Spyhunter is a program by Enigma Software intended to be a remover for crapware/malware/etc.
Besides whether it works or not for the intended scope, it has been reported in the past to overcharge customers that bought a license for it and to renew subscriptions billing the credit card without authorization.
Additionally, we had a number of reports that in some cases it can effectively make a Windows 7 unbootable.
It is STRONGLY NOT recommended by me.
However if you are reading this most probably you either installed on your system the trial or are a
The symptoms:
You are presented with a screen (white text on black background) with three choices:
None of which when chosen leads to have your system booted.Spyhunter
Windows XP
Windows Vista/7
The screen comes from a now obsolete version of grub4dos grldr, the 0.4.3 2007-10-15, that is renamed to shldr and has the internal embedded menu.lst modified as follows:
Evidently *somehow* the program makes a copy of bootmgr renaming it to bootmgr_ and as long as this works everything works.debug off
default 0
timeout 3
title SpyHunter
find --set-root /sh4ldr/vmlinuz
kernel /sh4ldr/vmlinuz quiet
initrd /sh4ldr/initrd.gz
title Windows XP
find --set-root /ntldr_
chainloader /ntldr_
makeactive
title Windows Vista/7
find --set-root /bootmgr_
chainloader /bootmgr_
makeactive
Several people have reported that the provision does not work.
The solution:
In some cases what does not work is the chainloading of bootmgr_, but there is still a good copy of bootmgr so all it is needed is to press "c" to get to a grub4dos command prompt and issue the commands:
chainloader /bootmgr bootor, at the most:
find --set-root /bootmgr chainloader /bootmgr bootWhat has been increasingly reported is that also chainloading the bootmgr does not work (it is very possible that this happens because of a concurrent different issue, such as malware or similar, no way to know the exact reason).
In these cases there is a way out by chainloading a copy of the bootmgr that is normally present in \Windows\boot\PCAT\, i.e. after having pressed "c" for the prompt issuing the commands:
chainloader /windows/boot/pcat/bootmgr bootor, at the most:
find --set-root /windows/boot/pcat/bootmgr chainloader /windows/boot/pcat/bootmgr bootwill work.
The above will only work if the Windows 7 has been installed on a single partition, i.e. the "system" and "boot" partition are the same volume, typically (hd0,0) in grub4dos notation.
However the "default" install on Windows 7 on a new hard disk/system creates two partitions, a first one ((hd0,0) in grub4dos notation) containing only the bootmgr and the \boot\BCD (which is the active partition in the MBR partition table or "boot" partition, called by MS "system", that normally has not a drive letter assigned) and a second partition ((hd0,1) in grub4dos notation) containing the rest of the operating system (which everyone would call "system", but that the goof MS guys call "boot", that normally has the drive letter C: assigned).
In these case you need to "force" the assignment of the boot partition, otherwise the chainloaded bootmgr will attempt to find the \boot\BCD on the same (hd0,1) partition from which it is booted and fail.
You do this by adding a parameter to the chainloader command --edx=0x0080 which basically overwrites a registry with the appropriate values, in the 0x0080 the 00 means first partition (or the second 0 in (hd0,0)) and the 80 means BIOS disk 0x80 or disk drive 128 decimal, i.e. first disk or (hd0), in a nutshell this set of commands:
find --set-root /windows/boot/pcat/bootmgr chainloader --edx=0x0080 /windows/boot/pcat/bootmgr bootshould manage to boot your system.
A similar situation may arise from other "rogue" or "improper" installs of grub4dos, particularly when the embedded menu.lst has been edited, it seems like some other crappy programs/loaders/whatever can create a similar issue, the good news is that attempting to run the above set of commands won't alter anything on the system, in the worst case it won't boot.
You should thank Tinybit (one of the Authors of grub4dos) for this nice, clean --edx=0x0080 trick and cdob for the finding about the existence of a working copy of bootmgr in \Windows\boot\PCAT\ .
Some past reference on the matter for historical reasons (including a few that were not solved due to OP leaving early the game):
http://reboot.pro/to...d-boot-problem/
http://reboot.pro/to...lp-grub-screen/
http://reboot.pro/to...ror-0xc000000f/
http://reboot.pro/to...file-not-found/
http://reboot.pro/to...ptop-wont-boot/
http://reboot.pro/to...nt-boot-server/
http://reboot.pro/to...ta-not-booting/
Wonko