Windows 7 booting into Windows.old folder, black screen with cursor

Sir George said:

rrrrramos said:

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

Try using Visual BCD Editor - Windows 7/Vista tool, available from;

http://www.boyans.net/

There is a tab on the bottom row to edit the Boot Menu. I haven't used this in a long time, so don't remember all the particulars.

HTH

Thanks, I'll check it out. But how can I use that if I can't get anything to run?

rrrrramos said:

Sir George said:

rrrrramos said:

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

Try using Visual BCD Editor - Windows 7/Vista tool, available from;

http://www.boyans.net/

There is a tab on the bottom row to edit the Boot Menu. I haven't used this in a long time, so don't remember all the particulars.

HTH

Thanks, I'll check it out. But how can I use that if I can't get anything to run?

OK, I am confused, how did you get to MSConfig?

Sir George said:

rrrrramos said:

Sir George said:

Try using Visual BCD Editor - Windows 7/Vista tool, available from;

http://www.boyans.net/

There is a tab on the bottom row to edit the Boot Menu. I haven't used this in a long time, so don't remember all the particulars.

HTH

Thanks, I'll check it out. But how can I use that if I can't get anything to run?

OK, I am confused, how did you get to MSConfig?

After it loads to a blank screen, I open the task manager and use the "Run" command from there. So far I'm able to get it to load explorer.exe, diskmgmt.msc and msconfig.exe. I can't access the main drive or anything like that, I've got to execute it all from the Run command.

rrrrramos said:

Sir George said:

rrrrramos said:

Thanks, I'll check it out. But how can I use that if I can't get anything to run?

OK, I am confused, how did you get to MSConfig?

After it loads to a blank screen, I open the task manager and use the "Run" command from there. So far I'm able to get it to load explorer.exe, diskmgmt.msc and msconfig.exe. I can't access the main drive or anything like that, I've got to execute it all from the Run command.

Can you still view a DVD disk from the "Run" command? If so, use a working computer to download and then run it from there. I haven't encounterd your exact situation before, so all this is second guessing what you will be able to accomplish.

I loaded it to a flash drive, I'm able to run the program via a command prompt, but it won't let me install. The popup reads as follows:
"The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance."

If there is a command line way to set the boot loader path to "\Windows\system32\winload.exe" rather than the "\Windows.old\Windows\system32\winload.exe" that it's set to right now, I'm able to do it that way. I'm pretty sure THAT right there is the big problem.

rrrrramos said:

I loaded it to a flash drive, I'm able to run the program via a command prompt, but it won't let me install. The popup reads as follows:
"The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance."

Sorry, it looks like this ain't gonna work. There is a tool that will run in a pure DOS environment that should work. It's from Terabyteunlimited and the program is "BooitIt Bare Metal". It is a pretty sophisticated partition management tool and has a fully functional 30 trial. You can download it from;

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm

You will need to download to a working computer, then create a boot disk and have your BIOS set to boot from either a DVD or Thumb drive.

Since I have no idea of your computer skills, I will recommend caution when using this software; you can definitely cause more harm if used incorrectly. There are tutorials on the site which will provide some idea of how it works.

rrrrramos said:

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

Why do you have a System Reserved partition that has a drive letter and is not active? Was this intentional?

Before following the advice for the 30 day trial partition software, I would recommend reading through Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

I have asked the author of that tutorial to take a look at this thread, as well.

writhziden said:

rrrrramos said:

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

Why do you have a System Reserved partition that has a drive letter and is not active? Was this intentional?

Before following the advice for the 30 day trial partition software, I would recommend reading through Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

I have asked the author of that tutorial to take a look at this thread, as well.

I'm using a laptop hard drive as the main drive for this computer. That is how it was formatted when it was in the laptop, I've made no changes to it since. I've since got the boot loader set up to read Windows from the correct folder, now I'm experiencing an issue where it will load up, then shut the screen off before it logs on...

Can you start a command prompt with admin rights ?
If yes create a complete BCD dump:
bcdedit /enum all /v >bcd_full.txt

and attach to your next post.

Shifting W7 loader to boot from any directory is done over the path element of the loader. But let's see what is there in the BCD first.