so I broke Windows
 

Well, I was uninstalling my ATi drivers today and the uninstaller wouldn't run, so I tried manually uninstalling my drivers by going to device manager, and when I tried to open it, it stopped responding. So I decided to try in safe mode and got the same thing, then in VGA mode, the same thing. Then I restarted and noticed everything going really slowly, and I opened up the task manager to notice that services.exe is running the CPU at 100%. Also, My Computer stopped working at the same time.

Any ideas here? I have System Restore turned off and am unable to find my XP cd in order to try a repair. Any help would be great. thanks.

at what point does it fail?

have you tried last known good configurations?

boot, press f8 a bunch, and instead of safe mode, select last known good configurations.

well, when I click on device manager it just brings up a white window and that's as far as that gets. There is an ATi uninstaller that's in the control panel that I have also tried and it brings up a bar, but goes nowhere from there. When I try to uninstall the driver from Control Panel without using the ATi uninstaller, nothing comes up at all.

Also, yes I have tried last known good configurations to no avail. :(

try reinstalling them. then removing them.

what is your end goal?

When I run the drivers, nothing comes up, and then I tried the Omega drivers and it comes up, then stops responding.

My end goal was just to upgrade to the Catalyst 6.11 drivers and it went all to hell. haha.

This services.exe is kind of freaking me out running at 100% also.

You should be able to install the new catalyst drivers over the old ones without uninstalling them first.

Ya, I thought so too....I tried that at first with no go.

Just take it as a sign that its time to do your basic windows maintnance and format and reinstall windows. Its good to do every 6 months to a year just in case anyway.

If it's dying after a safe boot something very basic is forkled. Probably a blocked driver. If you can't get to device manager you may have to disable the culprit from recovery console.

Can you launch event viewer and check for system problems? Look for anything that's failing and retrying forever.

if you can bring up the manager, then select the "services" program, and select "shut down", hit yes, and then you SHOULD be able to get back in and see about uninstalling the drivers and starting over.

I would, if I could find my Windows CD. I will keep looking for it, though.

I will try to launch event viewer once I get home. How do I use the recovery console? And, I do think it's a blocked driver, more than likely my video driver.

Is the "services" program in the Device Manager? If so, I can't access it. :(


BTW, thanks for all the suggestions, guys.

the recovery conson needs the windows disk unless you already installed it.

So if the world will end unless you can lay your hands on recovery console, it's available in the six floppy setup disk set from MS:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994

Just in case you're unable to stop the bad guy from taking over.

Sounds like you're in good hands. I'm picking up my dog today (woo!!) so probably won't be back.

ok, so I found my XP cd and am going to install the recovery console when I get home.

How would I go about disabling the bad driver with recovery console?

Well, update: I decided I might as well just format and reinstall, so that's what I did. Thanks for all the help guys.

Maybe we should re-install earth.
Anyone have the disk?