Windows Vista System Hangs at Vista Load Bar

Hey, I was playing some L4D late at night and everything was fine. I wake up in the morning, the computer is running, but monitor is in standby. So I restart it by holding power button down. Now I have to select start windows normally. When arriving at the load bar for vista, it stalls going nowhere. Eventually It will restart by itself and start over.

I have tried safe mode, it stops at crcdisk.sys. Last known configuration loops like the other way.

So I boot from the vista CD. I select repair. Now the strage part. On the screen where I select my operating system I see my Windows Vista, with the memory listed. When I try to click NEXT it hourglasses. From here I get like .1 frame per second, as it pops up a box to search for any operating system... BUT I JUST SAW IT! Most of the time it will stay at this step for hours. ONE time it did it in 1 minute, but said there was NO OS! BUT AGAIN, I JUST SAW IT HERE!

Obviously at this point command prompt is no good since I cant CD C:

I don't want to reinstall, because I need some of the data!

Please help!

I am running windows vista, I am using 2 raptors in RAID, with a 680i evga mobo. I have taken out every device attached to the mobo and reattached. Checked connections. Removed unecessary piecies like extra ram, sound card, video tuner, etc.

Raid status is healthy, and I see it in the bios, and initialy in the repair cd.

I'm not sure if it went to install an automatic update and something went wrong, but it litteraly worked one moment, then didnt the next.

Note: If I can get it to not go at 1fps like it did the one time, I will try looking for raid control drivers on a floppy. But thats my only guess at this second.

 

Not many options from here
What to do if Windows won't start correctly

 

Close to fixed

Okay, after much playing around last night I was able to let it sit for 4 hours untill the fps cleared up. However, I still was not able find an OS listed there.

New Info: I mentioned seeing the OS and partition, but when I hit next it wasnt able to fix startup?

Issue: When I hit back, the OS that I saw had disapeared. I tried to load the raid drivers, but they were not able to load.

Steps taken: So I while in the load drivers screen, I was able to use the gui to browse my directories. I saw that my raid drive was not C: but was now E: !! GREAT!

Next: So I got out, clicked next, and opened the dos prompt. I checked my directory with "dir E:" and all my files were here! I saved what I could on a USB stick.

Then: I used "dir E:\windows ". Now I notice I have no system folder, and no system32. So I ran a chkdsk /R on the E drive.

Next Morning: I awake to find that It had repaired several errors. Notably, an orphaned system and system32. So After it was done, I close out of the dos prompt. Hit back instead of restart to see if my OS is able to be found. It says that It found an OS now! HOWEVER, the startup seems damaged. Forget the exact term. It asks if I would like that fixed, then a reboot. I click OK, and the computer restarts. After a while on the green loading bar - my original issue, it goes to a black scren where it says there are inconsistancies on the drive, and begins performing a chkdsk.

Now I turn off my monitor and head to work. Atleast I can get to my files now, back what I can, and am hopeful of fixing this issue. BTW There are no backups or system restore points, atleast prior to the chkdsk recovery. (that might have changed, ill know after work)

Any ideas, insight, suggestions?



Another catalyst, I also replaced my PSU as it also failed on me, which explained why my computer would randomly shut down from time to time this past month. This probably help corrupt a file, possibly during an automatic windows update to SP2.

 

Now it just boots to a black screen w/ a mouse cursor before I can log in. All safemode options do the same. So does last known good config.

Only change is my C drive went from E, back to C now which is good. I have a system and system 32. When I run repair, it said system directory was corrupt. I tried to run another repair and I got a blue stop screen pointing at nvraid driver.

I backed up my files, and will erase the whole drive, im out of time and patience.

 

Yes, I always run diagnostics.

You say it is in a RAID configuration (RAID 0 I suppose). That may be the source. Would there be diagnostic utilities for that?

 

Vista has been reinstalled. I will NOT be using raid 0 this time around. No hardware issues found. Everything is working perfect now. Thanks for the help.

Disabled automatic updates, manually installed vista sp1 then sp2.