Solved Reinstall Windows 7 from Safe Mode - NO HARDWARE IS BAD

[spthomas]

My computer failed trying to do updates. It then says "Update Failed, Reverting Changes. Do Not Turn Off Computer". And there it hangs forever.

I have tried EVERYTHING. And nothing works. I can, however, get to Safe Mode.

From Safe Mode, I ran Chkdsk (ran to completion in 3 hours, no disk problems), Tried all the utilities, nothing has worked.

I did check Device Manager, and no devices report errors.

The only hint I got was from the Recovery Console, when I ran Fix Computer, it failed on "If you have a device plugged in such as a music player or ..., take it out and restart". I had originally had a bluetooth adapter plugged in, so I removed it the very first time I tried to fix this 4 days ago. Over 20 reboots later, it's still saying that. But there is NO hardware plugged into the computer. I even went to Safe Mode, plugged it in, then when it showed the BlueTooth radio in the Device Manager (which only shows when I plug one in), I deleted it from device manager, and took the adapter back out. Still no go.

All this is to say (1) there is nothing plugged in, and (2) device manager is not showing any devices with errors, I looked at them all.

So I can't get to normal Boot, and I can't reinstall Windows 7 from Safe Mode without doing a complete wipe.

Is there a way to reload just the OS for Windows 7 in Safe Mode by doing an update rather than a total wipe? I saw the tutorial but it talks about removing hardware, and I don't have any offending hardware or devices.

 

[mohavepc]

spthomas:
Welcome to Seven Forums.
I would suggest booting into safe mode, opening msconfig and try a clean boot. If it boots then you can either do a repair install or try enabling services and startups one to a few at a time to find the offending issue.

 

[spthomas]

Yeah, i did that. It didn't work either. I also tried "Last Known Good Configuration". Didn't work.

 

[SIW2]

Do you have installation media/repair cd?

You could try a couple of things, like from cmd prompt

cd /d <drive letter of Windows installation>:

(press enter)

DISM /image:<drive letter of Windows installation>:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions.

(press enter)

 

[spthomas]

I ran DISM as shown from the D: drive image (i dont understand that, since its on C: drkve when I boot normally but in recovery mode its D. DISM ran to a good end successfully. But when I rebooted it still stuck trying to revert changes like it has all along.

 

[gregrocker]

Did you try http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html from http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html?

Otherwise check against this list to make sure you know for sure you tried everything: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219533-troubleshooting-windows-7-failure-boot.html

If so then burn the installer ISO file provided to disk or stick with the tools from Steps 1 and 2 of http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164, following those steps to prepare and do a perfect install.