New
#1
W7 will not start, various errors
Hi everybody,
I am here today in need of help.
First, let me say that I never shut my computer down. The last time I went on the computer was last Wednesday and everything worked as usual.
Yesterday, when I got home from work, I went to my computer and turned on the screen to notice my background was gone and replaced by a black wallpaper with a message saying my Windows 7 Ultimate is not genuine (Been using this genuine copy since it came out). So, I went ahead and clicked the link it gave me to activate it. It sent me on a page to install a patch or something and then confirm on the website when the install is completed. So I installed it and went to confirm but then when it tried to activate, I got a message saying "Windows Activation Technologies plug-in crashed". I retried many times with different browsers, nothing worked, WAT plug-in always crashed.
So I then tried to do a System Restore to last Wednesday (which is my last known working state). Restore completed succesfully, yet now computer will not boot; Windows cannot start. So it sent me into its Startup Repair and tries to repair many things, but nothing yet worked.
-I ran Memory Test, everything is OK.
-I tried booting on Windows 7 DVD, got the same repair screen
-I tried cancelling restore from Repair Menu; Restore failed to extract a file in Mozilla Firefox and got me an "unspecified error occured during System Restore (0x80070017).
-I tried restoring to many other points; Restore failed with error (0x8000ffff) (if I recall correctly)
-I tried going in Safe Mode; cant even reach Safe Mode, it throws me back at the Startup Repair menu.
-I tried doing a "Upgrade Install" from W7 DVD Boot, but it tells me that I need to boot normally the computer in order to proceed to the upgrade. Which I cannot do.
So I decided to re-run the Startup Repair, which still didnt change anything, but this time I read the results. It says:
-Hal.dll is corrupted
-Mountmgr.sys is corrupted.
I dont know what to try next. I cannot afford formating my computer, I have too many important documents in there that I just cannot lose. I believe all of this began with a Windows Update, because last critical security update was Thursday and it worked fine a day earlier. Now I am stuck there.
If someone can help me, I'd really appreciate your input.
Thank you,
Maesen