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#11
Some good news but mainly more troubles. Sorry if this post is long. Maybe it's due to spending so many hours now trying to fix Windows 7 that I've lost track of how long I've been at these efforts.
Last night I finally got a CHKDSK /F/R to complete (it always stopped at stage 3 previously) though it took several hours to complete. CHKDSK usually took about 10 minutes to complete when Windows 7 was working properly in the past. Maybe CHKDSK was repairing a lot of corrupted files?
With that slight success, I thought I'd try to see if any Restore Points would work. However, when I tried another System Restore that still didn't work and once again I got an "Unspecified error message...". I also tried a SFC /SCANNOW which reported no system integrity issues (though I still couldn't get the /OFFBOOTDIR and /OFFBOOTWIN options to work).
So I was going to try to Repair Install as a last resort but first I decided to see what the BSOD error message actually was. The message literally flashed so fast I couldn't even read it. So I got a phone and made a video of the BSOD. The message is:
C0000135 This program can't start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix the problem.
That's the good news - now I have a slightly better idea of what's happening - though I still don't know the specific cause of the error message. Now for the bad news. According to this site (http://mikemstech.blogspot.com/2012/...xc0000135.html) I have to get Windows Debugging Tools to try to find the cause. I'm lost about using WinDbg and I don't have a spare computer right now. I've seen some other suggestions too aout fixing this '%hs missing error' (mainly concerning AVG causing this error) but I'm not exactly sure how to proceed.
So barring figuring about the BSOD error using WinDbg, I felt I was just left with the Repair Install option (or doing a complete reinstall of Windows 7 or moving to Windows 10 - neither of which I really want to do). So I burned a Windows 7 Installation iso (thanks again for the link and help here) to a USB stick and booted up. I thought this method would work and install without any issues since I was booting from a full version of Windows 7 instead of the Upgrade DVD I tried initially. However, I received the following error message
The computer started using a Windows Installation disc. Remove the Installation disc and reboot your computer so that Windows starts normally. Then insert the installation disc and restart the upgrade.
This error message is essentially the one I received when I tried booting from my Upgrade DVD. I can't start Windows normally. If I could I wouldn't need a Repair Install (Windows Upgrade). Aggravating.
So, barring the two aforementioned options I really don't want (a full install of either Windows 7 or 10), hopefully someone can help me either (1) overcome the boot issue and get the Window 7 Repair Install to work or (2) get Windows Debugging Tools installed and running so I can find and replace whatever files are corrupted or missing (such as *.dll files for example). However, I read that using WinDbg requires another computer to act as a host.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by GMX; 22 Nov 2017 at 13:11.