Black screen of death after IOLO defrag

Hello All,

My laptop (Dell Studio 1550, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit) just gave me the black screen upon start-up. The Iolo System Mechanic had defragged the registry, I think, and it seems that the process had damaged my laptop's registry.

I've ran sfc /scannow with no issues, but the memory diagnostic test froze. I am now running System Restore but it seems from prior threads that a clean re-install is necessary.

Would like to know if this is indeed the only solution, and if so, how do I go about re-installing without an installation CD (Dell never sent one, and I had bought the laptop abroad while I was in college).

Thanks!

Thank you. I tried the Last Known Good Configuration and it worked. Have uninstalled System Mechanic. Still scared the problem might happen again when I restart my computer!

Good news! Glad you uninstalled System Mechanic.

I recommend against 3rd party defrag tools. Windows has some nice command line flags for the defrag command that will accomplish the same tasks as 3rd party programs. The -b and -w flags will defrag boot files and the boot registry items as well as compact the data to the center of the disk for faster access.

defrag c: -b
defrag -c -v -w

The first command optimizes boot performance for the Windows drive by defragmenting boot files and boot registry items.

The second command includes all drives on the system through the -c command and optimizes the drives by compacting the data to the center of the disk. Verbose output through the -v option is optional to provide the user with more information about the defrag tasks. The commands have to be run in an Elevated Command Prompt


Using the above is far less risky than a 3rd party tool since the above was designed by Microsoft to work with Windows. Your registry is safer that way. :)