Help! I did something wrong!

Well the only truely important thing is there any data you cant live without? If not you will save yourself time and frustration by doing a clean re-install. If there is something you cant do with out you should back it up now

I'm at a university now... and our classes started the other day... I spent quite some time installing all the software I'd need and would hate to have to start over. Yes, I can back up the documents and such from Ubuntu but I don't want to resort to a clean install...

Hi, if I was you I would do a Repair install, I hope this helps .

I had thought of that... I dunno if it would even work though, I left my computer booting into Windows after it was stalling for some 5 minutes, I'll see if it's actually running when I get back. Shame you can't do it straight off the disc like in XP.

On that note, though - what all does an upgrade/repair install do? Does it remove any files/settings? I know with XP it basically forced it back to initial settings where there were no video drivers etc. and I had to painstakingly go back and install them all again. Also, I've heard nothing but bad thing about Windows upgrading, like from Vista to 7... about how it takes up almost twice the space as a clean install... Would that be the case with a 7 to 7 repair/upgrade too?

Paint, and the calculator both have some files they depend on. I am surprised that word doesn't.

No, I'm aware of that... Wordpad wouldn't run unless it had the en-US folder from Vista as well, which had a Wordpad.exe.mui file. Same with Paint. Other than that, they appear to be stand-alone... as in, I would run 7 Paint and Vista Paint side by side just fine, the issue comes to *overwriting* them... apparently just by replacing Paint.exe and Paint.exe.mui, it screwed something up in a big way.

And no, I wasn't putting 32-bit files into 64-bit folders, I had a 64-bit Vista, so 64-bit went in system32 and 32-bit went in SysWOW64. I'm not THAT uneducated :P

Another thing you can do is a system file check (sfc /scannow) it will scan the system files and replace damaged ones woth good copies. who know if it handles word, etc

I heard about that when I had the Task Manager problem... I just may try it. Can I do that from the recovery console, or does it have to be inside Windows? I tried running Safe Mode and THAT was stalling too, so really the only way I can get into a command prompt is through the DVD's repair option.

As far as the Windows Update thing goes... I can try that too, but when I tried Windows Update the normal way (like, from the crippled Windows 7 that managed to start), it said it couldn't find any repair points - maybe they got corrupted somehow?

Keep in mind that his boot record is now being handled through GRUB, the LINUX boot loader... while a reinstall will solve his vista problem, he will lose his ability to boot into Linux as well...
Just a random thought..;

OK, well, it's not the end of the world if GRUB gets knocked out... I can always use a live-booting Linux distro, then restore it from there. The thing is, when you select Windows 7 from GRUB, it runs Windows' bootloader anyway, so I don't see what would come from doing a /fixMBR, all that matters is what Windows has in its boot sector.

On another note, what's with the "System Reserved" partition? XP and Vista never had that, they'd just boot from the main hard drive. Did Windows 7 somehow lose the ability to boot itself and resort to making a small partition on the drive that does it instead?

Sorry for the long reply... I'm just willing to try anything short of wiping out my data at this point, and I'm hoping something that keeps the system like before, only fixes it... I've had bad results with XP repair installs so I'm not gonna resort to that unless all else fails.

Right, well no matter what I try, it just goes to a blue screen with a mouse pointer, that's it. It won't load the desktop or anything else... even in safe mode, even in Safe Mode With Networking.

What other alternatives are there? That sfc /scannow won't work off the DVD's command prompt (I googled it, too), and I can't even do a repair install that way... All the files are accessible via Linux, why won't Windows see them?!!!

The only weird thing is that the 64-bit mspaint.exe.mui seems to have been corrupted, as it was 0kb. I removed it entirely. But why would not having the Paint files cause Windows to not boot?

Can someone with the 64-bit version upload mspaint.exe and mspaint.exe.mui from system32, as well as from SysWOW64? That might help me out a lot.

Yeah but what I don't get is how a simple replacing of mspaint would cause my OS to not boot... It doesn't use Paint at bootup, does it?

It wasn't just replacing paint that hosed it. it was the drive letter changed that prevented finding critical OS files. You are going to have to re-install and it really really should be a clean install because anything else will import the problems you currently have

WTF would cause my drive letter to change though?

I've modified Windows files from Ubuntu plenty of times... why would it change all of the sudden?
Can't it be changed back somehow? I recall with Vista, even if it was installed on drive D: (like if XP was on C:), it would automatically boot itself and show as C: inside Vista.

What if I were to back up the contents of my hard drive in its entirety, then do a clean install, then paste all the files back? Or would that copy over some bad registry key that tells it the drive letter is different and still not work?

Nope sorry pasting files back isnt an option the files need to be reg'ed in registry for windows to know where they are. can you change the drive letter from ubuntu, sure but im not sure if it is going to do anything at this point. there have been so many changes we cant even back out of them all.

You have to tell us when you are ready to do a clean install because we can give you ideas for days and not fix it. Your call really

Ken

Back up everything and do a fresh install.