BSOD after installing a driver - can I reverse?

seanspotatobusiness

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I was trying to install a Bluetooth dongle driver using an installer from Belkin's website on my Windows XP Embedded machine (a Wyse thin client) and after restarting, I get a BSOD:

STOP: c0000021a (Fatal System Error)
The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000139 (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down.




Attempting to boot with last known good configuration gets:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM
You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD ROM.
Select ‘r’ at the first screen to start repair.



Attempting to boot into safe mode gets:

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 to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78FF528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)



Can this be reversed? I don't know what files the installer changed. There were a lot of files in the installer's folder.

If I can't rescue this installation, can I find the Windows installation key by booting from a USB flash drive? Although there is a sticker on the case with a code on it, it doesn't seem like the usual 25 character code I'd expect to see.
 

seanspotatobusiness

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Unfortunately attempting to boot into safe mode gets:

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 to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78FF528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)


I can get to a command prompt if I boot from a Windows XP Embedded installation disk 1 image I put onto a USB flash drive.
 
First disconnect the bluetooth dongle. The error code 0x0000007B actually refers to inaccessible boot device. So check the HDD on a different machine to confirm its working. I dont actually remember the name but there were Live boot iso's available on the net where you can boot into various recovery softwares, even a live xp boot. If you get one try that.
 

seanspotatobusiness

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Supposing I booted a live ISO, I wouldn't know what to do after that; I don't know how to reverse the driver installation. I don't know exactly what the driver installer did.

I can't transfer the disk to a different machine because I only have one V90L and the disk is a 'disk on module' which is a weird thing you don't find in typical computers.
 

seanspotatobusiness

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Thanks. I'm downloading Hiren's boot CD now but I'm not sure it will do much use; I was able to boot from a Win XP CD image on a USB which gave me a command prompt and I used DISKPART which told me the drive was 'healthy' and I used chkdsk which reported 0 bad sectors and nothing else (nothing else wrong, I mean; it reported a bunch of stuff not really relevant).
 

seanspotatobusiness

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This feature looks promising "Remove Non Present Drivers: Automatically remove all non-present/disconnected devices from a Windows and can often be useful to prevent misbehaving/unnecessary drivers from being loaded, cleanup drivers when you replaced motherboard or used backup image of different hardware." but unfortunately, the USB drive is not recognised by the BIOS for booting from. I connect it to my laptop and the USB drive is recognised and listed.

Edit: it only worked on my laptop when I used Rufus to make the bootable USB drive but when I followed the instructions here: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/usb-booting/ it was then bootable for both my laptop and the thin client. It wouldn't respond to my keyboard so I wonder if it needs a PS/2 keyboard.
 

seanspotatobusiness

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I can get into Mini XP on Hiren's Boot CD but the 'remove non present drivers' script only works if you're already running the affected Windows installation.

I've no idea what files I should delete to fix the problem. I deleted the Belkin (the Bluetooth adapter and software is from Belkin) folder from Program Files but that didn't change anything. Also, the \WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM error apparently is caused by a corrupt registry.