Win7 BSOD on boot after losing power/Windows Updates

[doveman007]

So my brother received the new PC I built for him, booted it up and I connected via TeamViewer and showed him his way around.

Then, in the process of unplugging his printer from the USB port on the back, he somehow managed to knock the power lead, killing the power

Since then, he's been unable to boot into Windows, just getting a BSOD every time after the "Windows failed to shutdown properly" screen and selecting "Boot normally". Strangely, the only other option on this screen is Repair Windows, no Safe mode or Last Known Good Config.

Luckily I've got a Win7 x32 VHD on there which he can boot into. I got him to remove the Nebula tuner PCI card, as that had caused some issues before but I thought I'd sorted them and it was working fine before I sent it to him and then I used the VHD to load the Win7 x64 Hive in regedit and set the two Nebula drivers to Start=4 to disable them. Still BSOD. I looked in the Win7 x64 Windows\Minidump folder whilst booted to the VHD and there wasn't any files dated today, so there's no help there.

I also used BootICE to add another entry to the Windows boot menu, Win7 (Safe), set in BootICE to Safe mode, but selecting this just gave him a BSOD as well. However, it did at least produce the Safe Mode, Last Known Good Config, etc options but Safe Mode with Networking and Last Known Good both still just result in the BSOD.

He managed to boot it with Safe Mode (without networking) but obviously that doesn't allow me to connect via TeamViewer to sort anything out. When he booted into this mode, it said it was reverting some updates. It had installed about 7 Windows Updates some time before the power got cut but we hadn't had a chance to reboot, so they may have not been installed fully and maybe that's why it reverted them, I'm not sure.

I've got a EaseUS ToDo Backup System Image that he could revert to (I added the Boot disk to the grub4dos menu) but that's the nuclear option as I think I made a few changes since making that and it will be tricky to talk him through using that as I won't be able to connect to his machine to do it for him, so I'd rather try and fix the problem if at all possible, so if anyone can help, I'd be very grateful.

 

[doveman007]

Tried some more things:

1. Selected Startup Repair instead of Boot Normally (by accident, my brother was too slow to change it, before then it had defaulted to Boot Normally every time anyway, so it took him by surprise). Anyway, I didn't want to interrupt it if it was doing something, so we let it run but although it said it had identified some problems and was fixing them, after about 10mins it said it had failed and showed

Startup Repair offline
Problem Signature 01 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02 6.1.7600.16385
03 Unknown
04 118
05 Auto failover
06 1
07 0x7e

2. Booted into Safe Mode (without networking) again and uninstalled KB2859537 as this article suggests it can cause BSOD on boot http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-KB2859537-Update-Causes-BSOD-on-Windows-7-375659.shtml I'm not sure this was one of the updates that was applied today before it started BSOD, as that article's dated 13 August so I think I'd probably already installed that and it hadn't caused any problems but it seemed worth a shot. It didn't help though.

3. Did a clean boot as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135 but that still resulted in the BSOD.

4. Booted into Safe Mode (without networking) again, went into Device Manager and disabled the onboard Qualcomm Atheros NIC (as it boots in Safe Mode but not in Safe Mode with Networking it seemed worth trying) but that still BSOD as well.

Every time it boots into Safe Mode (without networking), it says "Failed to configure Windows Updates. Reverting" and the first time after uninstalling that update, it said it had to reboot and did so automatically. After that, it still shows that each time but then continues to the desktop. It said that the first time we booted in this mode earlier today as well, before I tried uninstalling that update, but without forcing a reboot.

 

[YoYo155]

Hi .
Did you try System Restore (OPTION TWO)?

While in safe-mode you grab the dumps and then upload them.
Copy the files from;

C:\Windows\minidump

Paste them to your desktop zip them then upload.

 

[doveman007]

Hi

I don't actually have System Restore enabled and prefer to use third-party tools, such as EaseUS ToDo Backup which is what's installed on the PC in question. I could restore to that, which I believe was made on 30-08-2013 but as I think I added/tweaked some things since then, I'd rather avoid having to do that if possible.

As for the dumps, I checked earlier and there weren't any files from today, only two rather old files, so it doesn't seem to create dumps when BSOD at the start of boot, unless there's some setting I need to change to make it do so.

 

[doveman007]

OK, it seems it did create dumps despite the pagefile only being enabled on D:, not C:

From taking a quick look with BlueScreenView, it seems they all reference RTKVHD64.sys.

 

[YoYo155]

Hi thanks for the dumps but I'll need at least two more files.

Download and save Info.bat to the desktop.
Open an elevated command prompt and then type the following command:

cd C:\Users\<Username>\Desktop

Then type:

Info.bat

The batch file will begin to run, the SystemInfo.txt file will be saved to your C:\ partition,
the MSINFO32 file will simply open, therefore click File and then Save.
Chose the save location as your Desktop, and then copy the two files into a zipped folder.

Upload the zipped folder in your next post.

 

[doveman007]

Hi thanks for the dumps but I'll need at least two more files.

Download and save Info.bat to the desktop.
Open an elevated command prompt and then type the following command:

cd C:\Users\<Username>\Desktop

Then type:

Info.bat

The batch file will begin to run, the SystemInfo.txt file will be saved to your C:\ partition,
the MSINFO32 file will simply open, therefore click File and then Save.
Chose the save location as your Desktop, and then copy the two files into a zipped folder.

Upload the zipped folder in your next post.

Thanks, I did try to run the info.bat but got an error that seemed to mention html, so I think I must have accidentally downloaded it in the wrong format.

I seem to have fixed his PC now thankfully anyway I set the RTKVHD64.sys to Start 4 in the registry and it booted again after that. I uninstalled the Realtek software (it was 6.0.1.6923 and dated from May, strangely the latest driver on the Realtek site is dated April) and then Windows installed the default driver from 2010. Then I re-installed Avast and rebooted and then applied the 5 Windows Updates and rebooted and it seems to be stable now.

I'll have to install a Realtek driver sometime as he doesn't have the Control Panel for it otherwise but I've made an EaseUS System Backup now and will do that in a few days.

 

[YoYo155]

Good to hear , good luck!

 

[doveman007]

Thanks. I've installed the Realtek driver from their website now and it's still working, so probably that file just got corrupted when the power was cut accidentally.