A server with MS Server 2008 running for 6 months stopped booting on me. When booting in SAFE mode the TOP and BOTTOM header bars are displayed ... but no files are loading. Not one. I removed the hard drive and added it to a second machine and the hard file appears intact and there does not seem to be any corruption. CHKDSK runs without detecting any errors. Since I cannot boot from the drive I can not turn on boot logging using msconfig and there is no NTBtLog.TXT file that I can locate. Where can I look - what log files can I check - to gain insight as to why 2008 is hanging? I assume there must be a missing file, a file that won't load, a permissions error, etc ... Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hi What’s the symptom when booting into Normal Mode? Does any error message appear? What’s the symptom of the middle part of screen when booting into Safe Mode? Does the process bar appear when booting the system? To repair problems caused by problematic drivers when the computer does not start in Safe Mode, follow these steps: 1. Insert a Windows Server 2008 disk. Restart the computer and then load System Recovery Tools. 2. Click Command Prompt. At the command prompt, type Notepad %windir%\ntbtlog.txt. Notepad opens and displays the boot log. 3. Compare the boot log created when the system failed to start in safe mode to a boot log created when the system started successfully in safe mode. If you do not have a boot log that was created when the system started successfully in safe mode, create a boot log on a similarly configured computer by starting it in safe mode. The driver that is causing safe mode to fail is one of the drivers that is not listed in the boot log that was created when the system failed, but is listed with “Loaded driver…” in the boot log created when safe mode started successfully. 4. Replace the driver file with a working version, using the Copy command at the command prompt. Start by replacing or deleting drivers that have been recently installed or updated. After replacing a driver, repeat this process until the system starts successfully in normal mode. Tim Quan - MSFT