Paging file missing, W2K

[bonz_dragon]

Last night I was working on a WD drive that was corrupt and ran WD Digs on it. It was set as scond drive with CS. First, full test then write zeros to it. Next ran WD Tools to partition and format drive.
After it was completed I renamed to 2 partitions on the drive then shut down and removed the drive.

Restarted and W2K start, get to logon /password screen, enter password, Windows loading sound then error; system has no paging file, or is to small.
Gives a fix and OK button, click ok but it just loops back to logon screen.
Reacts the same way in safe mode.

Found a page on MS Support, Article ID# 259151 but it does not address the looping problem.
Have also tried booting from CD but that dosn't work either.

Any help guys?

[bonz_dragon]

Must be a real nightmare to fix, but Thanks!
Back to another search.

[mobo57]

hey bonz, you get that fixed? Had the something similar happen a few years ago, W2K Pro on C, page file on D. D took a dump. Was going to run without it but couldn't. Looped just like you are getting. Had to put another drive in so Windoze could see it. Then changed the settings back.

[bonz_dragon]

Not yet! Just posted it to another forum at Experts Exchange, see what happins.

Did find 2 refs on MS Support but can't get either of them to work.

[Steve R Jones]

So you did click the "fix" button?

What happens when you put the second drive back in?

[rmanet]

possible your guy moved his paging file to the slave using some sort of folder not there any more, assuming you have multiple users because it's asking you to login - you have admin rights and/or is there an administrator account??

Have you tried F8 and Last Known Good Configuration?

bummer you can't at least get into w2k and run regedit to see your settings, or get to Perfomance Options

Can you get to another w2k machine, create a rescue disk and try a repair with a w2k CD? May be some help....

[Ol'Tunzafun]

possible your guy moved his paging file to the slave using some sort of folder not there any more
That's what it sounds like.

A couple of different ways to approach this:

Plan "A" - Try restarting in Safe Mode with Command Prompt. If it lets you in, go to the prompt and type in

regedit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles"="C:\Pagefile.sys 200 1200"

This will erase any reference to a pagefile on a second harddisk and create a pagefile on the system drive. If for one reason or another this does not work for you, then it may be necessary to go to:

Plan "B" - Mount the troubled drive as a slave or secondary drive in another machine and set the pagefile by editing its registry through REGEDIT on the host machine. First back up the host registry or create a restore point. Then, open REGEDIT (or REGEDT32 if the host machine is also W2K) and highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE . Go to File and choose Load Hive. In the window that opens, browse to WINNT\system32\config on the slave drive and open the SYSTEM file. It will ask you to name the key. Call it W2KSYSTEM or something like that because there is already a key named SYSTEM in HKLM, and access would be denied.
When "W2KSYSTEM" opens, you can browse to MemoryManagement following the path highlighted in Plan "A", and edit the value to "C:\Pagefile.sys 200 1200" (without the quotes, of course).
When you are done editing the key, highlight "W2KSYSTEM" again, go back to File and choose Unload Hive.
Once the drive is back in its original location and you are able to boot back into Windows you can reset the pagefile to whatever you like.

[bonz_dragon]

The Fix button also just loops back. Reinstalling the second drive does nothing because there is nothing on the drive after writting zeros to it and reformatting it.

Have put the drive in as slave with another drive that is a clone that was made when I installed W2K the 1st time.
My Computor show both drives with all 4 partitions and am able to access both drives.
As per the 1st link, accessed the slave drive and changed the page file size and reset permissions. Didn't work.

Now with some of the suggestions I will print them out then try the work throughs, step by step and see what happens. One of these has got to work.

BTW the drive I was working on that started all this is now running fine in another machine with XP on it.

[bonz_dragon]

[QUOTE=Ol'Tunzafun]That's what it sounds like.

Plan "A" - Try restarting in Safe Mode with Command Prompt. If it lets you in, go to the prompt and type in

regedit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PagingFiles"="C:\Pagefile.sys 200 1200"


Plan "B" - Mount the troubled drive as a slave or secondary drive in another machine and set the pagefile by editing its registry through REGEDIT on the host machine..
When "W2KSYSTEM" opens, you can browse to MemoryManagement following the path highlighted in Plan "A", and edit the value to "C:\Pagefile.sys 200 1200" (without the quotes, of course).
When you are done editing the key, highlight "W2KSYSTEM" again, go back to File and choose Unload Hive.

Hi folks,
Still working on this and using plan "B". When I get to [b] Memory Management nothing will open.
Have also tried another suggestion much the same only following the path _Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\WINNT\Curranrt Version\Winlogon\Userinit
Neither has worked as of yet!

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Did you use REGEDT32 or REGEDIT? What was the operating system on the host machine?