Sudden problems with Win7. System Restore fails. Attempted many fixes.

[gedman]

I'm a software engineer and have tried valiantly to fix my Win7 problem. I've spent countless hours reading online and trying various fixes, and am totally frustrated with this problem at this point. I hope the gurus here can help!

My setup: Win 7 Home Premium x64; HP Pavilion desktop; 8GB RAM. Fully current with Windows Updates. I've never had any PC or OS problems with this box.

The following problem started suddenly 2 weeks ago:

• The PC won't shut down cleanly. The "Shutting Down" screen displays for ~10 minutes, then Windows restarts instead of shutting down. After logging in again, Windows reports "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" with Problem Event Name = BlueScreen. (See attached image). The PC will shut down quickly/cleanly if I initiate shut down from the login screen (meaning, shut down even before logging into Windows).
• The PC won't recognize my iPhone connected via USB or charge the iPhone via USB.

My attempts (and fails) to resolve the problem, and more clues regarding the problem.:
I tried to do a System Restore to a prior date before the badness occurred. System Restore fails. "System Restore did not complete successfully" and "The creation of a shadow copy has timed out." (See attached image.)

I noticed that my iPhone charges briefly via USB starting from the moment I turn on the PC but stops charging as soon as Windows loads.

I tried to resolve the iPhone problem by doing a full uninstall+reinstall of iTunes (and several associated applications, following instructions from Apple.) Uninstall of each program took 10+ minutes. Seems very odd and may be a further symptom of the general problem with the PC. Reinstall didn't help resolve the iPhone problem.

I did a clean boot and tried System Restore again. No success.

I started services.mfc to ensure that Volume Shadow Copy and Windows Update services were running to try and get System Restore to succeed. The Extended services tab contains just a blank blue block. See pic here. This fix didn't help.

I ran SFC /scannow which reported that it fixed a few things. I rebooted and tried System Restore, but that merely failed again.

I booted into SafeMode and attempted System Restore, but that merely failed again.

In my my many attempts to get System Restore to work, one of them actually succeeded! Once that happened, my problems listed above were all resolved. However, Windows Update ran again and re-installed all the subsequent updates and the problem returned. Trying to get System Restore to return my PC to that date all failed.

I read on this forum about performing a Repair Install. It seems that is not possible, since I don't have the original installation DVD. The machine came from HP with the OS already installed. There is a repair partition provided by HP, but that only provides the ability to run System Restore (dead end) or do a full reinstall - which I want to avoid.

Any guidance or suggestions are GREATLY appreciated. Help!

Gedman

 

[gedman]

An admin moved my post from "General Discussion" to "Back and Restore".

I do not believe that my problem is with Backup and Restore. The inability to run System Restore is merely a symptom of a bigger problem. The main problem is BSOD during shutdown, but there are many more issues described above.

Is there some way to get my post moved back to a more general topic area?

 

[gedman]

I found another problem. Surely related to the iPhone USB problem. My PC will no longer recognize any storage device connected via USB (thumb drives, etc).