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Worst crash of my life... cannot fix, blue screen after Update.. Help!
Hello. In my Windows 7 installation, during boot-up, I no longer have an option for startup repair (System Recovery Options) when my system crashes (which it is doing NOW! - blue screen at boot, cannot enter Windows or Safe Mode). So I am using a Windows 7 install/iso boot disc to get into automatic repair. I ran two iso/boot antiviruses from a USB but they came up clean. I ran the two separate anti virus programs, first one and then the other, from the DOS command prompt after booting from a USB drive, outside of Windows, after the blue screen crash had happened and I could not log into Windows 7 or Safe Mode - just to be sure it was not a virus causing this...
However, I did have a failed Windows update a couple days ago and at some point during the last 3 days of torture, received the 0x80070002 error code which can mean a problem after trying to update.
From the Windows 7 install/boot disc, once I run System Recovery Options, it tells me: Windows found problems with your computer's startup options. Do you want to apply repairs and restart your computer?
I say yes and it gives this error: Failed to save startup options. Under details it says:
Problem Event name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: -1
Problem Signature 05: ExternalMedia
Problem Signature 06: 1
Problem Signature 07: MissingBootManager
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
I used chkdsk and it found no problems or errors on the hard drive.
From the command prompt I typed: Bootrec /RebuildBcd
and I got: Total Identified Window Installations: 1 D:\Windows, do you want to add it to the boot list?; I said YES, add it to the boot list and it told me: The requested system device cannot be found. For some reason, it's calling the root/boot drive D: instead of C: - could that be the problem there?
Next, from the command prompt I typed sfc /scannow and it told me: There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run sfc again. Of course, I CAN'T restart Windows.
I also tried a variant of that: sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ offwindir=d:\Windows It said that it was unable to make the repairs to all the files.
I tried dism.exe /image:c:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions in order to get rid of the pending reboot but it said: Error 2 Unable to access the image. Make sure that the image path and the Windows directoy for the image exist and you have Read permissions on the folder.
So instead, I tried dism.exe /image:d:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions since it's calling my usual "C:" root drive "D:". Well, this time, it worked - it said it reverted the pending changes BUT it needs to reboot to complete the changes: so stuck again since I can't boot or reboot.
I tried deleting the file pending.xml from my windows\winsyx folder. Nothing changed.
I looked up where it's suggested that you can get back into Windows after a failed upgrade attempt by deleting the following file, which I did, with no effect: C:\Windows\System32\FNTCACHE.dat
I have also tried bootrec /fixmbr, and bootrec /fixboot. They complete successfully but the problem does not go away.
It seems that there should be some way to clean this mess up or at least to get it to boot back into Windows where maybe I can try to fix this by removing or applying another update. I'm completely stuck. It's like a mad loop where one thing stops me from doing another and I think it's all due to the failed update, as I said, and I keep having the blue screen crash on boot and Safe Mode. Somehow, during all this, it seems to have lost track of the restore partition on my hard drive as I don't see it anymore.
I can boot to a DOS graphical environment with Kaspersky anti-virus and that allows me to access a registry editor with which I could make changes and save them out, but I don't know what to do there. I am convinced that if I knew what to look for, I could make changes to the registry to bypass whatever Microsoft did during the update and whatever is insisting that I need to reboot first before I can make other changes.
I also think there is a way to uninstall Microsoft updates from DOS/command prompt but I don't know what to look for or how to know what to do either.
Any help out there? Please? Thanks...
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