Failed driver update now can't boot Windows 7 on NVME SSD (0x0000007B)

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

If I run it anyway and go to the "Drivers" subsection, I can't find the Samsung NVME driver, even after checking "Display in-box drivers" (whatever that means). I do find the two relevant files under 'Utilities\Startup", but I don't know what the purpose of this section is. I still can't find anything that remotely points toward the direction of a potential solution. (But I do find weird typos like "temprorary", which somehow tends to lower my confidence level when it comes to a software designed for advanced system tweaking and fixing.)
Any clue, anyone ?

SIW2 · 03 Nov 2019

1. If you are using dism++ to download and install the ms update database and all the 160plus updates, it will need a lot of space. Many people use it for that. That is why it suggeste 5gb min

Because you are not doing that, you can ignore the message. Nearly all software will require temp folder - particularly windows itself, which is constantly creating temp files.

2. If the drivers are not showing, it must be because they are not found in the registry, or at least not in the way they should be.

You can use regworkshop to search the registry for what you think could be the driver names.

3. From your first post, it might be the problem is a botched graphic drivers installation.

Did you have samsung nvme drivers installed previously, or were you just using the MS nvme updates?

If you did have the samsung drivers installed as your first post implied, they don't appear to be there now ( or at least they are no longer correctly installed).

SIW2 · 03 Nov 2019

From your first post, it is possible your earlier samsung driver were deleted, yet the newer version didn't install. That would tally with not being to find them via dism++.

You could try installing the samsung drivers using dism++ and see if that does it.

There might be additional issues, of course as you were doing it while instaling graphic card drivers.

You could check and see if you have hive backups in windows\system32\config\regbak. Also use shadowcopyview to check for any other shadow copies, you might have several - which will also contain the hives.

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

Well, thanks again, but the information is still rather sketchy at this point... I launched RegWorkshop (again, the shortcut is unresponsive, had to find it in the DVD's subfolders), but how can I use it to edit the registry from the NVME SSD Windows install ? And how should I know what to modify and where ?

Indeed I can find "secnvme.inf-3.0.0.1802" under Storage controllers for the SATA SSD Windows install, for the NVME SSD install I see only Intel and Asmedia, which indeed seems to imply that the Samsung driver is not correctly registered, so at least it seems to be on the right path.

Also, do you have any clue why those extra blank shortcuts don't appear when booting from a USB device ? And why they appear as blank and are unresponsive when booting from a DVD ? (At least the corresponding tools can be found, which wasn't the case when booting from USB.)

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

I do have a backup in RegBak, from 2019/10/30, and there's a shadow copy from 2019/11/01, made right when I was doing those updates -- so could it be an explanation to what happened, if somehow the NVME driver update was made on the current set of files while the Intel driver update was made on the shadow copy, or the other way around, and when the system rebooted it ended up in an inconsistent state ? Now what should I do with those backups, and how should I proceed to make sure that I don't screw things up any further ?

SIW2 · 03 Nov 2019

There is a special mechanism which assigns Y to the device containing the USBPrograms folder. I don't know why it doesn't work for you on your usb stick. That explains the absence of shortcuts when you used usb.

There is a script under the start menu called Fixusb which will try and find the usb stick and create the shortcuts, if it hasn't been found at startup.

As you have discovered, shortcuts to a non writable media, such as cd/dvd are not ideal. If you are able to run them directly from the dvd, than that will have to do.

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

Also, how can I load the driver files if I can't connect a USB drive in that environment ? (And the DVD drive is already used by the live system itself...)

SIW2 · 03 Nov 2019

Rename the hives in system32\config folder by adding a made up extension - to something like components.bok, default.bok, software.bok, system.bok etc.

( you can ignore the regtrans-ms files and log files - you just need to rename the actual hives)

Then copy the hives ( with no extensions) from Regbak folder into config folder.

Then when you reboot that will be the same registry you had on 2019/10/30

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

So, with Dism++ I did install that damn driver (copied the files to a secondary partition on the SSD -- I retried booting from a USB device : the Fixusb script is not there either, I find it only if booting from the DVD), then a Samsung subsection appeared in "Drivers"... but it changed nothing, I still get that damn BSOD !

Now what ? Could it be that this newer driver is not suitable ? Then how can I install the older one that way, without the proper .inf file ? (I had originally installed it with a .exe installer, as I did this time before I found that RAR file with the individual .sys / .inf / .cat files.)
Or is there a way to use that shadow copy ? But isn't that precisely what using the system restore is supposed to do ? (Which I already tried, and it failed.)

abolibibelot · 03 Nov 2019

So... isn't there a more "surgical", more elegant and less hazardous method than recovering the whole registry from a backup, assuming that there is one which is not too old ? And won't it result in yet another series of inconsistencies, considering that the registry from 2019/10/30 contained references to files which have changed in the mean time, or possibly even have been deleted during that botched update ?