Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery

How to Recover from an Infinitely Looping Startup Repair Loop without Reinstalling Windows​

If you've ever experienced a Startup Repair that continously loops and fails to fix the problem of not being able to load windows, even in safe mode, then you'll know that usually the only way to recover from this when System Restore does not work is to do a clean install of Windows.

Until now.

This tutorial will show you how to use the System Recovery Options provided by Windows to recover your system to a working state so that you don't have to risk losing data by performing a clean install.

   Warning

The instructions presented withing this tutorial must be followed correctly, or you can damage your Windows 7 installation even further. This tutorial is designed to help recover from a bad registry that is causing the startup repair loop. You should note that there may still be some issues remaining that cannot be fixed by manually restoring the registry.

Recovering Your System

1. Boot to the System Recovery Options screen.
   • If Windows automatically opens Startup Repair, and subsequently fails to fix a problem, you can skip ahead to step 4 below.
2. In the System Recovery Options screen, click Startup Repair:
   
   
   
   
3. Windows will search for an attempt to repair startup problems:
   
   
   
   
4. If startup problems could not be repaired, you will receive the message Windows cannot repair this computer automatically. Click View advanced options for system recovery and support:
   
   
   
   
5. Click View advanced options for system recovery and support, which which bring you back to the main System Recovery Options screen.
6. Click Command Prompt:
   
   
   
   
7. Command Prompt should open to X:, which is an internal ram disk use by System Repair:
   
   
   
   
8. Now you need to find your system drive. Depending on how your system is setup, this could be either C: or D:.
   • Type C: and press <ENTER>.
   • Verify that this is your system drive by typing DIR and pressing <ENTER>. If you see the Program Files, Users and Windows folders, then you have found your system drive, and can continue to step 9 below.
   • If the drive is not your system drive, repeat steps I and II above, changing the drive letter to D, E or some other letter until the system drive is located.
     
     
     
9. When you have located your Windows system drive, type CD \windows\system32\config and press <ENTER>:
10. Type DIR and press <ENTER>, and verify that the following files and folders exist in the config folder:
    • RegBack (which is a folder)
    • DEFAULT
    • SAM
    • SECURITY
    • SOFTWARE
    • SYSTEM
      
      
      
11. Type MD mybackup and press <ENTER> to create a backup folder that you can use incase this procedure does not work as expected.
12. Type copy *.* mybackup and press <ENTER>.
    • If you are prompted to overwrite existing files, press A to allow all backups to be overwritten.
      
      
      
13. Now you need to check if you can use the automatic Windows backups to restore your registry:
    • Type CD RegBack and press <ENTER> to go to the RegBack folder.
    • Type DIR and press <ENTER> to view the contents of the folder. All the following files must exist:
      • The DEFAULT, SAM and SECURITY files should each be about 262,000 bytes in size.
      • The SOFTWARE file should be about 26,000,000 bytes.
      • The SYSTEM file should be about 9,900,000 bytes.
      • The file sizes presented here are approximate estimations, and may vary depending on your system. If any one of them are 0 bytes, then you should stop what you're doing now and seek an alternative method of recovering your system, because Windows cannot function with a 0-byte size registry hive.
    • If the hive files listed in RegBack are ok, then proceed to step 14 of the tutorial.
      
      
      
      
14. Type copy *.* .. and press <ENTER> to copy the backup hive files to \Windows\System32\config.
    • If you are prompted to overwrite existing files, press A to allow all file to be overwritten.
      
      
      
15. Type exit and press <ENTER> to close the command prompt.
    
    
    
    
16. Click the Restart button to reboot your computer. If all goes well, your system will boot normally.
    
    
    
    
    

Reference Information
This tutorial was made possible after learning how to manualy replace the Windows 7 Registry Hives after reading the Recovering Windows 7 Registry Hives/Files article on Microsoft Technet.

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Enable or Disable Automatic Repair in Windows 10
• Advanced Boot Options
• System Recovery Options
• System Repair Disc Create
• How to Run a Startup Repair in Windows 7
• Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times to Repair Boot Issues

 

[Spilled OJ]

That's part of the issue. I custom built it for gaming.

