7x64 crashed and died

System has been stable and fine for months (though some comparatively minor waking from hibernation issues) but today it just woke up really cranky.

Hung system, reboot, verrry slow reboot, then some murky operation and another hang, forced hard reboot ... well you know the death spiral.

After a few reboots it sorta ran for a while then locked up. Then couldn't find any shortcuts. I did get it to run sfc/scannow and it reported 'no integrity failures'.

If I try to boot in any safe mode it stalls at system32/drivers/atiPcie.sys ... every 4th to 10th boot it starts up and then fairly soon fails to respond. I tried a sytem restore and selected a restore point but got an error message.

I checked for dust bunnies etc and it does not seem to be a heat / hardware issue. I have not changed or added any hardware for many a month. The only program recently changed was a Java Update.

I REALLY don't have the time for a clean install. Is this a corrupted MBR issue? Other ideas?

No dumps. It has booted a couple of times and suggested a startup repair (which then could not complete) but mostly its hanging the Starting Windows screen before I can even get there. Last time, once booted it crashed with an explorer not responding error.

RogerR said:

System has been stable and fine for months (though some comparatively minor waking from hibernation issues) but today it just woke up really cranky.

Hung system, reboot, verrry slow reboot, then some murky operation and another hang, forced hard reboot ... well you know the death spiral.

After a few reboots it sorta ran for a while then locked up. Then couldn't find any shortcuts. I did get it to run sfc/scannow and it reported 'no integrity failures'.

If I try to boot in any safe mode it stalls at system32/drivers/atiPcie.sys ... every 4th to 10th boot it starts up and then fairly soon fails to respond. I tried a sytem restore and selected a restore point but got an error message.

I checked for dust bunnies etc and it does not seem to be a heat / hardware issue. I have not changed or added any hardware for many a month. The only program recently changed was a Java Update.

I REALLY don't have the time for a clean install. Is this a corrupted MBR issue? Other ideas?

Hey it's RogerR, the man who used to have Homegroup problems. Have you tried doing a start up repair Roger? Sounds like something is pretty messed up. Could be a hardware problem also.
Startup Repair

chev65 said:

[
Hey it's RogerR, the man who used to have Homegroup problems. Have you tried doing a start up repair Roger? Sounds like something is pretty messed up. Could be a hardware problem also.
Startup Repair

:) yep, lil ole me again. Wishing homegroup was my only issue! (Got that mostly fixed btw.)

I'm starting to lean to a hardware issue. Although I really have no signs of overheating
when I switched to boot from CD to run a repair from disk, it has stalled on me again.

BIOS finds all the drives OK, and I get no video crash, but I'm wondering if a hot display adapter could cause this? Don't really know where else to turn - the hardware is all pretty new and durable.

So, to restate the question;

Is an image restore my best option here? Overwriting my data drive sounds, frankly, terrifying. I guess theoretically, I will still have an image in the Backup drive, but this is new territory for me.

You may not have many options left is the only problem. I would backup everything of value first but most of your old stuff should still be intact. You might want to clear the board first by shutting down and unplugging the PSU then pushing the start button. Clearing the cmos might also be worth a shot at this point.

chev65 said:

You may not have many options left is the only problem. I would backup everything of value first but most of your old stuff should still be intact.

Well - that's kinda the issue. Without being able to operate the OS its hard to backup... It says it backed up last night at 3AM, I've just never actually had to USE a backup before.

And since booting has been problematic I've been sitting here looking at the image-restore option from the CD boot for an hour or so - trying to decide if this is the best/only option.

Clearing the cmos might also be worth a shot at this point.

Good thought.