Embarrassing mistake going from bad to worse 0x0000007b +missing OS ++

I'm the last person to screw around with stuff without either a) an idea what the hell I'm doing..or b) a backup/backup plan. I had an HP envy 17 j034ca laptop running windows 7 as primary, but dual booted with a win 10.

I had not been happy with the performance lately, and despite executing a ridiculous amount of best practices, scans, tweaks you name it....I wasn't getting the results. I'm comfortable with most of the inner workings of the win OS's and can fix 99.9% of issues I've encountered...one way or another.

My clever self found sysinternals suite, and while browsing through its data/options, I found what I believed to be many unnecessary or non crucial tasks that could stand to be toggled off. Again, Im not a newb, so nothing I triggered gave me the impression it could cause problems. But I was dabbling in scheduled tasks, startup etc. To note, a bunch of windows updates had just finished as well and awaited reboot.. Did it work fine? HELL NO And here I am.

Started off as a constant BSOD when trying to start win 7 after that initial reboot. I believe it's always been the same error of 0x0000007b. Supposedly related to inaccessible boot device/controller. Every time, it proceeds with boot (set to verbose/detailed so lists the processes/drivers loading as they do) gets to the point where it stops listing paths and does its usual black windows loading screen with green progress bar. It only manages to get to that screen for avsplit vsecond before triggering the BSOD. Attempting all manner of startup repair, RE commands ( including check disk and bootrec and bcdedit variety), system restore etc has NO effect. Using the f8 boot option mode from windows OS select ( is safe mode, last good etc) ALL end the same way.....bsod 0x0000007b.

At this point, the existing OS were still found annd listed by RE , but during an initial system recovery attempt, it froze out, and I've spent the last 5 days trying to recover from the never ending death cycle known as missing operating system! With all files still intact when mounted, but NOTHING resolving the issue...and I mean NOTHING! Even down to manually rebuilding the BCD from fresh win 7 ISO.. Long story short, I gave up before "accidentally" smashing the laptop. I went nuclear baby! Active kill disk to wipe it ALL to scrap, reinstalled win 7 cleanly. Apart from pain in the ass of getting functionality and drivers and win 7 updates all over again, newvinstall booted and worked fine.

And then....I decided to try and recover my files from the drives prior to wiping. I was going to just mount the backup image (its a tib format made/running Acronis True image 2014) and copy paste all but maybe the OS files. I did have a lot of things I really liked about that install that I would never remember if starting from scratch...so I decided to run the restore option for the drive ho!ding the files via True image thinking whatever boot loader issue had occurred was resolved... MISTAKE!!! I'm back to square one with win 7 booting back to 0x0000007b!!!!

So trolls, don't bother, not listening. Anybody else with any ideas ? I'm all ears. If it WAS indeed something I triggered with sysinternals, I feel like I could figure out what it was....but I m not aware if I can run it or access it outside the booted win environment. And YES! I have run oodles of anti virus/malware/rootkit etc scans, I HAVE run startupbrepair and chkdsk /f ( and /r if I remember) multiple times, I have tried to rebuild boot, system restore etc etc etc.. So no need to copy and paste that go to chunk of text lol I don't need to loose any more hair from this, help!!

Sorry, couldn't help it.:)

Have you tried option #2 in the windows repair tutorial? Making sure to have the bios set to boot to the cd/dvd drive first!!!!

System Recovery Options

Maybe this will be helpful.

Tutorial by Brink:

System Recovery Options