safe Mode produced exactly the same error.
You can take the following steps to repair the operating system.
The repair operation did not go smoothly in this case. I received another BSOD.
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. The problem seems to be caused by the following file: cdr4_xp.sys PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA If this is th efirst time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your comupter. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to make sure any new hardware or software... ... Technical information: *** STOP: 0x0000005 (0xF000ADF1,0x00000000,0xF86D99DC,0x00000000) *** cdr4_xp.sys - Address F86D99DC base at F8678000, DateStamp 3cb4d5ad
The cdr4_xp.sys file is a driver file located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers. At Cdr4_xp.sys Windows process - What is it?, I found postings indicating that the file is associated with Roxio Eascy CD Creator. The system has Easy CD Creator 5 installed on it. I also found a posting from someone stating it "Caused BSOD STOP 0x0000007E error during Windows XP Home repair installation - had to boot to recovery console and manually remove this file before Repair would complete successfully."
I tried booting into Safe Mode, but I received the message below:
| Windows XP Setup |
| Windows XP Setup cannot run under Safemode. Setup
will restart now.
|
So I tried booting to the Recovery Console so that I could move or rename the file. I rebooted from the XP installation CD. This time at the first Windows XP Professional Setup screen where I was presented with the following options, I chose to use the Recovery Console.
Windows XP Professional Setup =============================== Welcome to Setup. This portion of the Setup program preapres MIcrosoft(R) Windows(R) XP on your computer. To set up Windows XP now, press ENTER. To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R. To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.
However, when prompted to enter the administrator password, I couldn't get the system to accept the password I knew was the correct password, even after resetting the password with ERD Commander 2002.
So I booted from an ERD Commander 2002 boot disc, clicked on Start, Administrative Tools, selected Service and Device Manager, selected Drivers and then selected cdr4_xp, which was marked with a startup type of System. When I double-clicked on it, I saw the following:
| Name: | Cdr4_xp |
| Display Name | cdr4_xp |
| Description | |
| Path to executable | C:\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers\CDR4_xp.sys |
| Startup type | System |
I changed the startup type from "system" to "disabled" and rebooted the system. The same BSOD as before referencing cdr4_xp occurred. When I checked the drivers with ERD Commander 2002 again, I found the startup type was back to "system" for cdr4_xp.sys. I moved the file to another directory on the system and rebooted. I was then able to proceed with the repair operation successfully when the system rebooted.
When I rebooted and logged into the system, the system was not recognizing the presence of the DVD-ROM nor DVD writer drives in the system and I saw the following message:
| DirectCD 5.2.0.91 | |
 |
DirectCD cannot find any supported recordable drives.
|
The message was referencing the DirectCD program that was installed with Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, which is the CD writing software installed on the system.
When I went to the Device Manager, I found that the DVD-ROM and DVD writer drives on the system both had yellow circles with black exclmation marks inside them next to "CD-ROM Drive". When I looked under My Computer, neither drive was listed. Only the hard drive appeared.
I moved the cdr4_xp.sys file back into the C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers directory and then, within the Device Manager, right-clicked on each instance of CD-ROM drive in turn, then selected "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and clicked on Next . I then had to choose "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install." I clicked on Next and saw "CD-ROM drive" listed under Model. I clicked on Next and the system then recognized the drives after I clicked on Finish. I was then able to load drivers for various system components from a drivers CD.
Unfortunately, since the Windows XP installation disc I used did not have Service Pack 2 on it, I had to then install Service Pack 2 again and then all of the subsequent security and bugfix updates from Microsoft, so the whole process of getting the system back to where it was before I move the drive from one system to another took many hours.
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Created: September 30, 2007