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Just because my pain should not be someone else's, I post this here.
Monday I started to have some odd DLL and other type errors randomly appearing. I figured it was about time to do a Windows Repair install to correct any system file errors. Well BIG mistake that turned out to be. And for the past 3-5 days thats what I have been working on solving.
After the repair install I received a 0x7b BSOD error. At first the system would load to the window's splash screen and then continually reboot. I Disabled the auto reboot on error through F8 and got the BSOD message. Then the search began....
The closest fix I found was to restore the registry from the "C:\System Volume Information" directory. Unfortunately I installed my parallel installation on the same partition, had disabled the windows restore point feature way back, and Could not retrieve any old "Good" registry files in the restore points. so I started to sort through the registry and see what had caused it to fail. I narrowed it down (after many loaded hive edits, reinstalls, repairs, and everything else) to the "system" registry hive file being corrupted somehow in the repair. I still could not repair it anymore then getting past the BSOD screen to a black screen with a mouse cursor and that was it (Task manager did not come up at all no matter how hard I slammed those Ctrl+Alt+del keys).
I searched through many ntbtlog files but they don't really help that much. I could not get a decent registry app to scan the files on load to get an accurate account of what drivers were failing and causing a hang in the system. I have finally given up on fixing it sadly.. but saved my original windows directory for later in case a solution presets itself. But realistically thats probably not gonna happen. If I couldn't fix it in the past 3-4 days working 8-13 hours day on it, I have pretty much given up hope on finding a solution and accepting my half ass restore.
I had that one install of Windows for about 3-4 years now.. so sad to lose it in failure. I have managed to recover most my applications and desktop through transferring the document and settings folder over to the new profile, but I know there is gonna be one or two apps that I won't be able to reinstall due to missing Keys or what not. Wish I knew where my paid for AVG license is... ugh.
So if you ever plan to repair or reinstall windows, all you need to make sure of is that you backup the windows\system32\config directory.. (Well back up the entire windows directory if you have the room). That houses all your registry files and could be used to recover from a bad repair. As long as the files for the drivers are there, all you need is the registry files.
Why didn't I backup? Why would I!! lol. Well this is the first time ever I have ever had a windows repair install ever fail me. It will also be the last time now that I know exactly what to back up and why. Hope this helps anyone else from the nightmare I have now gone through.
Monday I started to have some odd DLL and other type errors randomly appearing. I figured it was about time to do a Windows Repair install to correct any system file errors. Well BIG mistake that turned out to be. And for the past 3-5 days thats what I have been working on solving.
After the repair install I received a 0x7b BSOD error. At first the system would load to the window's splash screen and then continually reboot. I Disabled the auto reboot on error through F8 and got the BSOD message. Then the search began....
The closest fix I found was to restore the registry from the "C:\System Volume Information" directory. Unfortunately I installed my parallel installation on the same partition, had disabled the windows restore point feature way back, and Could not retrieve any old "Good" registry files in the restore points. so I started to sort through the registry and see what had caused it to fail. I narrowed it down (after many loaded hive edits, reinstalls, repairs, and everything else) to the "system" registry hive file being corrupted somehow in the repair. I still could not repair it anymore then getting past the BSOD screen to a black screen with a mouse cursor and that was it (Task manager did not come up at all no matter how hard I slammed those Ctrl+Alt+del keys).
I searched through many ntbtlog files but they don't really help that much. I could not get a decent registry app to scan the files on load to get an accurate account of what drivers were failing and causing a hang in the system. I have finally given up on fixing it sadly.. but saved my original windows directory for later in case a solution presets itself. But realistically thats probably not gonna happen. If I couldn't fix it in the past 3-4 days working 8-13 hours day on it, I have pretty much given up hope on finding a solution and accepting my half ass restore.
I had that one install of Windows for about 3-4 years now.. so sad to lose it in failure. I have managed to recover most my applications and desktop through transferring the document and settings folder over to the new profile, but I know there is gonna be one or two apps that I won't be able to reinstall due to missing Keys or what not. Wish I knew where my paid for AVG license is... ugh.
So if you ever plan to repair or reinstall windows, all you need to make sure of is that you backup the windows\system32\config directory.. (Well back up the entire windows directory if you have the room). That houses all your registry files and could be used to recover from a bad repair. As long as the files for the drivers are there, all you need is the registry files.
Why didn't I backup? Why would I!! lol. Well this is the first time ever I have ever had a windows repair install ever fail me. It will also be the last time now that I know exactly what to back up and why. Hope this helps anyone else from the nightmare I have now gone through.
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