Windows 7 - Startup Repair - somewhat confused

Hi everyone.

I've just been through the Startup Repair process with my machine and after reading through the generated log, I'm a bit confused with some of the output. Here's a section of the log:

Root cause found:
---------------------------
Unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem.

As you can see, it's not very descriptive; I'm assuming that it can't actually find a proper solution, so it's just taking a guess at what the problem could be. Here's the next section:

Repair action: System Restore
Result: Cancelled

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 944383 ms

These are the sections that I'm most confused about. Firstly, it says that the first repair action was a System Restore, but it was canceled. It didn't give me the option of actually choosing a restore point, and I'm just wondering why it chose not to choose one automatically. Does anyone have any ideas?

Finally, we have the last action, which apparently is a check and repair on system files. Does anyone know if it's possible to see which files were actually replaced?

Thanks.

Elliott.

Hi elliot94, Sometimes you have to run startup repair 3 times Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times very often windows cannot repair the fault on the 1st attempt , Give this a try and see how you go

Hi.

Thanks for your reply, but this isn't actually the problem. My machine boots fine, but all I wanted to know is why Startup Repair chose to cancel System Restore, and if there is a way to see which system files were replaced.

Thanks.

You are only prompted if you want to Restore not to choose a Restore Point, as WinRe works backward like Last Known Good Configuration to find a Restore Point which boots. If it found problems trying to run Restore or no bootable Restore Point it likely went on to the next test SFC -SCANNOW Command which apparently is what fixed it.

If you're concerned about System Restore you can apportion more HD space if it's available so you have more points and they remain longer: System Protection - Change Disk Space Usage. I set my installs to 20% so there is more rescue-ability.

Hi.

Ah - that's interesting. When the machine was first booted, I was asked if I wanted to restore, and the only other option was a Cancel button. I hit that, so I guess that's why it didn't use a restore point?

Do you have any ideas about the solution it found, i.e. restoring system files? To be honest, I don't think there was any need to do anything; the system was actually fine, the only reason this ran was due to the battery of the machine being removed while it was booting. This is why I hate things running without knowing what they're doing. The Technet article says the following:

At startup, the Windows loader sets a status flag to indicate that the boot process has started, and this flag is typically cleared before the Windows logon screen is displayed. If the boot attempt fails, the flag is not cleared. The next time the computer starts, the loader detects the flag and assumes that a boot failure occurred. When this happens, the loader launches Windows*RE instead of Windows*Vista.

I just wish it gave you the option of not running it...

Cheers.

In that case you should have the option at boot to "Start Windows Normally" instead of Startup Repair.

That makes sense - I most likely skipped past that screen accidentally.

I guess you don't know about the system files?

Thanks.

They were likely okay if this was the auto-repair running unnecessarily as you suspect.

You can always run SFC -SCANNOW Command to be sure there's nothing pending, as sometimes it takes several passes to repair damaged system files.

Thanks. I'm not worried that they may be damaged; I just wanted to know if there was a way to check to see if they were in fact replaced. It took around 10 minutes replacing them, so it must have done them all unnecissarily - that's the only explination I can think of.