Windows problems...

[Taco_assassin]

No surprise there!
A little background first. I'm running dual boot xp home with ubuntu 11.10.
I've hopped back and forth plenty of times between OS's without any problems. Windows has been a little wierd lately so i decide it's time to do a techie tuneup. I start with a chkdsk /p /r. Errors found and fixed. Next i do an avg scan, all clean. Then a malwarebytes scan, also clean. Defrag, startup progs redux, etc. All seems well, windows seems cleaner...
Well the other day i went to go back onto windows and it wouldnt boot. After the dell splash screen it just hangs at a black screen. No cursor, nothing. So i try to boot in safe mode. It hangs at sr.sys, which through my own research i found id the driver for system restore or something of the like. I've tried some other things i read on forums from people that had the same problem but nothing worked, i.e. repair install, registry repair....nothing. Still hanging at black screen on standard boot, and hanging at sr.sys on safe mode boot. Good thing i had linux on here...
I can backdoor windows from ubuntu if anyone has any ideas...

[RaTix]

If you have access to another XP machine, you could try to copy the sr.sys from there and replace the one on your machine that is holding things up. I would take note of the file size to see if it's corrupted/infected.

I'm surprised a repair install didn't fix it. If it was a system file issue, that should have replaced the file and corrected it.

Hate to ask, but I must. Have you tried "Last known good config" from F8 menu? If it's a registry issue, that could fix it.

Also, NEVER run a CHKDSK prior to doing virus scans. Some virus actually cause system messages to pop up specifically asking the user to run CHKDSK. It is during that process that the virus is able to embed into the root and boot records of the HDD and cause a world of problems.

Some other things you could try if it did fuck up the MBR.

Boot from XP CD and go into the Recovery console.
run,
Fixboot
Fixmbr

And couldn't hurt to rebuild the Boot.ini either

bootcfg /rebuild

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000648.htm

With at least that out of the way, you can rule out a corrupted MBR and focus on registry and system file corruption.

[Taco_assassin]

i tried fixboot, but not fixmbr. If i do fixmbr, grub won't load up and ubuntu becomes inaccesible. perhaps i should back up a few things on the windows partition through linux onto my external and try that. at least that was if i have to wipe shit, i have what i want saved. And yes Emp, I did try last known good config.
I have a feeling it was the chkdsk that somehow fucked things up. All was good before that.

[Taco_assassin]

i remembered that not too long ago, i made a copy of the c: drive onto my external just incase something shitty happened. Well i guess it did. I'm gonna replace the current windows folder with the one i copied. Hopefully that should put things right. I'll keep you posted

[RaTix]

If you want to try something else before throwing the backup on there, you can try Safe mode with command Prompt instead of normal or networking, sometimes it can load when the others don't. Then run a SFC scan if it does.

[Taco_assassin]

It all ended well RaTix. I did try safe mode with command prompt too. It hung up on sr.sys on any type of safe mode boot i tried. That backup actually did the trick. Good thing it was before whatever fucked things up. Thanks for your help!