Solved Dell XPS M1530 Startup Repair Loop, Offline SFC does NOT function

[writhziden]

Honestly, I wish Windows 7 had a method to do a repair install in place even if the OS is not running. Unfortunately, it does not. If you re-read my previous post, I've added some possible options to try.

 

[Z92435]

Unfortunately, programs cannot be moved over and work properly due to them needing to be setup properly through the install procedure. You will just have the user files remaining in Windows.old that are still usable; everything else that is kept is not going to help too much unless there were files saved in other areas by your uncle.

Re-reading everything you wrote in the first post, I feel bad that I could not offer a better solution. The only thing I can say is it may be worth trying the Paragon Recovery CD just to see if the claim that it can restore boot problems is true. Do this after you create the clone, of course, in case you need to revert back due to the unforeseen.

As to what initially got the computer into this mess, I learned the hard way just as you are, although it was a little different since it was with my own machine. I now will not do a hard shut down unless I really have no other option. I have literally waited close to an hour for my system to shut down just to avoid what you are experiencing. I had software installed a few months ago that would cause my system to take between 15-53 minutes to shut down on a regular basis (that software has now been removed and I will never touch it again).

Believe me, I know what you are going through on both levels. I have caused problems with my mom's computer trying to fix it before. These things happen, and luckily family forgives us.

Anyway, try the recovery CD after you get the clone made. Then do a re-install with windows.old folders as a last measure.

Writhziden,

Thanks for the post edit and the feeling bad. I know it's not worth much, since my crazy attitude and penchant to whine is set to 11 right now. But, I really do appreciate it. Also, you're absolutely right that Windows 7 should have allowed a repair install over the exist system using the CD. I do NOT know who was the idiot who got that feature out of Vista, but they totally need to dragged out onto Main Street and shot in the head. Just curious, do you think using a registry repair editor would perhaps bring some room to work with? I mean, I totally get that registry cleaners and editors are typically major bad news, but I'm apparently up the creek in Piranha country, and I have steaks tied around my arms and a slow leak in my canoe. So, if I make a few clones, I somehow doubt that I can make the situation worse, given that I can always get back to this point.

Also, don't believe that my uncle will forgive me. This compute belongs to my cousin, who lives with his ex-wife that he's in a custody battle with. Originally, she wanted to get it fixed up so she can use it. God knows that it had problems before, with them somehow activating the Dell HDD Password on it. Getting past that garbage was just... Whew! Regardless, she will chew him a new one, and I will in turn get thrown to the compactor. *sigh*

 

[writhziden]

If you get the system running, you could try getting all the updates set up, putting the program files where they belong, and and then moving registry files from the windows.old folder containing Windows registry files and seeing if it works. I would be surprised if this solution worked as intended, but it is worth a shot. You would have to do the registry file moves from within the recovery environment or from PartedMagic or something of that nature. Windows would not let you do it without changing the permissions, which causes a whole mess of other problem if you change them.

Whatever you do, do not replace any critical system files with the old files or you will likely end up where you are now.

 

[Z92435]

Unfortunately, programs cannot be moved over and work properly due to them needing to be setup properly through the install procedure. You will just have the user files remaining in Windows.old that are still usable; everything else that is kept is not going to help too much unless there were files saved in other areas by your uncle.

Re-reading everything you wrote in the first post, I feel bad that I could not offer a better solution. The only thing I can say is it may be worth trying the Paragon Recovery CD just to see if the claim that it can restore boot problems is true. Do this after you create the clone, of course, in case you need to revert back due to the unforeseen.

As to what initially got the computer into this mess, I learned the hard way just as you are, although it was a little different since it was with my own machine. I now will not do a hard shut down unless I really have no other option. I have literally waited close to an hour for my system to shut down just to avoid what you are experiencing. I had software installed a few months ago that would cause my system to take between 15-53 minutes to shut down on a regular basis (that software has now been removed and I will never touch it again).

Believe me, I know what you are going through on both levels. I have caused problems with my mom's computer trying to fix it before. These things happen, and luckily family forgives us.

Anyway, try the recovery CD after you get the clone made. Then do a re-install with windows.old folders as a last measure.

Sorry about this, but just wondering, do you know how to check disk usage using just CMD commands? The clone I made is only 75.4GB, but I thought that the original HD had closer to 100GB. I just wanted to check that out before I do anything.

 

[writhziden]

Taken from: Find free disk space from command line? - CNET Windows XP Forums

fsutil volume diskfree C:
by tdenovan - 2/3/09 4:53 AM
In Reply to: Find free disk space from command line? by engineer331

My apologies for bringing this post back from the dead, but it does display in the top 3 in many google searches:

the solution:

fsutil volume diskfree C:

which returns something like:

Total # of free bytes : 230645665792
Total # of bytes : 266205130752
Total # of avail free bytes : 230645665792

 

[Z92435]

Taken from: Find free disk space from command line? - CNET Windows XP Forums

fsutil volume diskfree C:
by tdenovan - 2/3/09 4:53 AM
In Reply to: Find free disk space from command line? by engineer331

My apologies for bringing this post back from the dead, but it does display in the top 3 in many google searches:

the solution:

fsutil volume diskfree C:

which returns something like:

Total # of free bytes : 230645665792
Total # of bytes : 266205130752
Total # of avail free bytes : 230645665792

Okay. Just found out something new. Apparently, both FSUtil and Defrag doesn't work from the CMD, if you're logged in via the Installation CD or WindowsRE. Lord. What's the point of having the CMD there, if none the commands worked?! =p

Bill, WTF is wrong with your people's designs?

I'll try to see if I can get something going with Paragon's thing. Maybe I can use it to adjust the partition on the Terabyte drive I've got, since when I cloned it using Acronis True Image, it took out all my partitions. Maybe I can set up another partition so that I can make yet another clone, just in case.

Just curious, what are the critical system files that you're referring to, and which are the items that I can put back, without breaking things? Just so I know what not to touch....

 

[writhziden]

Basically, the only things you should be touching in the Windows directory are the registry files. Those can be found as outlined in the tutorial for http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139576-startup-repair-infinite-loop-recovery.html.

 

[Z92435]

If you get the system running, you could try getting all the updates set up, putting the program files where they belong, and and then moving registry files from the windows.old folder containing Windows registry files and seeing if it works. I would be surprised if this solution worked as intended, but it is worth a shot. You would have to do the registry file moves from within the recovery environment or from PartedMagic or something of that nature. Windows would not let you do it without changing the permissions, which causes a whole mess of other problem if you change them.

Whatever you do, do not replace any critical system files with the old files or you will likely end up where you are now.

Hmmm! Color me purple and call me Laquifa! It appears that this might be a hardware rather than a software problem. I just ran Disk Health on PartedMagic's Disk that you referred, and it quite after 10% because it encountered an error. I wonder if I can just clone this onto another Hard Drive and have it be working. I'll be praising Jesus, Buddha, and the Spaghetti monster if this IS a hard drive failure.

I wonder if there's a way for me to premanently wall off the damaged the section and reuse that hard drive, if this is the case?

 

[writhziden]

Hard disk failure cannot be repaired by walling off bad sectors. There are many who claim this, but I have never seen it successfully done for more than a temporary fix to recover lost data. You are much better off doing the clone to a good drive and seeing if it works.

 

[Z92435]

Hard disk failure cannot be repaired by walling off bad sectors. There are many who claim this, but I have never seen it successfully done for more than a temporary fix to recover lost data. You are much better off doing the clone to a good drive and seeing if it works.

Oh, no. I know that for an active hard drive, that'd never work worth a damn. But, I'm not planning on giving the hard drive back to my uncle. So far, the only other drive I found around the house is the old 80GB one that I had from my Macbook that I'm no longer using. I mainly just keep some original files on there as a sort of "last resort" back up. I was just wondering if I can copy my files onto the 250GB drive I'm going to be removing from the Dell, put my emergency files on, then leave it sitting in a closet. Of course, I'd have to make sure that none of the 911 files go on the bad sector, which shouldn't be hard given how much extra room there are. What do you think?

 

[writhziden]

I wouldn't recommend it... In the end, it is up to you whether you want to take the risk. I'd say the chances are probably less than 50/50 that you will maintain your data. If you are not too worried about losing the data, that would be a fine solution, but if there is important data that you would be upset to lose, I would highly suggest finding another alternative. Borrowing a drive from a friend may be a better method. I'm sure you have a friend with a backup drive that wouldn't mind putting a folder on for you.

 

[Z92435]

I wouldn't recommend it... In the end, it is up to you whether you want to take the risk. I'd say the chances are probably less than 50/50 that you will maintain your data. If you are not too worried about losing the data, that would be a fine solution, but if there is important data that you would be upset to lose, I would highly suggest finding another alternative. Borrowing a drive from a friend may be a better method. I'm sure you have a friend with a backup drive that wouldn't mind putting a folder on for you.

Meh. I'm not yet done with the great clone exodus yet, since it took FOREVER for Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac OS X Cloning Software) to get the information off of my drive and make it into an image. God knows why the hell I saved that image, since it is just the native OS X image that Apple plopped down in my Macbook anyway (As soon as I got my Macbook, I cloned the Apple software into a bigger drive and put it into service.). Regardless, now I'm running disk clean up as well as defragmenting the hell out of the WD Scorpio Blue that was in the Dell XPS M1530, since Acronis actually is refusing to clone it over right now because it only barely fits. Here's hoping that after some shuffling around, I can free up some space to make it do it.

I do have good news though, which is that it does appear the Scorpio Blue is still barely under WD limited warranty under May 2012. Thus, I'm thinking that I can RMA the item for having what appears to be small, but critical bad sectors in thd drive. Yay for saving money! I'll try to pop by in here tomorrow morning to update on exactly how the problem is going and whether or not I've finally resolved it. Hopefully, WD will get their miserable website back online by then, so I can file my warranty return also.

 

[writhziden]

Look forward to the post back. Best of luck!

 

[Z92435]

Look forward to the post back. Best of luck!

Well, after a night full of cloning experiments that makes me feel like Dr. Franknfurter when he's a not-so-sweet cross-dressing fool in a nightie, I was surprised to find that the errors remained in the system even after being cloned over to a new hard drive, which may possibly point to there being two problems: First being that there may or may not really be a hard drive bad sector issue, and the other being that my system folders may well be corrupted to hell, perhaps as the result of Startup Repair trying to recover data from bad sectors but not succeeding.

Regardless, I did find some more information which may possible be helpful. The first being that I remembered that when I last ran Spybot-S&D, it has just had an update, which led to the creation of a registry back up by Spybot, in the event that it hosed my regs, which is stored as regLocal.reg and regUsers.reg, and they cover the registry keys for the Local Machine and Users, respectively. According to most people over on the Spybot forums, while it is a weird method to restore it, it is apparently possible to double click these files, have Windows take over and just insert them into your registry file. However, I'm currently not sure exactly how this should be accomplished via the command prompt that I can access from WindowsRE. Do you know of any way to help? My current thought process is that, being that these backups were made incredibly recently prior to the crash, they should be mostly, if not all, good and current. Thus, even if my regback folder had been corrupted, if the error lies in either one of these, I can get it resolved that way.

Conversely, my other train of thought is, now that I've got two identical cloned disks, assuming that the error isn't with the registry, since even the possibly corrupted regback restore led to some improvement, is there a way that I can do a install over one of them, then simply use either the command prompt or installation disk to copy over just the system files to the other? In essence, making one of them into an organ donor for the other? If need be, I can possibly start with just one folder (e.g. Drivers, maybe?), then move my way down the line. Would that work at all? After all, isn't that what a repair install does, to just replace the system files, but not others? I know this is one hell of a suggestion, but maybe I can do it manually from the clone donor?

