Having a major issue with my laptop. I am unable to boot into my Vista installation. And now I cant get into my Fedora 11 either. I am currently posting this through a Knoppix live boot CD. The BSOD error is:
0x0000007B (0x80399BB0, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
As far as I know, 7B is usually a hard disk error but I am 100% sure the HDD is fine as I can read and write from Knoppix without issue. If you look through my previous topics, I had a slightly similar (but different) issue a few years ago with XP but that method doesn't work with Vista.
Steps taken so far:
Obviously, I have tried the usual steps of trying to start safe mode, last good config, and all of the F8 options. When they failed, I used fedora to check for some solutions online (Mostly useless answers from MS) and I found one successful case when a person flashed his BIOS back to an earlier time. Unfortunately, I cant get the BIOS update I got from the Dell website to boot from a USB drive (Says invalid boot disc - the BIOS on it is in the .exe format) and I do not have a floppy drive on the laptop.
So, I put in my Dell drivers and utilities CD hoping that it would give me some option to update (Or roll back) the BIOS but there was no such option. However, it did give me a load of diagnostic options including repair options by symptom so went with the "Unable to boot from BIOS". Unfortunately, that didnt help me at all.
So, I got my Vista installation disc (OEM supplied) and managed to get to the repair menu (Which I had among my F8 options anyway) but this also has the option to reinstall. Unfortunately, it states that "Upgrade is unavailable" and that a clean install is the only thing I can select (At the expense of my files and settings).
As for the repair options, the automatic recovery doesn't seem to find any errors, asks to reset and see if all is well (It isn't). For some reason, system restore doesn't detect any restore points. There are no windows memory errors detected and I have no backups. So, i'm left with a command prompt that, by default, is asking for a file in this folder:
X:/WINDOWS/System32/
I have no idea where it is getting the X: drive from - I have C and D drives for windows only. As per another online guide, I tried:
bootrec.exe /fixboot
with no success (Although it stated the operation was successful). So, I got back to commant prompt and tried:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
which also didn't work (again, it things all is well now) and, as a final insult, I can no longer boot into Fedora as the new (Supposedly working) windows MBR didn't even want to know about Fedora
. I then used:bootrec.exe /scanos
which doesn't seem to find ANY windows installations (!). So, now I dont have Windows OR Linux. I also gave rebuildBcd a go with no practical success. I cant figure it out at all. I have not put in any new hardware or anything. What might interest you is how this all came about. I was installing some of the malware detection methods on this G2G site:
http://www.geekstogo...uide-t2852.html
I managed to get malwarebytes, ERUNT and GMER downloaded and put the download into a new folder on the desktop. Nothing was installed or run - Just downloaded and moved the installation packages. It's only when I went to get OTL - my computer grinded to a halt after about 21% was downloaded. I happened to have task manager open and it didn't show any spikes in usage or anything. A few minutes later, everything crashed and I had no option but to power off the ugly way.
I cant believe this has happened the week I start my (100% online) BSc Degree courses. Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to recover my existing installation? To be fair, I DO have the means to back up my data through this boot disc and my TB USB hard drive but I dont want to lose my FF settings as I have most my passwords, links etc... saved and I dont want to have to spend several hours finding and reinstalling everything. As this issue sounds like a similar topic up at the moment,
http://www.geekstogo...rt-t266090.html
I am going to give chkdsk a go (Cant remember if i've even attempted this yet in windows recovery - I know i've tried a few things with linux). Any help would be massively appreciated.
Regards
Noobsaibot21
Sign In
Create Account
