6 replies to this topic

[doveman]

So my brother received the new PC I built for him safely, booted it up and I connected via TeamViewer and showed him his way around.

 

Then, in the process of unplugging his printer from the USB port on the back, he somehow managed to knock the power lead, killing the power!

 

Since then, he's been unable to boot into Windows, just getting a BSOD every time after the "Windows failed to shutdown properly" and selecting "Boot normally". Strangely, the only other option on this screen is Repair Windows, no Safe mode or Last Known Good Config.

 

Luckily I've got a Win7 x32 VHD on there (Portable version) which he can boot into. I got him to remove the Nebula tuner PCI card, as that had caused some issues before but I thought I'd sorted them and it was working fine before I sent it to him and then I used the VHD to load the Win7 x64 Hive and set the two Nebula drivers to Start=4 to disable them. Still BSOD.

 

I also used BootIce to add another entry to the Windows boot menu, Win7 (Safe), set in BootICE to Safe mode, but selecting this just gave him a BSOD as well. However, it did at least produce the Safe Mode, Last Known Good Config, etc options but Safe Mode with Networking and Last Known Good both BSOD.

 

He managed to boot it with Safe Mode (without networking) but obviously that doesn't allow me to connect via TeamViewer to sort anything out. When he booted into Safe Mode (without networking) it said it was reverting some updates. It had installed about 7 Windows Updates some time before the power got cut but hadn't had a chance to reboot, so they may have not been installed fully and maybe that's why it reverted them, I'm not sure.

 

I've got a EaseUS ToDo Backup System Image that he could revert to (I added the Boot disk to the grub4dos menu) but that's the nuclear option as I think I made a few changes since making that and it will be tricky to talk him through using that, and I won't be able to connect to his machine to do it for him, so I'd rather try and fix the problem if at all possible, so if anyone can help, I'd be very grateful.

 

There's some issues with the VHD as well but that's a separate issue, so I've made another thread about that.

http://reboot.pro/to...ant-write-to-c/

[doveman]

Tried some more things:

 

1. Selected Startup Repair instead of Boot Normally (by accident, my brother was too slow to change it, before then it had defaulted to Boot Normally every time anyway, so it took him by surprise). Anyway, I didn't want to interrupt it if it was doing something, so we let it run but although it said it had identified some problems and was fixing them, after about 10mins it said it had failed and showed

 

Startup Repair offline
Problem Signature 01 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02 6.1.7600.16385
03 Unknown
04 118
05 Auto failover
06 1
07 0x7e
 

2. Booted into Safe Mode (without networking) again and uninstalled KB2859537 as this article suggests it can cause BSOD on boot http://news.softpedi...-7-375659.shtml I'm not sure this was one of the updates that was applied today before it started BSOD, as that article's dated 13 August so I think I'd probably already installed that and it hadn't caused any problems but it seemed worth a shot. It didn't help though.

 

3. Did a clean boot as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135 but that still resulted in the BSOD.

 

4. Booted into that mode again, went into Device Manager and disabled the onboard Qualcomm Atheros NIC (as it boots in Safe Mode but not in Safe Mode with Networking it seemed worth trying) but that still BSOD as well.

 

Every time it boots into Safe Mode (without networking), it says "Failed to configure Windows Updates. Reverting" and the first time after uninstalling that update, it said it had to reboot and did so automatically. After that, it still shows that each time but then continues to the desktop. It said that the first time we booted in this mode earlier today as well, before I tried uninstalling that update but without forcing a reboot.

[doveman]

As a temporary measure while I work out the best way to fix his proper install, I used VHD_W7C_78 and WinNTSetup to install Win7 x64 into a VHD, using the Win7 x32 VHD Portable that's working to create the VHD.

 

This seemed to work fine (I had to manually create a BCD entry with BootICE to point to the VHD as the one WinNTSetup created pointed to the VHD drive G: which obviously wouldn't be accessible after rebooting). I got him to try the WinNT created entry anyway just to check (labelled Method 1) but as expected, that didn't work, so then he restarted and rather strangely, Method one had disappeared from the Boot Menu but anyway, we then used Method2 (the one I'd created with BootICE) and that booted fine.

 

I then had to talk him through installing the Atheros NIC driver and he had Internet access, so was able to launch TeamViewer and let me connect.

 

The drive letters were mixed up so I went to swap D: and E: but I got "Parameter is incorrect" trying to change D: to F: I reckoned this was probably because the pagefile was on D:, so I disabled the pagefile.

 

After rebooting to clear the pagefile so I could swap the letters, now on Selecting Method 2, it goes to Startup Repair every time and says it's failed!

 

Any ideas how to get that booting again?

 

EDIT: Hmm, checking with BootICE, it seems it's somehow wiped half the settings for that entry and Boot Disk and Partition are blank, so it's not surprising it's not booting! Hopefully setting those back should fix that problem. Actually, I need to delete the entry and recreate it, as it no longer lets me set the VHD path.

[doveman]

Phew, got his normal install working again after setting the RTKVHD64.sys realtek audio driver to Start=4. I've uninstalled the Realtek software for now and it's just using the default Windows 2010 driver and have made a fresh System backup, so I'll install the driver in a few days.

 

It had v6.0.1.6923 installed with a date from May when strangely the Realtek website version is dated April, so I'll download and install that. The one on the motherboard website is dated March 2011, so I'm not sure where the May one came from but it was working before I shipped the PC to my brother, so maybe the file just got corrupted when he accidentally cut the power.

[doveman]

There is one strange thing though, it's deleted the Win7 x64 VHD entry I just added to the Boot Menu with BootICE completely now, which is rather annoying and worrying. I guess I'll have to try adding it back with EasyBCD and see if that sticks around.

[ktp]

You should use the latest version of BootICE (version 1.1.5) which fixes several problems, among them VHD add (refer to changelog):

http://bbs.ipauly.co...pic.php?f=2&t=2

[doveman]

Thanks, I'll try that.