Vista won;t boot or repair

[Guest]

over the last few days Vista has been freezing while doing CPU intensive
tasks (editing HDV in premiere & batch resizing photos in another app),
tonight it froze again, this time it doesn't boot up anymore (tried turning
off for a while too), even with last known good configuration.

on normal boot it has the green scrolling "progress" bar but never goes past
it and no HDD lights coming on.
With last known good config it goes to a black screen, after the green bar
mentioned above) and no HDD lights.

If I boot from DVD and choose repair it searches for an installed version of
Vista (which is in the list), but searches for hours and doesn't stop (again,
no HDD lights come on/flash)

I can boot into my XP partition and the Vista drive is fine, I've also run
chkdsk on it.

If I boot into safe mode it stops with "loaded:
\windows\system32\drivers\crcdisk.sys"
then no more activity

I unplugged all HDD's but my Vista drive, when booting to "repair" on the
DVD, there's no drives in the list, if I search for drivers it can see the
C:\ drive and everything looks like it's in place

25% of the time when booting from the DVD it does the initial loading of
files with the progress bar at the bottom and then stops when it gets to the
end and nothing else happens!

is there anything I can look at on my Vista drive, any files I can check
for/re-copy etc?

anyone got any ideas?

 

[Chad Harris]

Hi Maff--

My understanding is that you tried Startup Repair and iti searches in an
endless loop. You've been thorough in exhausing F8 options, but remember
that there are four safe modes available at F8, and occasionally, one of the
safe mode accesses to system restore can work when the others won't.

Also in my testing of the Win RE environment, and this is anecdotal, not lab
statstical since I don't have the resources MSFT has for deploying this in
hundreds of machines at a time, System Restore from the Recovery link on
your DVD is also a viable option. Sometimes it works when System Restore
from Windows which you have no access to right now, and system restore from
F8's options don't work so I urge you to try it.

One of the safe modes is Safe Mode with Command, so I'm going to supply you
with the command to use from the command prompt for that particular
category.

If you get into any of the other safe modes (4 from F8) and one from Startup
Repair via the Recovery Link from the Vista DVD, you have many ways to hit
system restore, but typing restrui into the run box or restore into the
search box above the start button will work

So you have these to try:

From the Win RE Recovery link on your DVD:

System Restore

From F8 System Restore via:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode VGA
Safe Mode with Command: At the prompt you would type the command to use for
system restore at the safe mode cmd prompt is:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

There is an additional tool that might help you in the Win RE panoply of
tools. Its use is outlined here in this MSKB and that's bootrec.exe:

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to
troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us

I would urge everyone, in the interest of having the maximum ability to
repair Vista, to follow the directions that are linked here from the Win RE
team's blog to load Win RE onto their hard drive, analagous to the way some
of you loaded the Recovery Console onto your hard drive for use in Windows
XP.

Good luck and let us know if any of these or other suggestions help.

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

How to install WinRE on the hard disk

http://blogs.msdn.com/winre/archive/2007/01/12/how-to-install-winre-on-the-hard-disk.aspx

CH

 

[Guest]

cheers, but I couldn't boot in any of the Safe mode options, stops at the
same point every time

anything I can do from within XP?

 

[Chad Harris]

Matt--

Nothing within XP to fix Vista that I know of, however you did not indicate
whether

1) You tried Safe Mode from the Recovery Environment (the same link as
Startup Repair on the DVD

2) You tried the MSKB for the bootrec.exe tool.

CH

 

[Guest]

I didn't know what you meant by RE in your original post, but from the DVD I
can't do anything to repair so not sure what you're saying

I can't use bootrec.exe as I can't get into the "repair your computer" from
the DVD (see original post)

cheers

 

[Chad Harris]

Here's what I said:

Win RE stands for Windows Recovery Environment.

1) You have the ability to choose safe mode from the DVD link. Have you? You
can do a system restore from there.

2) I presented you with an additional tool outlined in this MSKB:

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to
troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us

Have you tried these two yet?

CH