Hey guys. I had a bit of an issue last night (not related to CoH) and I would really love to get some insight as to what it might have been.
I was in CoH yesterday and I opened up my nVidia Control Panel to check something out and the machine locked up. So I forced the machine down and started it back up. The "Starting Windows" screen came up but the little animation didn't start. After a few minutes I realized it was completely frozen. So I restarted it again and this time attempted to boot into Safe Mode. It wouldn't. It froze on Classpnp.sys. Unfortunately, this could mean that either Classpnp.sys itself was corrupt or the file being loaded directly after it is. So I started my research...
I looked up some information on issues with Classpnp.sys and it looked like it may in fact be the culprit. Unfortunately, it's one of those issues that you find a million people with but no one with any real answers. Each one has resolved the issue with a different solution so it's nearly impossible to know what the actual cause is without trying it all out yourself. Fair enough.
I won't bore you with the million things I tried (such as unplugging all USB devices, swapping memory etc) as they're generally the things you start with in these cases. Eventually I got around to thinking about what changes I had made over the last few days. I installed some updates from Windows and I upgraded my nVidia drivers. Excellent. Now if I could only get into Safe Mode, I can remove those things and see if it will work! What a fantastic idea, if only I could actually get into Safe Mode!
I took a risk and decided to pull out the video card and run the integrated graphics to see if it was nVidia specifically (Remember it froze when I tried to open the nVidia Control Panel). BAM. Windows came right up without so much as a second thought.
Interesting. So I took the opportunity to go in and restore to a few days prior. Which it allegedly did successfully. After it's done I shut the machine down and pop the nVidia card back in. Hangs at the same spot. So now I'm getting ticked because what seems like an easy fix is turning into something really annoying. I decide to read a bit more and I come across some people who have swapped out their Classpnp.sys file from either a clean install or an older OS. So I decide to boot into an Ubuntu Live CD to rename the Classpnp.sys file and go from there. Ubuntu's first screen comes up and asks if I want to try Ubuntu without installing, I say yes. It hangs. Yay!
I remove the nVidia card again and go back to integrated graphics and the Ubuntu Live CD boots up just fine (But of course!). I go in, rename the Classpnp.sys to Classpnp.bak. I then shut down, put the card back in and start it back up. This time, the Starting Windows animation starts up, get's half way through it's swirling and promptly reboots. So I try to load into Safe Mode. Now, we hang at drive.sys. At this point I'm really getting irritated and I start to think the video card is bad and I'm cursing under my breath (Ok, I was really cursing loudly).
So I went into the BIOS (which I had done before) and looked over the settings again. I decided to reset to defaults (something I swear I did last night), restart and low and behold here I am typing this post. It should be noted that I haven't touched the BIOS in like 2 months and the changes I made back when I was in there were stupidly minor and really had nothing to do with anything other then maybe the boot sequence.
So I go and look.....and Windows didn't even restore back to before this issue. Just as a side note. Everything is running just fine now.
Hey guys. I had a bit of an issue last night (not related to CoH) and I would really love to get some insight as to what it might have been.
I was in CoH yesterday and I opened up my nVidia Control Panel to check something out and the machine locked up. So I forced the machine down and started it back up. The "Starting Windows" screen came up but the little animation didn't start. After a few minutes I realized it was completely frozen. So I restarted it again and this time attempted to boot into Safe Mode. It wouldn't. It froze on Classpnp.sys. Unfortunately, this could mean that either Classpnp.sys itself was corrupt or the file being loaded directly after it is. So I started my research...
I looked up some information on issues with Classpnp.sys and it looked like it may in fact be the culprit. Unfortunately, it's one of those issues that you find a million people with but no one with any real answers. Each one has resolved the issue with a different solution so it's nearly impossible to know what the actual cause is without trying it all out yourself. Fair enough.
I won't bore you with the million things I tried (such as unplugging all USB devices, swapping memory etc) as they're generally the things you start with in these cases. Eventually I got around to thinking about what changes I had made over the last few days. I installed some updates from Windows and I upgraded my nVidia drivers. Excellent. Now if I could only get into Safe Mode, I can remove those things and see if it will work! What a fantastic idea, if only I could actually get into Safe Mode!
I took a risk and decided to pull out the video card and run the integrated graphics to see if it was nVidia specifically (Remember it froze when I tried to open the nVidia Control Panel). BAM. Windows came right up without so much as a second thought.
Interesting. So I took the opportunity to go in and restore to a few days prior. Which it allegedly did successfully. After it's done I shut the machine down and pop the nVidia card back in. Hangs at the same spot. So now I'm getting ticked because what seems like an easy fix is turning into something really annoying. I decide to read a bit more and I come across some people who have swapped out their Classpnp.sys file from either a clean install or an older OS. So I decide to boot into an Ubuntu Live CD to rename the Classpnp.sys file and go from there. Ubuntu's first screen comes up and asks if I want to try Ubuntu without installing, I say yes. It hangs. Yay!
I remove the nVidia card again and go back to integrated graphics and the Ubuntu Live CD boots up just fine (But of course!). I go in, rename the Classpnp.sys to Classpnp.bak. I then shut down, put the card back in and start it back up. This time, the Starting Windows animation starts up, get's half way through it's swirling and promptly reboots. So I try to load into Safe Mode. Now, we hang at drive.sys. At this point I'm really getting irritated and I start to think the video card is bad and I'm cursing under my breath (Ok, I was really cursing loudly).
So I went into the BIOS (which I had done before) and looked over the settings again. I decided to reset to defaults (something I swear I did last night), restart and low and behold here I am typing this post. It should be noted that I haven't touched the BIOS in like 2 months and the changes I made back when I was in there were stupidly minor and really had nothing to do with anything other then maybe the boot sequence.
So I go and look.....and Windows didn't even restore back to before this issue. Just as a side note. Everything is running just fine now.
Any thoughts? Ideas? It's ok to laugh at me too
We'll see....