Home build crash

My son called last night to ask how to get his $3K build up and running again as after some Windows updates on the 16th it boots up to the post / the Windows "lights" then very briefly to a blue screen with white lettering - far too brief to read and back to the post then to start up repair.

Now the start up repair does nothing I have tried the advanced options system image / memory diags / system restore / command prompt that tels me that msconfig is not a operable program or batch file (there is an error - 0x8000ffff). I cannot reinstall Windows using the OEM disk in fact I cannot get past that system repair option. I cannot get it to safe mode and am left with a totally bogged machine.

Specs Gigabyte 890FX board AMD 1090 CPU (water cooled) 4GB G Skill 1333Mhz RAM very large Radeon GPU Windows 7 Ultimate - 64bit - sorry but with out pulling the whole thing apart that is the most I know (sons; away at the moment but will get the exact specs later tonight)

What bothers me is that it will not boot off the OEM disk.

I had a quicklook at the BIOS writhziden and didn't check all the waythrough as my son told me he had reset it back ot default.

The other thing is I have ended up with an error message - 0x8000ffff and from a Google this can be absolutely anything. So am going to have to check the BIOS and then work through the Google refs unless you or someone knows what this error mesage is all about.

I did try and boot from a cloned drive off my own machine and my own rescue disk but ended up with the same results. So I don't think it is the drive or board - which I was concerned it may be. So software?? Windows updates??

Hi John, will it boot to Windows at all?

Hiyya Sorry late reply - No B it wouldn't boot to anything just kept rolling back to the POST / start up repair / POST - start up repair and I tried the advanced options and the rest you k.

Now have set the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive / OEM as writh suggested and it seems to be working - it' s going through the installation as I type so heres hoping.

Luckily I got Tim to let me do a system image for him a while back - he's a bit lax when it comes to keeping stuff under control, but after this fright I think he'll be a bit more vigilant- and hopefully I can get most of the apps back on with that including the security etc etc.:)

Just noticed that it said that it is going to make an "old" Windows so can I remove / delete it when I have doe the system image?

It should ask if you want to restore settings, etc. Those will be from the windows.old folder. After you get it up and running you can delete it.
Right, hopefully your son has learned a lesson.

Hum things aren't going quite to plan at the moment it ran the install shut down and started again asking to do it all over again.

This time I asked it to repair and it has installed ok am now in the middle of updates etc and then I am going to try that system image - whew had me worried there for a while!

Thanks fellas the last try worked albeit a system repair / complete reinstall and now have got to get the essentials on board - security done but there is about a zillion MB's of updates