SPTD.sys and other .sys problem

[vimes]

Hello

FWIW I would like to share my experience with the latest version of Alcohol and SPTD.sys.

As many people have found I too have had this problem with my booting into XP just stopping. However what I have noticed is...

I had XP installed from a CD with SP 2 integrated and very little else. I never bothered about any Windows updates as I use alternative email / browser applications etc etc etc. And Alcohol worked fine.

However I was ready to format my drive, not been done for ages, and this time I compiled an installation CD for XP with all the latest updates, fixes, etc etc etc within it. I then installed Alcohol and found that I had the boot failures that other people are finding.

Restoring, from an image, my old copy of XP, with no Windows updates ever applied, SPTD.sys loaded fine and caused zero boot issues.

Going back to the new build with all the Windows updates then I again had the boot issues.

I decided to stick with the new build and remove the latest version of Alcohol and revert back to an old version that doesn't use SPTD.sys and all is fine.

Now one set of tests doesn't mean that my findings are accurate or correct. BUt it might be a clue that something with Windows updates could influence the way that SPTD.sys interacts with the system...?

[Thorz]

I have the same problem as most of you, XP doesn't pass the load screen and PC frozes in a black screen right before showing the windows desktop.

I DON'T USE DAEMON TOOLS, I use Alcohol 120% (the last version 1.9.5.3823).
PC boots on safe mdoe but I can see a delay loading SPCD.SYS (I get the press ESC message but i don't need to press it). This was what made me search on Google for this prob and ended here.
I have fully updated the PC with everything on Windows Update page, not only the critical updates (Date: 20.04.2006).

My system is just installed so it is very clean:

Asus A8N SLI-Deluxe
A64 X2 4200+ (dual core)
Geforce 7600GT
2 SATA HD (NO RAID): Raptor 74GB (boot) and Seagate Barracuda 500GB.
IDE devices: Pioneer DVD-ROM, Plextor Premium CD-RW and Benq 1655 DVDRW.
SB Audigy 2

Important drivers and progs installed:
-Alcohol 120% 1.9.5.3823.
-Chipset Nvidia drivers (excluding sound)
-NOD32 AV
-Logitech mouse, gamepad and USB camera

Only game installed:
Need for Speed Most Wanted.
-Office 2003

Ok, think ive got a fix, this is what worked for me anyhow...
Assuming you can now boot to windows, daemon tools will happily run with the sptd drivers supplied by alcohol.

In my case Alcohol produces the fail, no warranties that this fix helps in all situations.

Does this bug/error only affect people with dual processor technology? I sure don't hope I will get it..

Good question. My processor is a dual core too.

To recap, the problem is that the computer will hang on boot (not crash, if it ever where that simple) when the spdt driver is loaded.

When I boot into multiproc kernel, the driver will fail about 75% of the time. The computer will then enter a tight loop on one of the cores, since loading of windows apparently continues on the other core for a short while, since there is hd activity.

The 75% may just be because of the cpu speed of my dual core, and/or driver load order. Others may experience this as a complete lockup or 25% failure rate, depending on how easily this soft hang is triggered on their system.

I've also seen reports that unmounting the images from the drives helps, but I can't confirm or reject this right now.

I also see hard drive activity after the computer hangs on black screen, this confirms your sysmptoms and somehow can validate your teory about problem with multicore CPUs.

I too suffer from the sptd.sys won't boot, hangs before login screen death. I have narrowed it down to 1 of 3 things. Either:
1. CureROM frelled it up when it changed all the permissions and hid daemon tools
2. Star Wars Empire at War silently installed a I HATE DAEMON TOOLS mod that silently frells up your computer from the back door
3. The latest 5 pack of microsoft updates delivered a new change that has irreperably broken sptd.sys for the moment.

The people saying (I didn't change anything ) probably didn't include or care that they'd installed all of Microsoft's frelling updates.

I don't have CureROM but I think that what you say about the Windows updates can make a lot of sense.

I am sure that there has to be a comflict between SPCD.SYS and something that we all have in common. The scary thing is that somebody posted here that he installed DT4 right after Windows XP was finished installing and he got the hang too. I will test with my virgin Acronis True Image taken right after the install and will post.

I hope the developers can find a solution. This issue is affecting lots of people.

[Provider_uk]

Ok, think ive got a fix, this is what worked for me anyhow...

Go through normal procedure (install d-stools, allow sptd to be installed)
When rebooting to complete sptd install, boot to safe mode and rename or remove sptd.sys.
Boot normally, start an install of alcohol 120% (latest version) and allow that to install sptd drivers included.
Reboot again, and pray :P
Assuming you can now boot to windows, daemon tools will happily run with the sptd drivers supplied by alcohol.
Not sure on this, but maybe just installing latest alcohol before Daemon tools would work.
Or there might be a standalone sptd installer on alcohol's site. Whatever, i have it working fine now.

