I have a client's windows 7 pro computer that suddenly stopped getting past the welcome screen. This occurred after the attempted (automatic) installation of a set of windows updates from the 11/14/19. The initial problem was that it just kept looping on windows repair with none of the options able to fix the problem. Since none of the repair steps did anything so I decided to run the restore from image (via Macrium). The drives restored but the computer now hangs at the welcome screen.
I have done the standard boot fixes: Setting the partition active, running rootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /fixboot. This didn't take care of the problem either. When I did bcdboot c:\windows I got a message about failure to copy the boot files.
After that, I tried the aomei partition assistant and used fixmbr but that had some effect and changed the symptoms. Now it gets to the windows 7 options where you can choose safe mode / safe mode with networking / etc. If I try just a safe mode startup, it will run down the program list but freeze at disk.sys and go no further.
My hunch is that the machine was uefi and for some reason, the uefi partition didn't get restored correctly or is missing something. I have used two different images attempting the restore without any change.
Any one have any ideas on how to get this box back up and running?
Thanks in advance for the assist on this one.
Regards,
Bill
You can get a nice Windows PE boot disk/USB stick by downloading Hirens WinPE Here
Or if the computer is like a Dell, or an HP, it may have hardware diagnostics built into the system, and accessed by pressing a special key at startup like F12 for Dell, or Escape for HP, etc.
If the disk doesn't have any physical bad sectors, then we need to attempt to repair the problems with the Windows install that are preventing it to boot correctly.
First of all, if you are getting to the Windows Logon or Welcome Screen then there is most likely nothing wrong with your boot files, and BCD.
By pressing F8 at startup you can enter the "Repair My Computer' link, and start the Recovery Console (RC).
Here are many tools to repair Windows 7.
Start by opening the Command Prompt (CMD). and running:
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.This will scan for and attempt to fix disk and file system errors.
if this finds errors and says it repaired them then try again.
If not booting still then go back to the RC, and open CMD and run:
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Replace C: with the current drive letter for you Windows drive, if its different.When complete try again.
If not booting still, then try booting back to the RC and using System Restore to go back to a previously working registry and system files.
If none of this is effective, then without a valid disk image backup, from Windows Backup or other program, done before the failure, you may be faced with backing up and reloading the computer.
If this happens, one can use Transwiz to make a backup of the whole user profile, including files and settings, save it to a .zip file and then when the computer is rebuilt, can use to restore profile to new load of Windows.
Let us know how you do...