Infinite Loop, BSOD KnownDLL Failed, No safe Mode, No repair...

AstaLaVista · 16 May 2013

I am having all those issues but, I thought about posting on one of the other similar posts but, none of them are exactly like mine so I decided to make my own.

I built this rig quiet a few months ago for my neighbor and by the looks of things, it appears the problem lies after a Windows Update... I know, Impossible right?

OK, let's begin...

Basic Office Rig... ASRock B75M-DGS... CX430W... Intel G850... Corsair 4x2 1600... Spinpoint 1.0 TB (partitioned)... Samsung DVD/?/?/?... Windows 7 64bit Pro.

My neighbor tells me that it has a problem, that the computer won't start, I go check it out and I immediately see the loop and I suspect a corrupted boot, easy fix I thought, oh boy, how wrong I was... all hell breaks loose on me and here are more details.

1.- Startup Repair is my initial reaction as this has worked extremely good in the past... Nope, it lets me know that it can not repair itself

OK, first sign that today will not be a good day for me.

2.- No worries, lets go back and try a system restore... first one I see is yesterday "Windows Critical Update" so I figure it damaged something or my neighbor stopped it in the middle of it, etc, etc, so I choose another one 05/10/2013, got almost all the way when it tells me it can not use it (or something to that nature), I tried the one before that one, same consequences, so I figures, wth, let me try the one from yesterday... Nope, same deal, I am dead in the water!

3.- Command Prompt is next and I see something that strikes me as odd... my Boot drive is not C: but D: ??? I'd figure Windows 7 might do that from time to time even though, none of my other windows 7 systems did it. I tried chkdsk /R to no avail.

4.- Google is my friend and I have come to learn that I am not the only one this kind of problems happen first to

... sure enough, find a few things to try and I found a "Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery" post from Dzomlija that seems to fit the bill for me, follow the instructions to a T but still, NO GO for me.

5.- Other forums suggested Forcing getting into Safe mode by using... bcdedit /set {default} safeboot but that does not do anything. Others suggested using bcdedit /rebuildbcd but I get an error when using that sintax.

6.- Finally I tried getting the Windows 7 CD, inserting it and it dawns on me that I am doing the same thing I already tried w/o the CD.

All is left for me to do is Kick the installation to the side and make a fresh installation but I feel that there might be something else I could try, that I haven't and everything will get back to normal... is there?

Arc · 16 May 2013

Do you have access to another computer right now? If so, download Partition wizard Bootable CD (the last one in the link). Burn it in a blank CD or in a USB flash stick.

Boot into Partition Wizards GUI following this instructions. When you are on the last screen, take a camera snap of the screen and upload the snap here.
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums

We need to see the partitions and parameters.

Also, have you followed it ? If not, try it.
Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start

AstaLaVista · 16 May 2013

OK, yes, I have my own office PC and I also have a KVM switch so I can have my and the downed PC working at the same time. Right now what I have done is to get the downed HDD out and I have attached it as an external Slave to my own PC... here's an image of the Disk Management System.

If this does not do the same thing as the Partition Mini tool then I will proceed to do that, I just thought I save time.

Everything with MLI is my own PC... his is either Disk 2 or whatever says Esquerra + System Reserve (M)

Doing your instructions as I type this... might as well do what you ask and not what I think, right?

AstaLaVista · 16 May 2013

OK, I hope this is what I was supposed to do...

Arc · 16 May 2013

Partitions and parameters are just fine.

You follow Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start. As you cannot access the safe mode too, start with the bootable AV scan.

AstaLaVista · 17 May 2013

I was finally able to find a small Thumb Drive, wow, talk about finding a needle in a haystack

many of the bootable USB devices can't be more than 2 GBs... of course I found this out the hard way

I usually find myself hating Microsoft but this time is for real.... msstool64.exe is a TOOL application... no matter what I try, I keep getting the same error... There was an error formatting the USB or Adding file to the USB. Arrrggghhh

3 different ones, same story? Nah.

Can't get to safe mode so booting from a CD or USB is where I am at the moment... I'll comeback later to edit this.

EDIT 1: ... So far, the Bootable AV found an alleged Trojan on the Pagefile.sys. would that trojan make the boot fail? The PC uses 8 GBs of Ram, I can get away with having No Pagefile, right?

gregrocker · 17 May 2013

There is no System flag (called Boot in PW) on System Reserved so it needs the boot files repaired or rewritten.

But it may not repair without disinfection so you need to clean the system using Windows Defender and one other of the free bootable AV"s, unless you can get into Safe Mode to run a full updated Malwarebytes scan.

A trojan in the page file is rare, serious and may not be reparable. If you can identify it I would post it up in our Security forum where you can get specialized help for cleaning it further.

Otherwise there no shortcuts, everything that possibly can be done is listed in Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start leading up to if necessary rescuiing the files using a boot disk (so it doesn't infect your other PC), wiping the HD with Diskpart Clean Command to do a Clean Reinstall which may actually be easiest if you can't get traction soon.

AstaLaVista · 20 May 2013

Thank you all for the help, it seems that this was to much for me and my little knowledge. I ran an Avast Rescue CD and Antivirus, it ran all weekend long (did it with a thumb drive) but it did not fix anything so I desisted already and I am in the middle of a fresh Install. He did not have much installed anyways so it shouldn't take me long to finish.

I will be smarter this time around and make a clone drive just in case this happens again. The only thing that bothers me is NOT knowing what exactly happened to it, whether it was a virus or whether he turned the pc off in the middle of a critical update (last restore point said critical update) or whether it was something totally different... Oh well, some times you just can not know

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