c0000135 Error On Boot - %hs Missing

Hello and thanks for the chance to post on this site. I hope I can get some help because this is a work computer that I am having the issue with. I will try to be as thorough as possible.

My problem:
I was sick over the weekend and got home and just fell asleep. I had left my computer on the entire weekend and when returning to it Sunday night (before work), it had a blue screen that simply stated the "STOP: c0000135 The program can't start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem." (This is not the standard BSOD error.) I've read up online and usually this comes from a missing DLL file that was removed for whatever reason that is queued to be used in the boot process. I figure that the DLL was deleted during a routine service pack update or something from Windows since that's like the only thing that I have set to automatically update. (I disabled Java updates and stuff like that since the automatic updates are so annoying.)

The actions I've tried to take:
- Using the recover console, I tried using regedit.exe to check out my registries. I could no use File -> Load Hive option like some forums had suggested.
- Safe Mode, Safe Mode With Networking, Safe Mode With Command Prompt, Run Last Good Boot Configuration, and Debugging mode all result in the same issue and do nothing.
- Recovery Repair does nothing. I ran it like 10 times. It said the problem cannot be fixed with Recovery Repair or whatever it is called. (The Repair Your Computer option.)
- I cannot use the FRST.exe (by Farbar) because it says that the subsystem is not present from the recovery console. I can run other programs like regedit or notepad through this method, though.
- sfc /scannow does not find anything wrong.
- I performed a checkdisk, but unfortunately, I did not take note of what it said at the time. I don't think that there were any problems or I would have definitely written it down.
- I tried to do a system restore; I had two restore points but neither of them would work. I couldn't figure out why, but it would get to a certain file and fail to extract it. One of the points was messing up at a temporary Internet Explorer file in the AppRoaming directory. It was some random .JS file. That was one of the first things that I tried. I just tried again and my system repair could not find any restore points. It's frightening!
- None of the built-in VAIO tools can detect any problems or help me out.
- I also tried, "bootsect.exe /nt60 SYS /force" and a few varients.

Other important information:
- I do not have AVG installed. I have no used any anti-viruses except for Spy Hunter, which was the full version and had the automatic updates turned off. I never had a virus on this computer, so I don't think either of those effected this error.
- I have triple checked. I know for a fact that my harddrive is not faulty and is fully functional. I was able to browse the entire contents of the HDD without any issue to make sure the most crucial work files are fine.
- I do not dualboot.
- I use Visual Studios and many other IDE's on this computer. I have a lot of libraries and very, very important data that cannot be recreated or backed-up. I often get update requests from Microsoft updates about service packs for C++ libraries and stuff. I think that this may be of some importance to this issue.
- My boot settings were set to not show the standard boot screen to shave off a few seconds during the loading process. I'm not sure if this happens before the standard boot screen or not because it would just be a blank screen for me.

So, here it is. Let me know if there is any more information you need and I'll try my best to get that to you very quickly. I can burn a Ubuntu live disc or something if I need to and modify whatever files I need to, but I don't know what I need to do from here. I figure I just need to download some .DLL files and put them into the proper directories. Another option would be to somehow get those system restore points back and expand them somehow and browse the contents and delete the old file that the restore points get stuck on. Let me know what you think I can do. Please don't tell me that I need to just get a fresh install.... :-/ This computer is a VAIO, so I need to find an external harddrive to use the 'file rescue' feature where it backs everything up, repairs Windows, then puts the files back. I've never done it and I don't think I'll be able to get access to an external harddrive like that for a while, so I figure that that will be my last resort.

Thanks in advance, guys!

It has been 17 hours and I still have not a clue what to do. I repeated those steps again with no luck.

I cannot do that since I get this error when I boot. It is not the normal BSOD, like I said before.

Wait, so even safe mode causes you grief at startup? That's never good.

Concerning your woes with the System Restore, there may be a bad file in there somewhere. If it consistently fails on the .JS file you mentioned, that file in itself is corrupt, but if it's a different file each time, then there's something more fundamental that's causing the problem. If it's just that .JS file, you can try System Restore Explorer in another Windows environment. With it you can mount the system restore point to be able to browse its contents. I am not certain it can be used to delete specific files, since it's designed to copy files over from the restore point, but you can try. Your other option could be to manually copy over all the contents except that JS file over to replace the existing files, but that's obviously a destructive process and you will want to make a full backup before attempting that.

As for CHKDSK, the logs unfortunately are in Event Viewer. If you can find a way to access Event Viewer from the recovery environment (perhaps typing eventvwr.msc with /s or no switch in cmd prompt), then you can check from there, otherwise you'd have to run it again and pipe the output to a log file while it's running. All that's explained in the thread I found here.

