Unable to boot win7, recovery console unresponsive

Zhall · 03 Sep 2012

My computer was infected with alueron.k and started showing messages that said the harddrive had crashed. I knew these messages were being produced by the virus and proceeded to boot into windows security essentials offline to scan and remove this virus.

After removing I noticed that I was unable to boot into windows 7.

I used my installation disk to get to the system recovery options menu.

Every option cannot find a valid install of windows 7.
In the recovery console typing "tree" for c: results in "no subfolders exist", which is NOT true because I can use the notepad saveas trick and see that all of my windows system files are still intact.

Am I fubar and need to install a clean copy of windows 7 or is there still options?

System restore, fixmbr, and fixboot all dont work.

Edit: my default boot drive has been changed from C to X, which is a 30 mb partition, which was automatically created when this all started happening..

Trinty · 03 Sep 2012

Hello Zhall and welcome to Seven Forums!

First boot to Command Prompt at Startup from your recovery CD.
At Command Prompt type following :
diskpart
list disk
Then select disk where you installed Windows with command :
select disk #
(# is number of your disk)
list partition
Then select your System Reserved partition (System Reserved is 100MB partition) with following command :
select partition #
(# is number of your System Reserved partition from list partition command)
Then type :
active

Close Command Prompt and try to boot again.

I hope that will help :)
Trinty :)

Zhall · 03 Sep 2012

It boots to a screen that now says

"windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system 32\ntoskrl.exe.
Please reinstall a copy of the above file."

I was now able to run startup repair, but when I boot there are still the symptoms of the smart hdd virus.

All of my start menu icons are missing, desktop icons are being hidden.

Ill try a system restore next

Zhall · 03 Sep 2012

Things seem to be back to normal, thanks for your help!

I just hope that they really are back to normal.

timbuk2 · 12 Sep 2012

Trinty said:

Hello Zhall and welcome to Seven Forums!

First boot to Command Prompt at Startup from your recovery CD.
At Command Prompt type following :
Trinty :)

When I boot from a Recovery CD, I get nothing but a blue sky with a little white bird and a branch. Nothing else. Any idea what to do next? I've got a laptop that will not boot into windows, apparently will not boot from a Recovery CD, cannot run any command prompt, cannot run Malwarebytes from a thumb drive.

ThanKs!
Tim