Win 7 Repair Reinstall hangs at final re-boot

essenbe · 16 Aug 2015

Is your Windows 7 HP with SP1 installed? and is your installation disk a Windows 7 SP1? I am not sure if that would make a difference, but I know a pre SP1 repair disk will not work on a SP1 installation.

When it rolls back to your current OS open an elevated command prompt ( click start, type cmd in the search box, right click on the cmd entry and select run as administrator) in the black box that opens, copy/paste sfc /scannow. If you decide to type it, notice the space between the sfc and the /. It is a system file checker which will scan your system files and attempt to correct any missing or corrupt files. What we want are the results to say windows found no integrity violations. If it says files were found but could not be repaired, close the box, reboot and run it again, after opening the administrative command prompt. You may have to reboot and run it three times for it to repair all system files. If it can't repair them after 3 reboots, let us know.

Layback Bear · 16 Aug 2015

Thanks Steve for dropping by to help.

essenbe · 16 Aug 2015

Layback Bear said:

Thanks Steve for dropping by to help.

I'm not sure how much I did help, Jack.

Layback Bear · 16 Aug 2015

Well maybe I didn't explain what I meant by exactly the same Windows 7 well enough.

The SP-1 and sfc /scannow are great ideas.

A Repair Install should take care of any problems sfc /scannow can't but who know. It cost nothing to try and it can't hurt anything.

ICIT2LOL · 18 Aug 2015

Two things I can think of are the drive is no good - just how old is it as I don't remember seeing any vintage attached to it. It could be tested using say Seagate and even the surface test (in another machine of course) with Partition Wizard Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free (see pic)

Now an option would be to get a new drive - I know more expense and the OP would have to borrow an installation media disk and use Gregs tutorial and the ei.cfg removal tool. It would get rid of the bloat as well. The data if any needs saving from the original drive can be got using a Ubuntu or Linux Mint boot.
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Layback Bear · 19 Aug 2015

Thanks John for coming to help.
We need some response from sparkyguy3809.

From post #1

Hard Drive is basically new and I scanned it for errors before beginning using Western Digital Data Lifeguard utility plus I ran chkdsk /r/f on the OS partition before beginning.

ICIT2LOL · 19 Aug 2015

Oops sorry Jack my bad all the same I reckon a scan over the drive wouldn't go amiss and yes some response as you say would be good.

Now I am thinking along the lines of having a look at the state of the PSU too as I do like starting from scratch and it doesn't come any more basic than the power supply eh?

sparkyguy3809 · 19 Aug 2015

I came up with my own "back door" solution.

My apologies for not replying back sooner. In regards to various suggestions above:
Yes, I've verified that all my Windows install versions are correct to the letter. Everything is Home-Premium, 64-bit, SP1.

Before Microsoft/Digital River pulled them, I downloaded install media iso's for 32 bit and 64 bit Home-Premium and Professional of both Vista and Win 7 to keep on file for my various repairs. Glad I did since they are now difficult to find.

I'm familiar with SFC and ran it before my initial post (it came up clean).
My new replacement drive is WD/Blue. Before putting any data on it, I initially scanned the drive with WD utility, then my copy of Seagate utility and finally my copy of Spinrite (yea, I'm kind of OCD about error-checking all my new drives). All came back as perfect. I've also ran Chkdsk with /r/f switches a half-dozen different times before initially posting (also comes back as clean).

My solution:
The old drive image was still basically bootable, although some internal Windows functions were flaky (which was my reason for doing the repair-install in the first place). My final solution was to throw in the towel. I restored my basically-bootable image into the new drive and then did the dreaded Windows 10 update on top of the whole mess. Surprisingly, this worked.
Sorry that I got busy doing other drive house-cleaning chores after that and I neglected to get back to this forum until now.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've only posted this one time on this forum, but have referred to it for a long time as a resource and usually find my answers by simple searching. It is one of the most helpful places on the Net for Win 7 issues.

It still bugs the heck out me to not find out what was going on with the old Win 7 install, but as long as the computer is now functional without doing a full reformat/reinstall my niece will be as happy as a clam. In fact, she will probably think I did her a FAVOR by upgrading to Windows 10. Little does she know that I really FAILED to fix her old Windows 7 build.

Layback Bear · 19 Aug 2015

Happy computing to you and your niece.