 

[ZKhan]

Hey Brink, i Still havent gotten my laptop to work, but i was going through the steps again and when i got to MD Mybackup it says "A subdirectory or file Mybackup already exists" and that was the first time i did that. So how can check if that is the right thing and should i continue with the steps?

 

[Brink]

Zkhan,

Step 11 is to create the MD Mybackup folder. Since it says it's already been created, you could just continue on to step 12 and so on.

 

[ZKhan]

Brink,
The file sizes are not zero but they are very different from what the approximate amount, should i continue

 

[Brink]

Zkhan,

The important part is that they are not zero, so you should be good to go to continue the steps.

 

[ZKhan]

Brink,
It didnt work, i restarted it and it went back to the startup repair

 

[Brink]

You may need to reinstall.

 

[ZKhan]

Hey Brink,
The peppermint 3 backup, if i used my external hard drive would it be fine because i have a lot of things i want to take off of it. Wondering because in the peppermint 3 page it says the usb gets formatted so would that ruin my external hard drive

 

[Brink]

The only thing that would be formatted would be the USB flash drive that you use to create the Peppermint 3 on. Otherwise, you would just be copying and pasting to the external drive.

 

[ZKhan]

So I was thinking of having a usb with the program, and then the external hard drive separate and just move the files there, once again thanks for the help

 

[Brink]

You're welcome. That sounds like a good plan.

 

[captainEO]

This works great, until I get to step 14...

I enter the command "copy *.* .."
And I type "A" to overwrite them all...
BUT it returns "Access Denied" on every file 0.0

I don't understand, what am I supposed to do?

Can anyone help?

 

[RickyTee]

Okay, so I've done all the steps correctly, and like many others have said, had different file sizes but none were 0.
I feel like nobody addressed these problems and it's really aggravating me. I've tried this tutorial 3+ different times and it hasn't worked once.
My life is on that computer. Literally. I edit videos and ALL my videos are on there.
Can anybody get back to me?
It would be very much appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[Brink]

Hello Ricky, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Double check to make sure that you are using the correct drive letter for you Windows drive at step 8. It's not always going to be C at boot.

You don't want the sizes to be 0 as per the note at step 13 in the tutorial.

If any one of them are 0 bytes, then you should stop what you're doing now and seek an alternative method of recovering your system, because Windows cannot function with a 0-byte size registry hive.

Did you continue on with the rest of the steps in the tutorial?


In the worst case, you could use the tutorial below to create a bootable Peppermint 3 DVD/USB to boot from to use to hopefully copy your files from the HDD with to another location.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ate-live-cd-dvd-usb-use-emergency-backup.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[skunky62]

I've done the thirteen steps but I'm not going to step #14 until I get some assurances that I'll not lose all my DATA (Documents, Music, etc.). Can someone give me this assurance, Please?

The OS is Windows 7 64-bit, Dell Inspiron N5010

 

[Brink]

Hello skunky, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You shouldn't lose any data, but I would always recommend to backup anything that you do not want to lose just to be extra safe.

If you cannot backup your data using normal means, then you could use the tutorial below to create a bootable Peppermint 3 DVD/USB to boot from and use to copy your files from the HDD to another location.

Peppermint3 - Create Live CD/DVD/USB To Use For Emergency Backup

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[skunky62]

Thanks for the welcoming, Brink. I was planning to take out the HD, connect it to another PC with both WinXP and Ubuntu Pangolin (two HDs) and copy the files on both HDs. But your Peppermint option seems less complicated. I'll do that one, create USB/DVD. If that doesn't work, then I'll try the bootrec solution.

Our problems started with trying to do a Bluetooth update (Widcomm) from Dell but instead, it messed the Laptop and here we are now.

Anyway, I'll let you know if it was successful or not.

 

[skunky62]

Another thing, Brink: let's say my PC boots fine (after the fix), should I do a System Restore (date before the mess) or will I be compounding the problem with the Restore?

 

[Brink]

If you don't have any more issues afterwards, then I wouldn't mess with doing a system restore.

 

[RickyTee]

Thanks for responding promptly, Shawn!
Yeah, I made sure. It was E: for me.
I did all of it correctly 3 separate times, but it still won't boot up the windows logo at all! /:

And my sizes are different, but none of them are 0.
If I could, I would use a system restore point, but it seems I didn't make any on my laptop. Ugh.