Can't boot into Windows 7

[Col]

I'm currently using a Ubuntu live CD that I had lying around to post this.

I was in Safe Mode a few minutes ago to prevent anything from interrupting the defragmentation of my registry and hard drive. After restarting, a blue screen appears and Windows doesn't boot, not even into Safe Mode.

I tried "Repair Your Computer" from the Windows Startup menu. The Startup Repair Wizard tells me that the system cannot be repaired automatically and offers to let me use System Restore to restore the computer back to a previous time. System Restore however, will not restore my system drive because System Protection is apparently not turned on, which is complete bulls because otherwise System Restore wouldn't be backing up everything every month.

So I can't get in to Windows to enable System Protection, System Restore won't restore, auto-repair won't auto-repair and Last Known Good Configuration doesn't seem to do anything.

I haven't yet tried Safe Mode With Command Prompt, but I highly doubt that will work. Doing that used to boot you into just the command prompt, but in Win7 you're booted to a blank desktop with a command prompt window in it.

How can I get Windows booting again without a reinstall? I have discs for older version of Windows, so if I can use the command prompt or recovery console from Windows Vista, Windows XP or Windows 7 to fix the problem, that'd be good.

Any ideas?

0x000000F4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xFFFFFA8005C27920, 0xFFFFFA8005C27C00, 0xFFFFF80002F99240)

Windows 7 Home Premium x64
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4
BIOS version F10a (beta)

[El Wayneo]

When did it last do windows update?

It might be a bad update, thats what happened with 2 machines i'd built, went from working fine to BSOD.

Also can you run Check Disc and memtest, check all the voltages too, swap the SATA cables on your HDD.

[Col]

Last system update according to System Restore was yesterday. It was apparently a critical update, so it must have been installed automatically. I never ran an update. But with System Restore not system restoring, I can't really restore to before the update.

[Maxi]

Can you try booting from the Windows 7 CD and do a repair from that? I'm not sure if that is much different from the boot-up repair though.

If not, you could re-install windows which will create a Windows.old folder with all your files in.

[Col]

I have a disk image saved which was taken shortly after installing drivers, Steam and a few essential programs, but I've changed it a lot since then so it'll still be a hassle to get back the way I like it.

[.Alan.]

My dad did something similar about a year or so ago.
He got a free trial of some defrag program and ran some option which left his lappy blue screening.
Fortunately it had some Acer backup software onboard and we got it back from the last restore point.

He's since been warned, but he's one of those. You know, Google and Yahoo toolbars on his browser.:rolleyes: Can't help himself.

[Burn-IT]

Those parameters for the 0x000000F4 error incicate that it is a hardware error not a software error.

[Col]

Well I got impatient and just restored the disk image. All seems to be working now. Maybe the registry or disk defrag cleaned up something that wasn't supposed to be cleaned. I dunno.

Used Ubuntu to backup anything recent that I wanted to keep and restored using the old disk image. The problem I have is that I can't update the image now, because i don't have a hard drive big enough.

@ Burn-IT: Do you think it could be related to the fact that I have recently flashed my BIOS from a stable to a beta BIOS to enable my motherboard to support a new processor which I installed not long ago? If the beta BIOS has a problem, wouldn't the second BIOS chip kick in and just restore back to what it was before?

[DiGiTek Systems]

My dad did something similar about a year or so ago.
He got a free trial of some defrag program and ran some option which left his lappy blue screening.
Fortunately it had some Acer backup software onboard and we got it back from the last restore point.

He's since been warned, but he's one of those. You know, Google and Yahoo toolbars on his browser.:rolleyes: Can't help himself.

HAHAHA!!!

Brilliant!, this perfectly sums up so many people i meet, including my dad. more toolbars than viewable browsing area! he does like a bargain and anything free is good to him!!

[pab]

Yeah, like all that crapware you get free with laptops, then spend half a day trying to remove the stuff <spit>. Norton - you know who you are!:mad: