Hdd gone-ish, trying to repair partitions.

Greg is a Windows expert. I am only a Windows user. I can't fill or fit in Greg's space. But I can always share what I do as a Windows user

Kalorvoe said:

...........Symptoms are still PROCESS1_initialization_FAILED after windows logo.
The Bootcat.cache was NOT recreated......

This now confirms that a corrupt bootcat.cache was responsible for that error. Earlier a corrupt bootcat.cache file was responsible for that error and now the absence of that file is responsible for this error.

As I suspected in my post #37 a new bootcat.cache file was not recreated. And I had also indicated what should be done rather what other users had done in such circumstances.

"Check whether a new bootcat.cache file has been created.

It is said that if ntdll.dll (which is in System32 folder) is also corrupted, a new bootcat.cache file will not be created.In such a case some users had copied both ntdll.dll and bootcat.cache file from a working system and copied it to System32 folder and CodeIntegrity folder respectively. If you have a Win 7 Home Premium SP1 64 bit , you should copy those files from another Win 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit computer, that is, the files should come from a like system."

So that is the way you have to go now. As I told, you can copy those files from another similar system and then inject it into your system.

There can be many ways of doing that but I can only tell you the way I shall do - with a live Linux pen drive.

Copy those files to a USB pendrive.

Download Lucid Puppy (Ubuntu compatible Build) lupu-528.005 lupu-528.005.iso 132.6MB http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%...%20Release.htm

Create a bootable pen drive with that ISO using Rufus 1.4.7 (592KB) Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way ( Make sure to backup all data on the pen drive for it will be lost when Rufus formats the drive and extracts the ISO into it.)

Boot your computer with the Live Lucid Puppy pen drive after plugging in the pen drive on which you have the ntdll.dll and bootcat.cache files.
Copy ntl.dll to your system drive , the ntdll.dll into Windows/system32 and bootcat.cache into windows/system32/CodeIntegrity.

Guide to use Lucid Puppy: Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer
(Here the files are copied from a non-bootable system drive to another external drive. But you will be doing the reverse - copying files from the external pendrive to appropriate folders in your system drive. )

Now from where to download the official Windows 7 installer:

....download the latest official Win7 OS installer ISO file with SP1 and Media Refresh for your 32-bit or 64-bit licensed Windows version. If your download is unavailable, download another version and unlock all versions with eicfg removal tool.

-copied and pasted from Greg's Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

The first fix mentioned in that article is for those who had not installed SP1 in their systems. Such people were experiencing occasional or frequent ( but not permanent) Process Initialisation errors. Microsoft in their article "Stop error code 0x0000006B PROCESS1_INITIALIZATION_FAILED" error message during startup on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 offered the fix. The fix is " Apply Service Pack 1 for Windows 7".

In your case since SP1 must have already come in through Windows update and you have it (unless you had deliberately stopped it installing), the second fix applies. Since bootcat.cache was not recreated on booting, you must replace ntdll.dll which is responsible for creating bootcat.cache.

Why do you require Windows SP1 disk?

If you want to get into the recovery environment and try any repair procedures from Windows Disk, then it has to be done with SP1 disk.(And also for a repair install, clean install)

For example if you want to run SFC scan now from Windows disk in an effort to repair and replace corrupt files, then it should be from Windows SP1 disk. If you want to take this approach to repair ntdll.dll ( rather than getting it from another working system and copying) then rename bootcat.cacheold back to bootcat.cache. Hopefully SFC scan will find the corrupted files and replace them.

That is disturbing news.

Did you get the ntdll.dll and bootcat.cache from a Windows 7 Professional 64 bit SP1 the same version as yours? Again ntdll.dll should be injected into System32 folder and bootcat.cache into system32/CodeIntegrity folder.

Check the file size and properties in your system folder and the source ( on the pen drive) are the same.

If you are sure that everything is OK, then run Startup repair as suggested by Greg.

Let us see what it complains now.( as compared to "bootcat.cache not recreated" last time)