[joshx0rfz]

Welcome screen hangup

Well, I've been working on solving this problem for a couple weeks and have had no luck. For the longest time I couldn't even access my harddrive until I got an ntfs for dos disk which allowed me to access and alter files on my harddrive. I proceeded to rename sptd.sys and all the other sys files that were suggested and tried restarting and it still hangs (in safe or normal) and it still hangs every time.

I decided to bite the bullet and reformat and reinstall but no harddrives showed up (even though I could find them in ntfs dos but not through recovery). After a few seconds a BSOD popped up as well. I tried buying a new harddrive (thinking the old one was fried) and the windows installer won't recognize that and BSOD again.

Any help would be appreciated as right now my laptop is just a very expensive paperweight.

Thanks.

-Josh

[Provider_uk]

Tried all the suggestions so far, always get to the same point, re-install sptd, reboot, no login screen. I've gone back to d-tools 347 without the sptd for now, but a fix would be really nice.

[flippz]

What fixed it for me was to reinstall Microsofts default
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers



I hope this help any of you.

ps i had the nvidia drivers before

edit: seems this did not help although i could boot into windows once

[marcurea]

Hang-up on boot

I have the hang-up on boot problem as well and removing sptd.sys etc. seems to be the only real solution = no DT.
Since most people have been using DT regularly on a variety of different machines before, this particular problem seems to be related to "new" technology. Specifically I'd guess the problem is related to new hard drive arrays, such as RAIDs and SATAs, or incompatibility between DT and drive controllers on newer systems.
So, has anyone encountered this problem on "older" systems, with IDE drives and older mobos? I don't think this issue is related to Windows or any updates as I've used DT myself on XP with SP2 on other systems before.

[Lef]

Hello there
If you uninstall daemon tools and sptd and delete all the entries from the registery that will come up when you search for sptd, you can reboot normally. When you install d tools again you must do a reboot for sptd. When I am not wrong you can normally boot after that and the installation will continue. At the end of the installation uncheck run Daemon tools and finish the installation. After that delete the entries from the reg class mentioned above and then start d tools. I think this will work. At least it did that for me and i also could not boot with sptd in place and d tools installed

Sorry again for my bad english

[Provider_uk]

Ok after doing everything and after a few posts on the forum I saw a reply to delete everything from the class 4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318 from the registery. So here is the fix:

1 Install DAEMON Tools normally but don't start daemon.
2 Go to start -> run and type regedit
3 When you are in regedit you can click on search int he menu edit.
4 search for "4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318"
5 When you find this delete everything in that class but don't delete the class itself! (the class must have the axact same name as stated above!)
6 When you've done this, you can start DAEMON and your pc will not freez up

Thanx to AALY

Im fairly sure this is a solution to a different problem to that described by the thread opener. The main problem discussed here, which i also have, is that after the SPTD driver is installed (which then requires a reboot before DT is installed) the system doesnt boot anymore. Getting as far as installing the actual app isnt even possible.
Initially, after updating from a previous dt version (347) everything worked fine, no problems with th sptd driver. Since the install a couple of weeks ago (no reboots in that time) i have installed Elder Scrolls: Oblivion game, and nvidia 84.21 forceware drivers (with the reboot pending). PC crashed playing elder scrolls today and goes into the aforementioned lock (after XP boot screen, and before logon). Fixed it by renaming stpd.sys (just that file), but no amount of re-installing, uninstalling etc of d-tools will let me boot with the SPTD driver now.

Running:
XP SP2 (32bit, single processor)
no av
no sw firewall
KT800pro onboard sata raid
Nero V6
No starforce

Any suggestions for making d-tools work for me again?

[Lef]

Fix

Ok after doing everything and after a few posts on the forum I saw a reply to delete everything from the class 4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318 from the registery. So here is the fix:

1 Install DAEMON Tools normally but don't start daemon.
2 Go to start -> run and type regedit
3 When you are in regedit you can click on search int he menu edit.
4 search for "4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318"
5 When you find this delete everything in that class but don't delete the class itself! (the class must have the axact same name as stated above!)
6 When you've done this, you can start DAEMON and your pc will not freez up

Thanx to AALY

[aaly]

Here is a picture delete all that and then it must work i gurentee

[Lef]

Do you mean to delete the whole class where the entries upperfilters and lowerfilters are?

[aaly]

try to delete everything in that folder before starting daemon,at my frends laptop that helped

[Lef]

This is a new fix that i've not seen before. Only it doos'nt work for me. I don't have the uppercasefilters entrie only the lowercasefilters. I deleted that one and then started DAEMON and my system freezes.
To bad

[aaly]

Can a windows update cause this problem?

yes it was a windows problem

I found the answer for my case after hours of testing. After the restart i completed the installation but didn`t run daemon first I had to remove this in the registry :

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Class/{4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
4. On the File menu, click Export.
5. In the File name box, type savedkey, and then click Save.
6. Click the REG_MULTI_SZ data type UpperFilters, and then click Delete on the Edit menu. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

7. Click the REG_MULTI_SZ data type LowerFilters, and then click Delete on the Edit menu. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.


After that I started daemon tools and works lika a charm.