Vista Boot woes + REcovery disc confusion

BrickBoxer said:
Oh, hehe, my mistake I thought it was sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ OR /offwindir=c:\windows\

the /offwindir threw me off. I'm used to seeing \ instead of /
Click to expand...
Most CLI programs use / instead of \ for arguments, because \ indicates an escape character, and so you would have to pass \\ to get a backwards slash in there.
At least that's how it is in C++. I don't know about other languages.
 
Hmm, interesting note; last night, I restarted my computer, took out the ubuntu disc, was curious to see if it would load. I think the last time it was giving me trouble I had scheduled a scan at start up or something. Anyways, after the loading green bar at the Microsoft corporate logo, it was a pure black screen with white text running a scan. (I can never remember if this is sfc or chkdsk) Either way, curious, I let it run through the night. Upon waking up, I noticed a bsod that may be the a cause of the troubles. It said:

STOP: c0000218 {REgistry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SECURITY
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

Is that helpful? Anyways, I'm wondering if this changes up anything or should I just proceed with Justin's steps in post #15? THanks for the understanding and patience guys.
 
BrickBoxer said:
Hmm, interesting note; last night, I restarted my computer, took out the ubuntu disc, was curious to see if it would load. I think the last time it was giving me trouble I had scheduled a scan at start up or something. Anyways, after the loading green bar at the Microsoft corporate logo, it was a pure black screen with white text running a scan. (I can never remember if this is sfc or chkdsk) Either way, curious, I let it run through the night. Upon waking up, I noticed a bsod that may be the a cause of the troubles. It said:

STOP: c0000218 {REgistry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
\SystemRoot\System32\Config\SECURITY
or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

Is that helpful? Anyways, I'm wondering if this changes up anything or should I just proceed with Justin's steps in post #15? THanks for the understanding and patience guys.
Click to expand...
Please proceed with Justin's steps. It is obvious that there are system files in the OS deeper than the boot that are corrupted. sfc should find them and replace them.
 
hmm, typing in sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows\
just brings back the menu that states:
"Scans the integrity of all protected system files and replaces incorrect version
s with
correct Microsoft versions."

Then it lists the [/scannow] , [/verifyonly] etc options in brackets. Am I forgetting something? Oddly my old issue with my os not being listed in the previous recovery menu has been resolved (I don't think D and C are switched still)

After cancelling the command prompt and going to system restore it says "No restore points have been created on your computer's system disk. To create a restore point open System Protection"
 
Terribly sorry for the double post, but my PC seems to be working again strangely. Here's what happened:
So after my above attempt. I decided to try and take out the disc, do an advanced boot (with F8 at start up) and chose safemode with command prompt. I then did sfc /scannow. This completed and correctly verified my PC volume (I'm not sure if this is the correct terminology) I then chose to do chkdsk /f, it said I needed a restart, so I did so, and I left for a bit. When I Came back my PC was doing a reboot and things seemed to be normal. After waiting for a bit and seeing if my PC would be stable, I decided to run an AVG scan. After it completed, I hooked up the internet, received updates. So far all seems well. What would you guys recommend I do next? Update drivers? Download everything from Windows update? Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it. It finally feels like the nightmare is over. :smile:


Edit: Arrrrgh, no no no! So everything was fine, I went to take a shower and upon returning I have a BSOD

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR

***STOP: 0x0000007A (0xc0604000, 0x000000E, 0x5FBAD880, 0xc0800000)
Collecting data for crash dump...
Initializing disk for crash dump...

Any ideas? :frowning:
 
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Thanks for the reply, I'll be sure to check that link out. I've been away for a few days, but strangely, after trying some combo of the chkdsk, and sfc type of commands my computer has been running incredibly more stable.

I'd consider it fixed if not for occasional bsods or nonresponsiveness in the mornings. At times, things will be fine, I'll leave my computer on during the night for an AVG virus scan, but upon waking up in the morning and turning on the monitor, the computer does not respond. The loading light on the tower (an orange light) is solid. Absolutely no blinking. After waiting a while, I decide to do a hard shut down and start up. Mostly things are fine, though today I was having a bit of trouble with sluggish performance which would end up with BSODs. I tried to find out what was causing the massive slow down by opening taskmanager, but nothing helpful was found there. I later opened Administrative tools ---> Reliability and Performance monitor. The "disk" section often was maxed out with a 100% Highest Active Time, though looking at the files listed, I couldn't understand what I should be looking for as the source hog. Shutting off for an hour then powering on has resulted in a stable performance.

One thing of note is that enabling boot logging showed these results, I'm not sure if they help:

Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys

I hope all this is relevant, my apologies if I'm just drowning you all in useless information.
 
Using AVG? Well that might explain why you're getting the BSODs. I'd recommend MSE instead for free anti-virus/spyware protection.
 
AVG can lead to BSODs? Really? Well, today things looked stable; after a night off, like usual it ran great, but only towards the night [about an hour before the time of this post] did it begin to lag. I'm getting to my wits end. Is there some sort of recommended diagnostic progratm I can get at a site like majorgeeks or something? I know now my harddrive isn't at fault given the ubuntu sessions, but is there something I can get to look at my PC's inner workings? I tried something called bluescreen view, but just my luck, all the BSODs don't leave mini dumps even though I've set things up so that they should. The only one on record in from December 2009. :frowning:
 
AVG installs some potentially unstable drivers. I've had a system where it was so bad I had trouble removing AVG.
 
Hey guys, thanks for all your help, unfortunately, my harddrive eventually died and I replaced it. I was able to back stuff up a bit ago so things worked out in the end.
 
Yeah, that was kind of apparent from all the dire chkdsk warnings. Glad you had a backup though - that's super important :smile:
 
Glad I reminded you to backup while you had the chance. Hopefully this experience well encourage many backups in the future :smile:
 
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