I'm a fairly computer-literate person but I may have painted myself into a corner. I can't start my Vista up through normal means as explorer.exe freezes the entire computer. This is a bit convoluted so I'll start at the beginning.
For a few days my computer needed to do some heavy lifting, so I left it on a few times overnight lately. I hadn't powered off/on for the past week or two, so I can't tell exactly when the boot problem appeared, but I noticed the whole thing had gotten mighty slow. No HDD access noise or anything, just a longer and longer wait at various stages (green loading bars, then desktop loading, etc).
I assumed at that point my login attempts were locking up the computer. So I loaded a restore point with a Vista recovery CD, to no effect. I began to noticed that the comp would lock up at different points of the login (and when I used different Vista accounts), so I thought maybe the system files were damaged. I ran the Startup Repair (?) program on the recovery CD, which apparently detected errors. It did its thing, but after the computer locked up upon restart the entire process quit on me.
The next time I ran it to try to continue the repairs, it scanned the OS and detected no errors. Around this time, something weird also happened with the USB readers. They stopped detecting the all-important thumb drive which held the SATA drivers necessary for the recovery CD to detect my OS. USB is a little unreliable now as the recovery CD will only detect my digital camera, and trying to browse through any devices (My Computer) freezes the comp. Safe Mode sort of works. This is where I've been doing most of the tinkering and how I'm posting this.
Here are my options with F8:
Start Windows Normally: Awful load time, locks up at login if you're not quick to type in the pass. Typically locks up during loading, usually before my programs appear.
Safe Mode /+Network: Slightly better load times, locks up when explorer.exe loads. The menubar and my programs appear, but something causes it to reliably lock up just after my first program is given an icon (sndvol.exe).
Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt: It works. Renamed explorer.exe to explorer2.exe and can load SM with network. Loading explorer.exe after naming it back will cause the same lockup normal loading does.
Repair Windows (or something): My OS is stamped (Recovered) now, so I can't run sfc. Loading this option causes a swift BSOD with codes of the 0x00..07 variety.
Last Good Config etc... nothing else works. I ran chkdsk and it didn't find so much as a bad sector. So I'm seeking the help of people more experienced in Vista before my web gets more tangled. Also, I have no restore points because something was disabled at some point or another, erasing them all. I have SP1. A recent scan with Spybot (updated) shows we're free of spyware.
This is my computer, sans new power supply and graphics card:
Newegg.com - Gateway DX Series DX4800-05e Desktop PC Pentium dual-core E5200(2.50GHz) 6GB DDR2 640GB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce 9200 Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
What do? TYIA
For a few days my computer needed to do some heavy lifting, so I left it on a few times overnight lately. I hadn't powered off/on for the past week or two, so I can't tell exactly when the boot problem appeared, but I noticed the whole thing had gotten mighty slow. No HDD access noise or anything, just a longer and longer wait at various stages (green loading bars, then desktop loading, etc).
I assumed at that point my login attempts were locking up the computer. So I loaded a restore point with a Vista recovery CD, to no effect. I began to noticed that the comp would lock up at different points of the login (and when I used different Vista accounts), so I thought maybe the system files were damaged. I ran the Startup Repair (?) program on the recovery CD, which apparently detected errors. It did its thing, but after the computer locked up upon restart the entire process quit on me.
The next time I ran it to try to continue the repairs, it scanned the OS and detected no errors. Around this time, something weird also happened with the USB readers. They stopped detecting the all-important thumb drive which held the SATA drivers necessary for the recovery CD to detect my OS. USB is a little unreliable now as the recovery CD will only detect my digital camera, and trying to browse through any devices (My Computer) freezes the comp. Safe Mode sort of works. This is where I've been doing most of the tinkering and how I'm posting this.
Here are my options with F8:
Start Windows Normally: Awful load time, locks up at login if you're not quick to type in the pass. Typically locks up during loading, usually before my programs appear.
Safe Mode /+Network: Slightly better load times, locks up when explorer.exe loads. The menubar and my programs appear, but something causes it to reliably lock up just after my first program is given an icon (sndvol.exe).
Safe Mode w/ Command Prompt: It works. Renamed explorer.exe to explorer2.exe and can load SM with network. Loading explorer.exe after naming it back will cause the same lockup normal loading does.
Repair Windows (or something): My OS is stamped (Recovered) now, so I can't run sfc. Loading this option causes a swift BSOD with codes of the 0x00..07 variety.
Last Good Config etc... nothing else works. I ran chkdsk and it didn't find so much as a bad sector. So I'm seeking the help of people more experienced in Vista before my web gets more tangled. Also, I have no restore points because something was disabled at some point or another, erasing them all. I have SP1. A recent scan with Spybot (updated) shows we're free of spyware.
This is my computer, sans new power supply and graphics card:
Newegg.com - Gateway DX Series DX4800-05e Desktop PC Pentium dual-core E5200(2.50GHz) 6GB DDR2 640GB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce 9200 Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
What do? TYIA
