Windows 7 stopped booting; Can't repair.

[tkneis]

I searched the threads for an existing post and I couldn't find one that matched my problem. Sorry if a solution has already been posted somewhere.

I have a new Acer 1410 w/ 4GB of DDR2 memory and a 1.6 CULV processor. It came with Vista Home Premium installed, but I downloaded Windows 7 Ultimate from my technet subscription. Because I don't have an optical drive I had to install from a USB stick. I did this without any problems at all.

Windows 7 has been booting fine and running great for about a week now. I haven't recenly loaded any new software or drivers. Yesterday I shut down my laptop normally; when I tried to reboot an hour later I was shown the "loading files" screen and was then taken to the Windows Startup Repair option. Windows spent an hour trying to repair whatever was wrong with my startup and I was finally given an error message that it couldn't make any repairs.

I tried going to the DOS prompt and fixing the boot manager and boot file; interestingly all this did was suddenly give me the option to boot Windows 7 or Windows Vista (!!!). I still get the Windows Startup Repair when I try booting Windows 7. If I try to boot Vista (I was curious) it takes me all the way to the login screen but then tells me I have files missing if I try to login, which is fine - I wasn't trying to set up a dual boot anyways.

Here's the part that's really got me stumped: If I try booting my laptop into install (using the bootable USB stick I created to setup Windows 7 on my laptop) I have the option to repair my computer. When I choose this option it of course takes me to the advanced repair options where I can choose Windows Startup Repair; it runs the repair and tells me it doesn't find any problems with my computer and to go ahead and start my computer normally. Of course, when I reboot and remove the USB stick my computer doesn't boot normally; I'm taken back to the "loading files" screen and then to Windows Startup Repair where I'm told that Windows can't repair my startup.

Any help? I really do not want to have to do a fresh install if it can be helped.

 

[tkneis]

UPDATE: I may have some new information. I've booted to the install menu and picked "Repair your computer". From there I went to the command prompt and typed "sfc /scannow".

I received this message:

"There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run sfc again."

 

[DocBrown]

Try taking out 2gb of ram temporarly during install or repair. There have been known issues about over 2gb ram during install. Also any un-needed extra peripherials.

 

[tkneis]

Good suggestion, but it didn't work. I removed a 2GB stick and went through the Startup Repair, which reported that it couldn't fix the problem. On reboot, I was still taken to the Startup Repair which still couldn't fix the problem.

 

[DocBrown]

Then Complete format of win7 partition or HD & Clean New Install.

 

[h2ofun]

Yep, I had the same type of thing happen to me. Was working fine, and shut down.
Restarted 2 hours later, and it was messed up. Not as bad as yours, but still, enough
was missing that I had to reformat and start over again. This is some BAD type of corner case bug maybe.

 

[tkneis]

Yeah, that's what I've ended up having to do. There doesn't seem to be a fix that I can find for this problem except to just start over.

Just awesome.

 

[Snufffed]

Some times you have to run REPAIR 3 or 4 times. I found that the repiar can fix only 1 major item at a time.

1. When you installed Windows 7 - how exactly did you install?
very important.
did you have a windows.old ?
did you mess with windows.old?
did you attempt to move {boomgr}
lots of info needed will start with this?

2. If you can boot and at least get into CMD (DOS) you might try this.
rstrui.exe /offline:C:\windows

that is ran from command line. Now if you Win7 is not in C:\ change to appropiate drive.

------------------------------what happened after you attempted:

UPDATE: I may have some new information. I've booted to the install menu and picked "Repair your computer". From there I went to the command prompt and typed "sfc /scannow".

I received this message:

"There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run sfc again."

or did you do this.

 

[y0himba]

I had the same problem, but mine turned out to be bad ACLs on a file, caused by a hard drive that started dying. Kg*.sys hidden and system, a DivX file. I do a system image backup to an external drive once a week, so I just restored that image and bought a new drive, then restored the image to that drive.

 

[harpua]

To me this kind of thing sounds likely to be caused by a hardware problem.

 

[tkneis]

Some times you have to run REPAIR 3 or 4 times. I found that the repiar can fix only 1 major item at a time.

1. When you installed Windows 7 - how exactly did you install?
very important.
did you have a windows.old ?
did you mess with windows.old?
did you attempt to move {boomgr}
lots of info needed will start with this?

2. If you can boot and at least get into CMD (DOS) you might try this.
rstrui.exe /offline:C:\windows

that is ran from command line. Now if you Win7 is not in C:\ change to appropiate drive.

------------------------------what happened after you attempted:

UPDATE: I may have some new information. I've booted to the install menu and picked "Repair your computer". From there I went to the command prompt and typed "sfc /scannow".

I received this message:

"There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run sfc again."

or did you do this.

No, I didn't try running rstrui.exe but I wish I had tried that before reloading the OS. Oh well, maybe the next time it crashes on me

And, by the way, "sfc /scannow" never did work for me.

 

[tkneis]

To me this kind of thing sounds likely to be caused by a hardware problem.

I wondered/feared the same thing, but everything seems to be running like a champ this time around now that I've reloaded the OS; in fact, my machine seems to be running a little more smoothly even.

I think rather than a hardware issue, it might have been a driver issue. I loaded a bunch of Acer drivers on top of my OS install for my chipset, graphics, etc. I think that's when my laptop started getting buggy.

@ y0himba
Now that I've got everything reinstalled just the way I like it, I did just now create a backup image. You know - just in case.