Stuck in startup repair. How long is too long?

Hello,
Windows explorer was not responding yesterday so I had no choice but to hard reboot. Since then life has ceased to exist as i knew it.
I cannot get into safe mode. Pretty much I can't do anything but linger here in startup repair land. Going on 11 hours now. blue screen for about 4-5 hours last night until the "attemptingrepairs" startup repair screen came on. My excitement is quickly growing into despair as I have been watching the blue lines cross the status bar over and over now. My whole life is on this thing and I am pretty poor at backing up anything.....<lesson learned a little too late....> I did read the posting instructions, but was afraid to touch anything while this system is working. plus I have no idea how, and my boyfriend who does know how left me here alone with this levithon and won't be back until tonight.

So my question is: What in the world is it doing during startup repair? And why did they say it might take over an hour to complete vs saying it might take over one month to complete...

Has startup repair ever ended well for anyone?

Thank you in advance for any input and please excuse the amature post.

Reguards,

Eboz

This may be useful to read - http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...epair-win7-how-long-does-take.html#post947965

Why do you start Startup Repair? Did Windows prompt you or recommend to do so?

Windows prompted me and recommend I do so. Thanks for the link! I read it a perhaps there is hope......

Do you know how large the hard drive(s) are?

1TB Drive

That's going to take a while, and you have to also consider the level of repairs to carry out.

Thanks! I will resist the urge to mess with it then, and continue with my prayer dance.

Eboz said:

Thanks! I will resist the urge to mess with it then, and continue with my prayer dance.

Click to expand...

Hi ! First of all .. if U want to back up something now .. just put in the win 7 repair dvd..
go the command prompt .. and type notepad.exe .. this will start notepad..

from there .. Click file .. save as .. and select all files .. now .. go to any folder .. click it and save it to dvd
or Usb (or external USB hard disk)

Hope this helps

If I had a win 7 repair disk...... also, it wont let me do anything while repairing I guess. If I can find a repair dvd what will it back up? Will it save data from accounting programs and Adobe Illustrator? Outlook? Excel Data? oy!
I can certinatly try it if the repair fails .... Thanks for the input I will let you know if I get to try it!
Eboz

Eboz said:

If I had a win 7 repair disk...... also, it wont let me do anything while repairing I guess. If I can find a repair dvd what will it back up? Will it save data from accounting programs and Adobe Illustrator? Outlook? Excel Data? oy!
I can certinatly try it if the repair fails .... Thanks for the input I will let you know if I get to try it!
Eboz

Click to expand...

It can back up anything .. Any Data.. all U have to do is Copy the folder that contains the files that interest U .. and copy it to Ur Usb pen drive or .. Usb Hardrive.

If U want to cancel whatever Ur doing .. just keep the Power button pressed for a few secs..and then .. put the Win 7 repair Dvd .. and boot from it .. and go to command prompt

It won't even boot to a disk. The system check went fine though Hard drive passed.

Are you able to boot into Windows normally or even Safe Mode?

If you don't understand anything I write in this thread, then please do not hesitate to ask me to explain it more

Startup Repair taking Hours

Hi, I'm running 32-bit Windows 7 with an Intel Xeon inside processor. This computer is my companies server. The computer kept freezing after being on for a day and I'd have to restart it to access the 2TB hard drive on our network. Today the computer would not get past the "Starting Windows" on any of the safe boots or a normal boot. I inserted the Win 7 Disc and did a Startup Repair. After doing this it asked me if I wanted to restore the computer. I said cancel and then the Startup Repair screen has been on for close to 5 hours now with the little blue square going left to right. The caption says, Attempting repairs....

2 questions.

Is it safe to turn the computer off by holding the power button? I can not loose any of the data on the hard drive.

Also, how long can I expect this to take, I read somewhere that it would take up to 12 hours???

Thanks in advance.

Thanks all for giving me hope. I woke up to a laptop with a screen frozen on the Win flag. After powering down my computer came up with the startup repair screen. I tried restoring to an earlier point but it did not work. I think I next tried the repair from my hd but it failed too. After searching here I ended up booting up with my recovery disc and launching the startup repair as described here. That was around 11 am EST and it ran all day. After reading here to let it run, I just went about my day and hoped for the best.

At 8 pm and came up to check on my laptop (Sony Vaio) and low and behold it up and open to the user logon screen!!! I logged on and it opened to the exact tabs that I must have left it at yesterday before it went south. It was like it never happened!!!!

I tried the best I could to see what might have happened in the event log. It looked like it finally repaired and rebooted about about 5 pm. I had a Windows update this am and it required a reboot. Somehow something went very wrong when it happened and it froze. I have had many issues with the laptop but mostly with the CPU use and fan so I have been here often for info but never posted.

It looks like the startup repair found and repaired the following:

1. System volume corrupt (what?)
2. Repaired file system errors
3. A software patch prevented the system from restarting (could I find out which one?)
4. Restored system to earlier restore point
5. Repaired corrupted files from the backup

Just prior to these events it looked like all of the Windows updates installed again? I am not sure, but maybe they had to re-install? How knows but now that it is up I shut down the auto update function and the auto-restart with issues function. I have had sooo many issues with Win updates I can not begin to tell you how many times I have been here searching for fixes. This time I got so lucky I just had to say thanks and maybe someone else reading this will get as lucky!

Also if you have not made a recovery dvd or something similar - it is VERY nice to have on hand. I made my right after I bought my laptop and thought I would never need it! Sure glad I had it today!

Just for those looking for a little bit of hope, I have successfully run the startup repair on a 64bit Windows 7 install.

It took about 5 1/2 hours on a 1TB Seagate 7,200rpm HDD that was packed full of bad sectors and at about 70% capacity. It is also worth noting that this had not been my first try.

After the repair it stayed up long enough to extract some critical data that had not been backed up in time which was my primary objective. That may at least give you a single point of reference, but I still would not have been surprised if it had gone over 24 hours.

I have also successfully run the startup repair on Win 7 Pro 64 bit. My startup disk is 2 TB with about 65% full.

Took about 40 minutes but I would advise for most to give it at least a couple of hours, and perhaps more than that if you have the time.

Upon reviewing the Log the root cause was "A recent drive installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from restarting".