SFC scan reported no errors in cmd prompt, but it's still good to check the log (I believe it's Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log). In addition, you'll want to try and run it from both the Windows 7 DVD recovery environment as well as the one on disk. In fact, have you been using both environments? Sometimes what doesn't work in one will work in the other. This is especially true of SFC.

Other than what I've mentioned so far, there's not really much saving you from this predicament, at least from a long distance perspective without having access to the PC. Very, very few applications/services of any sort should start up in Safe Mode, and the only ones I can think of are some forms of AV software or malware. If SFC scan isn't helping you on this, then not much will. You can kinda try a manual effort as what's mentioned here (the 2nd half) but I'm not entirely sure that will help your situation. Beyond this, one is stumped without being able to ascertain just what "program" this bugcheck is triggering from.

Vir Gnarus said:

Wait, so even safe mode causes you grief at startup? That's never good.

Right!

Vir Gnarus said:

Concerning your woes with the System Restore, there may be a bad file in there somewhere. If it consistently fails on the .JS file you mentioned, that file in itself is corrupt, but if it's a different file each time, then there's something more fundamental that's causing the problem. If it's just that .JS file, you can try System Restore Explorer in another Windows environment. With it you can mount the system restore point to be able to browse its contents. I am not certain it can be used to delete specific files, since it's designed to copy files over from the restore point, but you can try. Your other option could be to manually copy over all the contents except that JS file over to replace the existing files, but that's obviously a destructive process and you will want to make a full backup before attempting that.

Do you know any Linux alternatives that would work on Puppydog Linux? I could boot that up from a USB drive or something and work from there. It seems to be the exact same .JS file every time for that specific savepoint. It doesn't really make sense to me, but I'm sure it is because that file is corrupted. (Hence the inability to expand that file.) I tried with ShadowExplorer but that would not boot from the repair environment. (From the repair partition.)

Vir Gnarus said:

As for CHKDSK, the logs unfortunately are in Event Viewer. If you can find a way to access Event Viewer from the recovery environment (perhaps typing eventvwr.msc with /s or no switch in cmd prompt), then you can check from there, otherwise you'd have to run it again and pipe the output to a log file while it's running. All that's explained in the thread I found here.

I'll try that command later today and get back with you.

Vir Gnarus said:

SFC scan reported no errors in cmd prompt, but it's still good to check the log (I believe it's Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log). In addition, you'll want to try and run it from both the Windows 7 DVD recovery environment as well as the one on disk. In fact, have you been using both environments? Sometimes what doesn't work in one will work in the other. This is especially true of SFC.

I do not have the disc on hand, but I'm in the process of getting it. I was hoping to have one the day that the problem started, but I couldn't find it. I'll retry a few things and get back to you whenever I have the disc with me.

crait

Without the dmp files or the logs we are pretty much shooting in the dark !!

So there are only few ways you could go from here

1. Use a live cd ... probably ubuntu live cd or use UBCD.. to boot into a live environment and then navigate to C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs and copy to a usb disk the Application and System logs...

and navigate to C:\Windows\Minidump\ and copy the all the dmp files to the usb

Zip the above files and upload here

2. Use the live dvd to backup all your important stuff and do a clean install of windows.

Here are the requested dumps from winevt and the minidump. I really hope that they help!

That single crashdump was from back in Dec of 2011, which will definitely not help us.

I checked your syslog and so far I'm seeing massive amounts of disk-related errors for \Device\Harddisk1\, which have existed from March all the way to today. You may say you have no issues with any storage devices on your system, but this evidently proves otherwise. I do not have the information to translate the Harddisk1 device object into a more human-friendly name, but generally Harddisk0 is the primary Windows drive and Harddisk1 and subsequent drives are any additional storage devices.

Outside of the disk errors, I'm afraid the logs may not help us any further, as these crashes occur so early in Windows startup that they do not even write to the event log, so we have no details of it other than the fact it's an 0xc0000135 crash.

I agree with centaur that your best option would be a diagnostic live cd like UBCD or Parted Magic (UBCD actually has Parted Magic but not as updated). They may have a tool to help you here.

I'd like to point out for future reference that backups are crucial when involving critical production material like your VS projects. Fortunately, yes, they can in fact be backed up, like anything else. If need be, make an occasional full disk image using something like Clonezilla, do whatever is necessary to back up data, because if it's important enough, you should be willing to invest in a proper backup solution for it (if it's company-based stuff, ask them to pitch in or provide a solution for you). There should be no excuse for lacking a proper backup.

Again, your best bet at this moment is to either edit the system restore file, use the VAIO restore, or install a copy of Windows over your existing version. Those are the only options I see available to you at this point in time. Good luck, skipper.

I have reinstalled Windows 7. Restoring my Windows.old using the official method Microsoft gave out reproduces the error that I had. I now have full access to all my files, though. What can do to determine the source of the issue so I can revert back?