Can't Boot or repair - NETIO.SYS missing/corrupt

I returned home today to find my computer off and not able to boot. My wife said all she had done was web browsing and then sleeping the computer. At this time the computer tried to Auto-repair the startup but would cyclically fail (indicating an issue with NETIO.SYS). I performed the following steps:

1. Did a scandisk with repair options that recovered some files on the boot SSD (all future scans have been clean)
2. ran bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr bootsect with a few more options including ALL
3. Tried to use windows Automatic Startup Repair and still had cyclic failures and got worried that perhaps there was a virus.
4. Re-flashed the BIOS with an updated BIOS
5. Ran Avira from a boot CD, scanned for viruses, and only things that turned up were a java virus in a random file or patch. Seemed unrelated to any of the problems.
6. Ran bootrec to restore the MBR
7. All throughout this process tried the windows Startup Repair with no luck

Now instead of automatically going the Startup Repair it tries immediately displays a Windows failed to start problem. With NETIO.SYS and a status of 0xc000098 (Windows failed to load because a required file is missing, or corrupt). I don't have a recent enough system restore point to recover from. I am desperately trying not to do a full re-install to preserve installed program data. Startup Repair from DVD of course still fails with a detailed signature of: StartupRepairOffline - AutoFailover (sig5) - CorruptFile (sig7).

System info:
MB: Asus P6T SE
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit
HD: Intel 80GB SSD for boot, secondary 1.5TB data drive

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Robert

The computer is not getting to a BSOD. It's not loading enough of the OS on boot to get a memory dump, and since I can't start the OS in safe mode or any other way I cannot install or run SF_Diagnostic_Tool. I'd love to give more useful information, but I'm not sure how. The only thing I can do is get to a command prompt through the 'Repair your computer' option of the Windows 7 Install DVD. Any thoughts?

Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Seems like the only option to me :/

Hope this helps,

Harry

Arc said:

In this situation, I would suggest you to copy your user data elsewhere other than C drive. Preferably externally.
Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

Then perform a clean install.
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

I agree with you Arc (:

2 days ago I started having the same problem with x64 Win 7 Ultimate. I would get the netio.sys BSOD within 5 to 10 minutes of booting.

I have 3 different versions of Windows installed on my pc and depending on the need I boot into the required one with boot manager. Only Win 8 would run without netio.sys BSOD. Then I read somewhere about IDM and various flavours of antivirus. Then I realised that I had upgraded IDM from version 6.17.5 to 6.17.8 on 2 of my other installations. I managed to revert to the older version and rebooted the system. Lo and behold no more problems.

Just thought my experience might come in handy for some person having similar problems.

Please start your own thread here - BSOD Help and Support - Windows 7 Help Forums