Without any warning my computer restarted by itself and upon seeing the Windows XP load screen, I saw a glimpse of a blue screen of death. Right there the boot loop started.
By starting windows in safe mode I determined that the SPTD.SYS driver was the last thing windows was loading before crashing miserably. SPTD.SYS is used by a few softwares like Alcohol 120% and Daemon Tools.
Here is what I did so that I could at least start my computer and start backing up files:
- I booted the computer using a BartPE boot cd
- Clicked on “Go” then on “Command Prompt (CMD)”
- In the black “Command Prompt” type:
- c: <enter>
- cd c:\windows\system32\drivers <enter>
- rename sptd.sys sptd.bak <enter>
- exit <enter>
- Then click on “Go” followed by “Shut down” and to finish “Shut down”
Started windows again and the boot process went all the way to a login screen. The problem is not really fixed at this point, what I did was only a patch so that I could start windows again, daemon tools is currently showing an error message upon boot saying that sptd.sys is required to start.
I then tried to install a new version of the sptd.sys driver from http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads/ however this did not work, upon restarting the maching I was caught in the same error loop as before and had to deactivate sptd.sys again.
Still looking for a permanent solution, note that this problem started occuring “out of nowhere” without any software update or new software installation.
