startup repair infinite loop after BIOS update, recovery not working

[Kieran28]

Hello,
I recently attempted to update my BIOS (Gigabyte F8 to F10) so that I could upgrade my CPU from a sandy bridge to an ivy bridge. I did not do the cpu upgrade, yet, just the BIOS flash. The flash, using Gigabyte's q-flash) went fine, according to the flash results screen. I then rebooted, and the computer when into the Startup Repair Infinite Loop; it goes through POST, and then says "Windows is Starting" and the animated Windows logo (where the four colored window panes fly at you and then pulse/glow while the OS loads) begins, but then freezes just a moment after it starts. The system then goes into the repair loop.

The first thing I did was to re-flash back to F8. That did nothing though. But just FYI, my BIOS is back at F8.

I have tried the recovery method from the tutorials section, but I'm stuck and posting in that thread has not yielded any replies. So, I'm posting here.
Before I even get to the editing of the registry, I'm stuck in that a "DIR" command on my c-drive shows "File Not Found." Not sure what to do from here.
Thanks for any tips, advice, explanations, etc.!!
Kieran

 

[gregrocker]

Confirm the Partition Marked Active is 100mb System Reserved (if you have it) or Win7 partition (if you don't).

Then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times until Win7 starts.

If this fails boot into System Recovery Options to System Restore backward until you find a working configuration.

 

[Kieran28]

Greg, thanks I will try that tonight. FYI, I forgot to mention that I did try to restore back a few versions to before the bios update.

 

[Kieran28]

Hi Greg,
Well, I tried all three of your suggestions, with no luck so far. I rolled back to a previous configuration using system restore, all the way back to the earliest listed configuration. I then re-ran the 3x startup repair, making sure the correct (100MB system reserved) partition was active and no other partition was active.
No dice.
Any other suggestions? I'd be happy to do a full clean re-install of Win7, if I could just get a look at my c-drive and grab a few files that weren't backed up recently... But I can't even seem to view/browse the c-drive.
Thanks again,
Kieran

 

[gregrocker]

Did you try to Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console?

 

[Kieran28]

I didn't know about that. I'll try it later today.
Thanks.