Boot time scan screen black ????

[spudman]

Hi there. I am having a bit of trouble with the boot time scan option in avast. I have been using Avast for about 4 years now and its an amazing bit of kit and i have never had any troubles up until now. When ever i do a boot time scan, the scan runs as normal but there is no display. I know that it is running the scan as the hard drive light is flashing. I have seen a couple of posts on this issue in the forum but there still seems to be no answer to it. I have checked my boot.ini file etc etc. I am wondering if its some thing to do with the graphics card possibly, as when i was using an agp card i had no troubles but since changing to pci-e on sli i seem to have this issue. Can anybody put some light onto this subject as it is becoming a real pain.

Regards
Spudman

[Vlk]

Please check this (2+ years old) thread: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=6960.0

This is usually caused by the /noguiboot option specified in boot.ini.

Thanks
Vlk

[spudman]

Ok thanks for your speedy reply  . I have checked the boot.ini file here is a copy of it

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin  /fastdetect

I see there is no /noguiboot option in the file to delete.

[spudman]

Any ideas 

[igor]

Well, yes, it may be caused by the graphics adapter. I mean, if you (for example) have to monitor connected to the secondary output and this one is initialized later in the boot process...
I guess the question is: can you see the BIOS POST messages, boot-menu, Windows splash during the boot, etc.?

[spudman]

Yes i can see every thing when booted. Bios splash screen, windows logo just no boot time scan screen.

[Lisandro]

Yes i can see every thing when booted. Bios splash screen, windows logo just no boot time scan screen.

What happens if you schedule it by running:

C:\Program Files\ALWIL Software\Avast4\sched.exe /A:*

and then booting?

[igor]

That's strange...
Can you tell us something more about your system? In particular, what graphic adapter do you have, what monitor/display, how are they conneted - digital or analog, primary/secondary (you mentioned SLI, so I guess there are at least 2 outputs, maybe even 4), what drivers do you have...
Thanks.

[spudman]

I ran the sched.exe and rebooted but nothing happend. Windows just started up as normal.
My system specs are 2x 6600gt running in SLI, monitor is just your box standard CRT that is connected via analog. I have tried swapping the cable over to the other display adapter port but nothing changes. I am also running the latest graphic drivers from Nvidia.

[Lisandro]

I ran the sched.exe and rebooted but nothing happend. Windows just started up as normal.

Do you mind testing another program at boot time, like http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html

[spudman]

No problem. I will reboot now and see what happens 

[igor]

That's actually a good idea. It's enough to run
chkdsk c: /f
(provided C: is your system drive).
Checkdisk will say that it's not able to perform the check right now (because the /f argument means "fix errors, if detected" - which is not possible to do directly from Windows on the system drive) and schedule a disk scan for the next boot.
So, if you can try this - do you see the Microsoft scandisk being started on the next reboot?

[spudman]

Ok nothing came up  when i reboot. I didnt see it defragmenting

[spudman]

I just done what you said for the checkdisc..... it done it but nothing was displayed  :'( .... Could it be anything to do with a dos setting. I don't know as this is all way beyond me just taking guesses at the moment

[Lisandro]

Spudman, so the problem is not on avast but I think it's not on DOS either. I think it's on XP.

Overinstallation can solve the problem and you won't lose your programs, settings, data, files, etc.
Just choose 'Repair' installation of Windows and install 'over' the old installation.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;315341
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm