Installed windows updates - won't boot now

[Glasspar]

I Installed some optional windows updates, one of which was Logitech, and after the updates were installed and it automatically restarted, I got a DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER so I put the windows CD in, and then as it was loading windows files it Errored out with Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer. Status: 0xc00000e9 This error can be caused by unplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Now, I have tried unplugging everything USB, and even only had 1 DVD drive and 1 SSD plugged in and I still get the error. However, Bios sees both of my DVD drives, my 1TB and my 128gb SSD just fine, and I get into them and see partitions with gparted and everything, so I really doubt there is anything wrong with my drives, especially since this happened IMMEDIATELY after restarting after windows updates?!?! what do I do from here??!

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello, welcome to SF!

Try a system restore: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

See if that solves the problem.

 

[Glasspar]

well I couldn't get windows to boot at all to get into system restore, even from the CD, but I managed to load the CD files on a thumb drive and the windows startup fired right up from the thumb drive so I just reformatted. Seems to be g2g now although I am leery of installing optional windows updates now. Very scared too actually but maybe I should just do them all right now to see if it happens again before I get too far into setting up windows... and if it does I can just reformat from thumb drive again.

 

[Jonathan_King]

That sounds like a good plan; I wish I could tell you why it happened, but I guess the best we can do at this point is hope it doesn't happen again, and go from there.

 

[Glasspar]

Well it messed up again... installed all the optional windows updates (1 failed for some reason, not sure which one or even what most of them do, there was 20 or so not including language packs) and upon restart I got disk boot error, please insert system disk. so I put in windows thumb drive and it gets stuck on setup is starting, so I rebooted and tried to boot from SSD and it gets stuck on starting windows screen. did both ways multiple times. Not sure what to do at this point but I'm thinking I may have to delete the partitions with gparted again and then try reformatting? or maybe I need to re-write the windows file from the disc to the thumdrive. ugh idk what to do

EDIT: I just tried to Repair Computer from windows thumb drive and scanned for system image but it could not find one. maybe I should try and write one to a DVD next time? When I try to go to Install it gets hung up on Setup is Starting... and when I try to boot from SSD it gets stuck on Starting Windows and I've left it gor for so long (15-20mins) that eventually the screen goes completely black and I have to reboot.

EDIT #2, just tried to boot from SSD again, it said windows launch recovery. windows has failed to start etc. might be due to a recent hardware or software change... so I chose Launch windows startup recovery and it starts to load windows files but then it just goes to the blue background with the leafs and a cursor and nothing else

EDIT #3, rebooted, windows launch recovery came up again only instead of choosing Launch Startup Recovery (Recommended) I just selected Start Windows Normally... gets stuck on Starting Windows... ugh. going to take a shower and then try and reformat the drives

 

[mgorman87]

Check out the Ultimate Boot Disk for Windows. It boots off a CD to Windows XP and it includes lots of programs and utlities to diagnose your computer. This requires that you have a copy of Windows XP.

UBCD for Windows

If you don't have a copy of Windows XP, you can give this boot disk a try
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[Jonathan_King]

I'm still not convinced this is a Windows Update problem --although it's possible. If you can't do a system restore, try the format again, and this time don't install any updates. Reboot, use the internet a bit, just don't install updates until you determine the problem is not there.