Overwhelming Side by Side Errors for all software

Hello everyone,

For a couple of days now I've been working on a solution for my spontaneous (no spell check because firefox/chrome refuse to launch) Side by Side configuration errors to no avail.

Most programs refuse to launch, giving the usual "[directory for said program] This application has failed to start because its side by side configuration is incorrect."

I cannot uninstall/repair any software using the control panel, and most software even give me errors that they cannot be found and can be "unlisted." SFC via command prompt reported several failed file verifications but, and look at my luck, recieves even more errors when trying to fix them. Hence, I'm back where I started. Sxstrace produces a logfile filled with gibberish characters and not one intelligible word I can look at.

To make things even more fun for me, I was not able to boot windows from a USB flash drive or from a DVD for also unknown reasons. Whenever I try to read W7 disk, Windows informs me that it is an empty disk (The same DVD works fine on a different PC) and whenever I try to burn a disk I also get another error.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Grav

EDIT: To my information and using 4 different AV/Anti-malware for critical scans, there were no malware of any kind. Also, I'm pretty clean/conservative about what I do on my PC, so I don't really need an AV inthe first place.

Did you do the SFC following steps from this tutorial? You might need to run it multiple times, and each time it will fix something.

Your windows 7 is clearly corrupted and SFC is clearly the way to go (other than a repair install or a full reinstall), but booting from a DVD is handled by the BIOS (the motherboard's own firmware) that runs on its own, so it will work regardless of windows 7 condition if the DVD itself is ok. BIOS works even without Windows 7. That's the entire point of it.

Can you go in bios options (also called Setup when the PC is powered on, it will write a line in white text on the black screen to say what key to press to enter BIOS or Setup, it is usually F1, F2, Del or F10 depending on what PC is that) use the keyboard arrows to move around and make sure that the boot order has the CD/DVD drive before the hard drive? Then save and exit BIOS (from the last tab to the right).

Then place the dvd in the reader and restart. Then follow the tutorial linked.

Ok, let's avoid the DVD drive.

Do you have access to another Windows 7 PC? If yes, follow these steps to create a USB installation drive with a clean ISO file provided from the links.

SFC may fail to work if it is too screwed up. If run from an installation drive it usually works unless there is a hardware failure.

Speaking of hardware failures, while you wait can you do a check disk? This tutorial. Check both options. Will ask to reboot, do it, might take a while.

If in the final report there are more than 0 bad sectors, the hard drive is failing. That is a prime cause for sudden windows 7 corruption (other than malware anyway).

You must be trying to make a USB with a x64 iso from a PC that has windows 7 x86, or anyway a non-64 bit windows. That tool is dumb.

You need this file to make it work (yes, it's hosted on my own dropbox). Extract it and place it in the same folder where is the "usb/dvd download tool" you use to make the drive. Yeah it is the "bootsect.exe" that it says it lacks.

Otherwise you can try rufus. That's what most here use.

Since you may miss the results of the check disk (as you are running it overnight), this tutorial explains how to read the results from the logs.

Is there a way to easily copy/move information from my old copy of Windows to my new one instead of trying to repair my old Windows?

You can move data (documents/images/music) but not programs, that is you will need to reinstall all your programs then copy over the program settings/game saves if you know where they are located. Desktop and Documents are inside C:\Users\<name of your local account>

You should be able to run SFC scannow on the other partition from it though, and it should work as the install seems clean (you need to specify the drive to scan). Although I would trust more a USB installation disk to do it.
Open an elevated command prompt and type sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows and press enter (because when you are booting the second installation it will see the system drive as C:\ and the other as D).

I extracted it into the root directory (where my boot program is) of my USB boot drive but I still got the error in BIOS.

It needs to be in the same folder where the USB/DVD download tool executable file is, rightclick on the shortcut on the desktop and select (open file location) to get there.

Run SFC up to three times with the same procedure.

When you manage to make a working USB, do a SFC from it for three times in a row.

If it fails I'd do a repair install, this tutorial.

don't forget the disk check.