Just as a starting point, is there a way one can get a hold of the logs generated when Windows boots up in Safe Mode? If so, I can possibly check out exactly what needs to be replaced, since when I try to boot in any of the Safe Modes, the list of files and drivers does load, it just hits a wall suddenly somewhere down the line. If we can see that log, we can possibly know where to start.

 

[writhziden]

I do not know if this will work, but if they are .reg files, you could try using regedit.exe from the System32 folder and typing regedit.exe /s "path to file" (and yes, keep the path in quotes). This will work, I just tested it with my Windows installation DVD.

Also, installing Windows on the same machine, getting everything working, and not installing any software but the device drivers for the system should allow you to copy everything over cleanly to the old installation and fix Windows files. I am not guaranteeing this since I have never tried it, and I do not want to try it now as that would be a couple hours out of my day to test, but it seems like a valid hypothesis that may turn into a working theory.

 

[Z92435]

I do not know if this will work, but if they are .reg files, you could try using regedit.exe from the System32 folder and typing regedit.exe /s "path to file" (and yes, keep the path in quotes). You may have to use regedt32.exe; I'm not sure. I'll have to test it out myself through my installation disc by rebooting my computer.

Let us know if this works. I am trying to find any other possible solutions as well.

If I didn't express my gratitude yesterday, please do know now that I really do appreciate all your help in this, whether we succeed or not. Regardless, I'm getting the feeling that we're playing with the big boys now, and if one of these crazy notions of mine works, I think we might need to co-author an article on having just one more step to try before doing the re-install.

In any case, I'm currently making an image of the bad drive using this method and UBCD that you recommended yesterday, so that I can go ahead and use up both HDs, as long as it nets me with at least one that's fully recovered, all with a safety net. Regarding the log, I have not yet had a chance to dig it out, but according to my google-fu, what I'm looking for is the ntbtlog.txt that's supposed to be generated when Safe Mode is attempted, right? I'm under the impression that I can use the "load driver" option of an installation disk to copy and paste it onto a flash drive or something to view.

Currently, my thought immediately after the imaging process is done is that maybe I should check out the ntbtlog.txt file, and save a copy or two of both the Spybot reg backups, as well as my regular reg, regback, and backup regback folders (Because I already tried the Loop trick, remember?), which would render me safer, just in case this ends up with velociraptor badness. Also, I just read about pulling a minidump out of the machine. Am I able to do that without being able to fully boot up? If so, I think that'd give us more information in working with exactly what part of the boot process goes guano insane.

I'm going to grab some lunch, while waiting for the chkdsk and image making process I've got going to be done. Then, I'll check back on any thoughts or leads you've got. Once again, thanks for everything, bud. I totally owe you a fish taco if I'm ever in Colorado. =)

 

[writhziden]

Sounds good. You should also note that I edited my last post with some more information regarding getting things back up and running. You are welcome to sort through the ntbtlog.txt file and let us know any of the info it spit out to see if we can try to make sense of it if you have any trouble doing so.

The minidump folder can be found in the Windows directory. If you can get it off the drive, we have a lot of experience analyzing the .dmp files it contains that Windows generates. It won't provide us all possible useful information, but it does comprise 90% of the information we use to track down problems like these.

 

[Z92435]

I do not know if this will work, but if they are .reg files, you could try using regedit.exe from the System32 folder and typing regedit.exe /s "path to file" (and yes, keep the path in quotes). This will work, I just tested it with my Windows installation DVD.

Also, installing Windows on the same machine, getting everything working, and not installing any software but the device drivers for the system should allow you to copy everything over cleanly to the old installation and fix Windows files. I am not guaranteeing this since I have never tried it, and I do not want to try it now as that would be a couple hours out of my day to test, but it seems like a valid hypothesis that may turn into a working theory.

