[ZLynx]

Hi, im visiting my parents this weekend and of course they pawned off all their technical problems on their "technology savvy" child.

They had a power outage the other day and now their Dell Dimension E521 with Vista wont boot up properly in normal mode. It will get all the way to the welcome screen and you can put in the password for log in, but from there it gets stuck on "Welcome" with the spinning loading symbol.
I changed to safe mode with networking, and everything works fine so i'm not sure what the problem would be to cause it to "freeze."

Any tips are welcome!
Thanks

Edited by ZLynx, 29 May 2010 - 11:39 PM.

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How to use WMIC to do a System Restore from Safe Mode with Command Prompt

In a case where you are only able to start Windows in "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" and not WinRE [Windows Recovery Environment] (i.e.: you don't have the install media; WinRE is not installed on the hard drive; your media reader is damaged, broken or not functioning), you can use the following WMIC procedure to do a System Restore:

• Restart the computer, (from a complete power-down). As the computer restarts, press the [F8] key, and then choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the menu options.
  
  
• At the command prompt, type the following three commands, pressing [Enter] after each:

  wmic
  /namespace:\\root\default
  path systemrestore get

  You will see a screen similar to this, (note the latest Sequence Numbers in the right column):
  
  
  
  
• Type the following command, (and press [Enter]), replacing the "<SequenceNumber>" with a number you obtained in the previous step. Typically you will select one of the latest numbers on the list, however you may want to select one that corresponds to a certain action. In this example, we are restoring back to the point where Microsoft Office 2003 was installed:

  path systemrestore call restore <SequenceNumber>

  
  
  
  
• Press the [Y] key at the prompt to restore the computer:
  
  
  
  
  
• A response will be given indicating that the execution was successful:
  
  
  
  
  
• Type exit and press [Enter] to exit WMIC:
  
  
  
  
  
• Restart the computer. After the computer returns to Windows, in the System Restore dialog box, click Close:
  
  

[SpywareDr]

How to use WMIC to do a System Restore from Safe Mode with Command Prompt

In a case where you are only able to start Windows in "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" and not WinRE [Windows Recovery Environment] (i.e.: you don't have the install media; WinRE is not installed on the hard drive; your media reader is damaged, broken or not functioning), you can use the following WMIC procedure to do a System Restore:

• Restart the computer, (from a complete power-down). As the computer restarts, press the [F8] key, and then choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the menu options.
  
  
• At the command prompt, type the following three commands, pressing [Enter] after each:

  wmic
  /namespace:\\root\default
  path systemrestore get

  You will see a screen similar to this, (note the latest Sequence Numbers in the right column):
  
  
  
  
• Type the following command, (and press [Enter]), replacing the "<SequenceNumber>" with a number you obtained in the previous step. Typically you will select one of the latest numbers on the list, however you may want to select one that corresponds to a certain action. In this example, we are restoring back to the point where Microsoft Office 2003 was installed:

  path systemrestore call restore <SequenceNumber>

  
  
  
  
• Press the [Y] key at the prompt to restore the computer:
  
  
  
  
  
• A response will be given indicating that the execution was successful:
  
  
  
  
  
• Type exit and press [Enter] to exit WMIC:
  
  
  
  
  
• Restart the computer. After the computer returns to Windows, in the System Restore dialog box, click Close:
  
  

[ZLynx]

Thanks for the reply.
I went through the process you laid out and restored back to 5/24/2010. Now when I restart normally it gets past the "Welcome" screen, but then just goes to a black screen where I can only move my mouse.
The blackout happened on the 26th, so the restore point that I chose should have worked.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Edited by ZLynx, 30 May 2010 - 01:39 PM.

[SpywareDr]

Will it still boot up in Safe mode?

[ZLynx]

yes the safe modes work fine. We found that if we left it to sit long enough when rebooting normally that we could actually get to the desktop. We get the popup window saying system restore was successful and all that. However, the computer runs reeeaaalllly slow. Not sure why it runs so slow. Task manage shows that the CPU is only running at 20% and memory is about 40%.
We rebooted again after a while, and it looked like it was going through the same process. We got a black screen that lasted for 10 minutes or so, then the desktop shows up, with the popup window saying the system restore was successful, again. For some reason it keeps doing a system restore after its started up everytime.

[SpywareDr]

Have you tried a different restore point?

Using Windows 7 or Vista System Restore
http://www.howtogeek...system-restore/

If that fails to fix the problem, recommend making sure it's "clean" next:

• Visit our Malware and Spyware Cleaning Guide. This will guide you through a few preparations, as well as instruction for posting your OTListIt2 log.
  
  
• Start a new topic in our Malware Removal forum.
  
  
• If you are still having problems after being given a clean bill of health from one of our malware experts, then please return to THIS thread and we will pursue other options to help you solve your current problem(s).