W7 64bit booting

[AndrewJ]

Gday All

Am at my wits end
Started my W7 64bit this morning and got a black screen with cursor only.
( This sometimes used to happen but i had a blue screen and using ctrl+alt+delete, i could invoke task manager and start explorer.exe that fixed it. Nothing works in this ne black screen mode )
After faffing around a bit, i also got some BootMgr is missing warnings so did some googling. The black screen with cursor gets a few mentions with a few options to fix, so i tried em all.
Anyway, before i did anything, i connected my HDD to a Sata to USB adapter and could read the HDD so saved all the pertinent stuff, then did some more googling.
On booting in F8 i could reset the boot order such that it uses the HDD.
( that fixed the BootMgr error )
This means it now starts OK, i get the initial windows splash screen then the screen goes black and i get a working mouse only.
( even safeload with command prompt gives me a black screen )
I then tried rebooting with my machine with the original disks and can get in to command prompt via the repair option, so tried the
bootrec /FixBoot
bootrec /FixMBR
bootrec /RebuildBcd
and none helped ( they all said they worked )
I also tried bootrec /ScanOS and it says i dont have one
but when i use the GUI repair function it does see my installation and allows me to try and repair it.
I then tried the system restore option off the CD and it says i dont have any restore points.????????
I then went back to the command prompt and swapped from X: drive to c: and it swaps over OK ( ie it sees the C: drive ), but when i do a dir, i get back that it is "system reserved", ie i cant see anything on it

Soooooooo, any other breadcrumbs to follow????

Andrew

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Reboot with the Windows Install disk ( 64 bit version ) and select 'Repair' at the installation splash screen.

Unless you've created a restore point and it is on the HD it is not an option. The Cmd prompt options don't do too well for 64 bit OS.

The other option is to reinstall the OS and allow it to save your data during the rebuild. It will end up in a folder called 'WindowsOld' and you can recover data and sometimes application function if you know how to twiddle with it.

Might pay to do a HDD Diag test first to see how it's holding up. Should be in the BIOS settings.

[AndrewJ]

And as a follow on, it gets more complicated :-)
I didn't pick it up earlier, but the repair utility in the boot disk
did find i had an operating system, but it is now on drive :E????
ie C: is now listed as "system reserved" ( but i cant detect a size )
and :E is where windows is now reported as being.
( I have a secondary backup HDD that is mapped to colon D )

Going into command prompt mode allows me to see that all the data is there, but now i need to know how to turn it back into what it should be.
I can manually get to diskmgmt.msc but cant run it
Anyone hit this before ( ie simple solution )

Andrew

[AndrewJ]

And to make it more fun, i have seen several posts that say when you are in the WinRE ( repair ) mode on the boot disk and get to the command prompt of :X
that the other drives and volumes may be mapped with different letters.
Sooooo, if i use diskpart to kill off the volume name of the 100MB reserved partition, am i really doing it ??????

Andrew
more googling after lunch ( and a red or 2 ) on how to use diskpart

[bojan]

Today is not a day for w'7..
This morning at work I couldn't load my profile... options were to switch user (which I couldn't because I didn't know the admin pass and I was the only user..
I couldn't google because.. I didn't have a comp to do googling.. so I tried couple of things, finally I interrupted the shutdown process (by unplugging the power cable).
Then, I was offered the option to repair system - which helped and I am now in business (which is obvious because I am writing this).

Windows...

[AndrewJ]

Gday Bojan

Glad to see its not just me

Anyway, after doing a bit more reading on the subject,
I have now used diskpart to check my drives in more detail.
( had to remember how dos worked )
What i have found is my primary drive has 2 partitions
and my secondary has 1.
In the repair section from my install disk, i can see all the partitions
and as per before, i noted they are listed as
disk 0
partition 1 "c:" for the 100MB "system reserved"
partition 2 "e:" for the 1TB "rest"
disk 1
partition 1 "d:" secondary backup drive
Windows is installed on the 1TB partition
What i also found when going into detail is
c: is marked as active on disk 0
d: is marked as active on disk 1
Soooo, is this part of the problem?
ie the "system reserved" partition is "active" as it has the BCD.log in it
or should the e: be active as it has the windows OS on it????

Andrew

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Ignore the partition designations in Repair (or WinPE). They are just arbitrary ID's for it to identify them to itself. Work with the Volume numbers.
Try selecting 'e' and making it 'Active' as below
in Diskpart this will be
Sel vol (disk number) without the brackets ie if 'e' is listed as 2

sel vol 2

Then type active to make the Volume active.
Exit the Diskpart function
Exit again to reboot and if that doesn't work try Repair because it should now find the volume having been set as active.

I'd strongly advise you run the DIAG to test your hardware, in particular the HDD.
And be ready to rebuild from scratch

[AndrewJ]

Gday Brent
Have tried most of what you listed, but not making :e active, as everything i have read says the 100MB partition needs to be active.
Will try later but currently, i am copying stuff off pre nuking the 100MB partition and letting it rebuild. At least in that case, all files will be on one drive and it may just play
Gotta save my firefox and thunderbird settings, but after that, most is already backed up.
All good fun (not)

Andrew ( currently remembering how dos xcopy etc works )

[AndrewJ]

And making :E active merely means it wont boot as the system cant find bootmgr. I rebooted and it asked me if i wanted to fix it and said yes.
Rebooted and nada,
Rebooted via repair disk and reset the 100MB partition to active
and back to old problem.
Also ran a full scannow of the e: drive and get no errors.
Will nuke the 100MB partition tomorrow and copy the bootloader stuff into the big drive. Just gotta confirm what directories to use

Andrew
( dos skills getting much better )

[AndrewJ]

Problem solved
Radiation levels are now receding

Andrew
( now doing just over 220 patches / 1.2GB )
at least i could saved my Firefox and Thunderbird setups.

[AndrewJ]

And finally, after freshly rebuilding and loading all the patches ( with no errors reported ), i tried to make an image and got an error.
Ran a third party S.M.A.R.T. analyser and it gave me 8 clusters that were not behaving properly, "but not dead".
One of them was where the old NTUSER.dat was stored :-(
New HDD and reimaged the new load and all is sweet.

Andrew

[ZeroID (Brent)]

HDD starting to fail ,... figures.
Did a BIOS diag not pick that up ? Normally gives some sort of warning.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Brent

Did a BIOS diag not pick that up

Nope.
My Mobo has an intel rapid storage utility and that said everything was healthy.
When i looked in the event logs, i had no disk errors.
I have seen no error reports on booting and going into bios, it happily detected everything without barfing.
When i did a fresh install of W7, it gave no errors
( What i think happened there is on reloading ( seeing it was already formatted ), it simply renamed the directory holding the existing install as Old.windows, and then ignored anything in there when it tested )
It was only when i tried to make an image that it failed and running a full chkdsk found one dud cluster in the old "backed up/renamed" NTUser.dat
Only using the dedicated SMART tester app showed the other "possibly" dodgy clusters. Even there it was only a warning, not a failure.
$64 bucks for a new HDD and its happy.

Andrew