NT Man
11-01-2003, 06:28 PM
I've got a machine running NT4 server SP6a and I *believe* that once
upon a time this install was once running on a dual pentium
motherboard and was later swapped into a single-cpu mother board. I
think that some mucking around with ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll was done
in order to get the system running after the swap.
This machine runs un-attended pretty much all the time, with only
occasional console activity. No e-mail is ever read on this machine.
I *believe* it was comprimized a year or two ago with some trojans
that seem to allow it to be used as someone's private FTP server.
Also at some point in the past, while performing a windows update,
something got installed that really fucked it up. I suspect that
what-ever was being installed thought that this was a multi-processor
system. In a desperate move a Windows 2k server install was attempted
(I'm not sure if this was successful or if w2k was ever operational on
this machine) but it was never utilized and the NT os was eventually
made operational. I believe that the attempt to install w2k ended up
making some sort of change to the ntfs file system such that NT's
native disk tools are unusable and even chkdsk complains of an
"incorrect" version of ntfs.
Anyways, at this point I believe that some DLL's are dammaged and I am
not able to execute any windows-updates downloads. For example,
(using IE 6) Windows updates tells me I have 19 mb of critical updates
to install. I select those updates, click on download, and get a
shell of a window where I know the perfunctory licence agreement comes
up just prior to starting the actual download. Problem is, this
window contains no text, no buttons, and just sits there.
Ok, fine. So I try to re-install NT server 4 from the original CD.
The setup copies a whack of files to a temp directory and then does a
re-start. A new startup option is added to the start-up menu with a
5-second auto-execute. It's the nt install. Ok fine, lets see what
happens. Typical blue screen, some text at the top, then I get some
sort of core dump (or a dump of all components currently loaded in
memory and their locations) and a message telling me that (I think)
some sort of problem with ntoskrnl.exe.
On a lark I go to the temp install directory and rename ntkrnlmp.exe
and I get a new error (can't find ntkrnlmp.exe). Ok, fine, what the
hell are you doing trying to load that? That's the multi-processor
kernal.
Bottom line: This computer is running some software for which there
is no equivalent W2k version so for the time being it is working just
fine but I would like to be able to execute the windows update and
have it work correctly hence I believe the only way to do this is to
re-install nt from the CD. I expect that all currently installed
services and software will survive the re-install and continue to
operate correctly immediately after the install and also during the
application of sp6a and the various rounds of auto-updating I will
do. (correct me if I'm wrong about this).
I seem to be unable to re-install nt because the install thinks it
must use a multi-processor version. So I'm thinking that perhaps the
install CD has determined (from the registry) that the current OS is a
multi-processor version.
So ultimately my question is - is there a registry entry(s) for
multiprocessor operation, and will changing those entries to
single-processor settings enable the NT4 CD to install correctly?
(please post any responses - thanx).
upon a time this install was once running on a dual pentium
motherboard and was later swapped into a single-cpu mother board. I
think that some mucking around with ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll was done
in order to get the system running after the swap.
This machine runs un-attended pretty much all the time, with only
occasional console activity. No e-mail is ever read on this machine.
I *believe* it was comprimized a year or two ago with some trojans
that seem to allow it to be used as someone's private FTP server.
Also at some point in the past, while performing a windows update,
something got installed that really fucked it up. I suspect that
what-ever was being installed thought that this was a multi-processor
system. In a desperate move a Windows 2k server install was attempted
(I'm not sure if this was successful or if w2k was ever operational on
this machine) but it was never utilized and the NT os was eventually
made operational. I believe that the attempt to install w2k ended up
making some sort of change to the ntfs file system such that NT's
native disk tools are unusable and even chkdsk complains of an
"incorrect" version of ntfs.
Anyways, at this point I believe that some DLL's are dammaged and I am
not able to execute any windows-updates downloads. For example,
(using IE 6) Windows updates tells me I have 19 mb of critical updates
to install. I select those updates, click on download, and get a
shell of a window where I know the perfunctory licence agreement comes
up just prior to starting the actual download. Problem is, this
window contains no text, no buttons, and just sits there.
Ok, fine. So I try to re-install NT server 4 from the original CD.
The setup copies a whack of files to a temp directory and then does a
re-start. A new startup option is added to the start-up menu with a
5-second auto-execute. It's the nt install. Ok fine, lets see what
happens. Typical blue screen, some text at the top, then I get some
sort of core dump (or a dump of all components currently loaded in
memory and their locations) and a message telling me that (I think)
some sort of problem with ntoskrnl.exe.
On a lark I go to the temp install directory and rename ntkrnlmp.exe
and I get a new error (can't find ntkrnlmp.exe). Ok, fine, what the
hell are you doing trying to load that? That's the multi-processor
kernal.
Bottom line: This computer is running some software for which there
is no equivalent W2k version so for the time being it is working just
fine but I would like to be able to execute the windows update and
have it work correctly hence I believe the only way to do this is to
re-install nt from the CD. I expect that all currently installed
services and software will survive the re-install and continue to
operate correctly immediately after the install and also during the
application of sp6a and the various rounds of auto-updating I will
do. (correct me if I'm wrong about this).
I seem to be unable to re-install nt because the install thinks it
must use a multi-processor version. So I'm thinking that perhaps the
install CD has determined (from the registry) that the current OS is a
multi-processor version.
So ultimately my question is - is there a registry entry(s) for
multiprocessor operation, and will changing those entries to
single-processor settings enable the NT4 CD to install correctly?
(please post any responses - thanx).