Startup Repair Can't Be Cancelled - still running...

Started the day with a corrupted Admin profile. Thought it was due to Win Updates running last couple of days so did sys restore to Saturday. After that, starting machine brought up a boot-type screen asking if I wanted to start into RAM settings or into Windows Vista (recovered).

That didn't seem right. So I booted to a Vista Repair CD I created from a tutorial on this site and selected Startup Repair.

After getting past the "choose your language" screen there was no OS listed on the "select your OS to repair" screen. I saw a couple of posts where folks were advised to click next anyway so I did.

Now it's been running for about 5 hours - trying to cancel or close window brings up a message: This operation cannot be canceled.

It says "Startup Repair is checking your system for problems..." and the progress bar is still moving at same speed across screen under which it says "attempting repairs".

The machine's fans are running but I don't hear ANY HDD activity and no flicker on the HDD light.

I'll need the machine to work in the morning. I've read some horror story posts about folks hard booting and wrecking their HDD.

Any ideas?

Thank you.
Buck

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Have you tried or can you boot into safe mode if not heres how..

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/123496-safe-mode.html

Oh and is your computer a desktop or laptop

So it's 15 mins after posting and Startup Repair actually finished. All checks said "ok" and successful except for the last one which said "no valid system partition found" then it said "system partition repair" "completed successfully".

It just rebooted but did so to Win7 (which is on a 2nd HDD in the case but which was not active).

Rather than open a profile, I shut down and then rebooted.

The "select your OS" screen appeared again (it's a black screen with plain white type) and showed 2 OS's to choose from:

Windows7 (recovered)
Windows Vista (recovered)

I chose Vista and now here I am at the startup screen like nothing happened. The Admin profile that was busted is still busted and the new one I created to replace it also doesn't work. Still getting the message: "The user profile service failed the logon."

I used the system's hidden admin account (per tutorials in these forums) to create the new profile and then I was going to delete the old one, but it didn't work.

So I'm not sure what to do. Do I assume that since I'm at the start up screen that everything is fine?

americancritic said:

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Have you tried or can you boot into safe mode if not heres how..

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/123496-safe-mode.html

Oh and is your computer a desktop or laptop

Click to expand...

It's a desktop (basic system specs are entered) and at the time, I would have said NO I couldn't boot into safe mode because I couldn't cancel the Startup Repair function. But now...see above follow up post.

Hello try a sfc scan and see if it will fix your computer.

Click start...
In the search box type cmd..
When the popup list comes up RIGHT click on cmd.exe...
When the command box comes up type sfc /scannow Notice there is a space between the sfc and the forward slash, after the scan is finished if there are any errors the do the sfc 3 more times as if fix's more each time it is run..

Thanks for replying.

americancritic said:

Hello try a sfc scan and see if it will fix your computer.

Click start...
In the search box type cmd..
When the popup list comes up RIGHT click on cmd.exe...
When the command box comes up type sfc /scannow Notice there is a space between the sfc and the forward slash, after the scan is finished if there are any errors the do the sfc 3 more times as if fix's more each time it is run..

Click to expand...

To clarify:

"Click start..."
Should I log into my regular (non-admin) user profile to do this? (i'm still at welcome screen)

"When the popup list comes up RIGHT click on cmd.exe..."
I think right clicking wouldn't bring up the command box, it would bring up a context menu wouldn't it? Why RIGHT click instead of regular left click?

Thank you

No you have to log on as administrator, or in safe mode..

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

I am sorry when you right click (run it as administrator)

Hello


1. Click Start...
2. In the search box type: cmd and hit enter...
3. When the popup list comes up then RIGHT click on cmd.exe and run as administrator.
When the command box appears then type: sfc /scannow, notice there is a space between the sfc and the forward slash, if it comes back with any erros then run it 3 more times as it repairs more each time it is run...



http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

is it possible to stop this function before it finishes? It's in the verification stage and I'm not sure I want to have it revert all my system files - just read that in the tutorial

tutorial says it's going to remove all system changes - does that mean printer settings, etc? I read all this AFTER starting the scan (my bad)

So it finished. Says it found corrupt files but could not repair them all and refers me to the CBS log file.

Before I do anything more I'm wondering how much stuff I just screwed up - the tutorial is light on details regarding what could be lost - it says 'fonts' and 'theming explorer/system files,'

What about changes to system files by things like my antivirus or firewall or drop box or carbonite, or...I can already see that my side bar disappeared.

What else?

Another question now is...if my 2nd HDD (which has Win 7 installed) does not have an Active partition, why am I all of a sudden now getting a choice of which OS to boot into at startup?

And...

When I just restarted, hit F8, and chose Safe Mode, it booted into Win7 Safe mode.

...confused...

Signing off for tonight. Will have to revisit this tomorrow...

Yes just close the command box and it will quit right then..

You have nothing to worry about as far as losing any files, documents, pictures, music etc when the sfc runs what it does is repair your OS software that came on the system like your Vista or win7. Doing a SFC does not do anything except to correct the registry or corrupted files in your OS, it does not reset or change your printer settings. So please do not worry about the sfc messing anything up.

If at some point if you have to do any kind of system restore not a factory restore, so lets say you had your system mess up today we would tell you to do a system restore going back at least 5 days before the problem occured, now under this guide line you would lose all software you have downloaded then you would lose those thins for those days. So you will have something to do in the morning I will give you a couple of tutorials to read...

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/194765-system-recovery-options.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76905-system-restore-how.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66971-system-restore.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/101393-repair-vista-options-preferred-sequence.html

You can at least read them to see if one of them might help in your recovery of your system, I will send this to one of the forums experts that deal with this kind of thng everyday. So Please keep your chin up and we will find out what is wrong with it.

Thank You