Writhziden,

I wouldn't think that that you nor anyone else would have a couple of hours around and an extra computer whose contents you don't care about to try this, just in case it is a velociraptor badness territory. However, with my situation, I think we can both admit that it is already just a drop of bad away from being a Santorum-Palin ticket here. Thus, if you don't mind putting up with my stupid questions, I'll go ahead and try it. After all, I have very little to lose, unless one of the hard drives truly dies, which I somehow doubt (or hope won't) will happen. However, as I've mentioned in the first post, I consider myself to be an advanced user, not a technician nor a guru. Thus, I would like to have your help in letting me know which files you think we can replace step by step, and which ones I really should not touch, much like the drawers of a nun.

As I tried to imply in my previous post, my self generated process will be to just re-install one of the hard drives with windows after all the backing up and such are done, then copy over the "drivers" folder from the "Windows32" folder in C:\. However, I'll be honest that I'm not familiar with this enough to know if that will copy over everything, if I just do the copy and paste trick using the "load drivers" option with the cd. In addition, can you please take me through how to launch regedit from the command prompt using installation disk? I seem to recall trying it once and getting told by cmd that it's not a recognized command. But, as hazy as that memory is, it could be wrong.

 

[Z92435]

Sounds good. You should also note that I edited my last post with some more information regarding getting things back up and running. You are welcome to sort through the ntbtlog.txt file and let us know any of the info it spit out to see if we can try to make sense of it if you have any trouble doing so.

The minidump folder can be found in the Windows directory. If you can get it off the drive, we have a lot of experience analyzing the .dmp files it contains that Windows generates. It won't provide us all possible useful information, but it does comprise 90% of the information we use to track down problems like these.

Okay, stupid question #1: Can you tell me how to make sure a minidump is generated whenever the boot attempt doesn't work? The post I found on the forum requires one to go through the "Start" menu, which is worthless to me, because I can't get into Windows, as you know. I can get into F8 now, as well as command prompt, so can I enable it through these channels? additionally, even if I can get it generated, can I simply do the "load driver" copy-and-paste method to get that folder onto a flash drive? If not, you're going to have to tell me a way.

I'll try to get the ntbtlog.txt and minidump uploaded as soon as the chkdsk is done, which will be in just a minute.

 

[writhziden]

So to do it via the installation disc, what I did was started it like I was going to install. I immediately hit Shift+F10 once it loaded. Then I typed

regedit.exe /s "C:\users\mike\documents\test.reg"​

but there was no confirmation as to whether it did anything. I assumed it worked because there was also no error message. However, just to be sure, I then typed the command

regedit.exe "C:\users\mike\documents\test.reg"​

and it said running could possibly change the system setup (or something to that effect) and to only select yes to continue if I trusted the source. So I would say this was a successful test run for what you are trying to do.

As to how to replace the Windows file, I would do it via the installation disc as with the .reg file. Start the command prompt with Shift + F10 when the install disc loads. Then run the command

robocopy /s /r:5 /w:0 /xj C:\Windows D:\Windows​

I am assuming you are copying from the current system drive (assumed as C: ) to the secondary system drive (assumed as D: ). I do not know how familiar you are with the robocopy command, but I find it does the best job of replacing system files. As I said, if you do not install any programs and only install device drivers and possibly Windows Updates (though the more I think about it, the more I think this may be a bad idea unless you know the exact state of the updates when the machine went kaput), the Windows directory should be clean enough to do the above steps.

I am thinking the Windows updates may be an issue with the transplant scenario... If you know the exact state of the updates, that would go a long way to making this work.

Okay, stupid question #1: Can you tell me how to make sure a minidump is generated whenever the boot attempt doesn't work? The post I found on the forum requires one to go through the "Start" menu, which is worthless to me, because I can't get into Windows, as you know. I can get into F8 now, as well as command prompt, so can I enable it through these channels? additionally, even if I can get it generated, can I simply do the "load driver" copy-and-paste method to get that folder onto a flash drive? If not, you're going to have to tell me a way.

I'll try to get the ntbtlog.txt and minidump uploaded as soon as the chkdsk is done, which will be in just a minute.

Not a stupid question. If there is no minidump folder in the Windows directory, then you need to configure them to be created. You can enable them through the registry using the command prompt and following the steps in How to configure system failure and recovery options in Windows