Windows Vista Vista can't start up

Hi. My computer has gone through a load of problems in the past two days and seems to be getting worse and worse.

Yesterday when booting windows, the computer freezes every time as soon as the desktop loads but not in safe mode. By running a disk check on my harddrive it seemed to be fine and I managed to get the computer working for the rest of the day.

However when I turned the computer on today it was stuck for a long time on the black screen with the green bars loading, before eventually (after a long time) loading onto the desktop which crashed as before. I thought I'd try a dskchk again to see if it'd fix it. Unfortunately the power cut off during the dskchk an the problem seems to have gotten much worse. (I'm not sure how disastrous this really is)

When I boot up the computer I'm given the option for Startup Repair or to start Windows normally. The former gave me a screen saying it was unable to fix problems automatically. The problem details are such:

Code:

Problem Event Name: StartupRepairV2
Problem Signature 01: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6001.18000
Problem Signature 03: 5
Problem Signature 04: 131074
Problem Signature 05: NoRootCause
Problem Signature 06: NoRootCause
Problem Signature 07: 0
Problem Signature 08: 2
Problem Signature 09: WrpRepair
Problem Signature 10: 1117
OS Versio: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

On diagnostic and repair details there's an Error Code = 0x0 for most. Root cause is unspecified changes to system configuration might hve caused the problem. Error Code = 0x45d. Unfortunately I have no system restores available.

The latter seems to stay on the black screen with "Microsoft corporation" and the green loading bars indefinately.

Is my hard drive busted? I have two on my computer, which some files I'd rather not lose copied onto the D: Drive as well as the C: Drive with windows on it. Is a format and re-install of Win Vista required and would I be able to keep data from my D: Drive on? Is there any hope to salvage the situation

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Left it to do a memory test and it seemed okay. When I came back it seemed the comp had automatically started another chkdsk. As of posting it seems the chkdsk has frozen at Stage 4 of 5 for a long time.

 

Did you try selecting "Last Known Good configuration "?

 

No luck with that either. I left it for a while and it only ended up with a black screen.

 

Can you select to boot to the command prompt, then just navigate over to where your data is, copy it to a back up drive. Then re-install.

Have you added any hardware? I had a computer once that when I added memory that did not match the computer, it made it act like it could not find the boot drive. When I removed the added memory, it worked just fine.

 

I can't remember what stage 4 is off-hand. It's a system file check. Don't "crash-out" of CHKDSK when it seems to stall, it is probably fixing something. Leave it to run for as long as it likes.

Go to safe mode with command prompt
Advanced startup options (including safe mode)
At the command prompt enter
CHKDSK /r
Leave it to run overnight. Check the results if they can be seen when you come back to it. Run the startup repair again.

Backup as Javier suggested.

If you try reinstalling, it should offer to repair the current installation of Windows.

Watch out that you may have bad sectors on the HDD. If you do, look at changing the HDD asap. See if you can copy the old HDD to a new one, some HDD manufacturers offer copying utilities, but they probably won't work unless you have corrected any errors (with CHKDSK).

Matt

 

Nope computer is untouched hardware wise. The problems started when my computer crashed when I was browsing, and I had to turn it off via the power switch.

@ Mattman: Stage 4 is verifying file data. I ran chkdsk again this morning and it is stuck in the same place as yesterday. It has not moved from 41144 of 230704 files processed in ~2 hours now. I'll keep it going though.

@ Arie, I don't really know the make of my HDD (the computer itself is an Acer),and I don't realy know how to check the make.

I appreciate all the suggestions, guys.

 

My System is an Acer M7711. At a quick search I couldn't find a good website that listed detailed specs.

After pretty much ~12 hours and repairing a heck of a lot of bad clusters in my files I came back to my desktop sucessfully loaded. But after just a couple of minutes using firefox the whole system crashed again into a black screen with white cursor.

I switched the PC off and restarted it. It seemed to load the desktop successfully but I decided to shut down (first successful shutdown that wasn't from the power button in a long time!) since I'm calling it a night.

I'm hoping that my PC will still be able to start up tomorrow, unlike the time of my first post when it was working fine the night before and suddenly stopped working the following morning, but if it isn't - are there any suggestions I could try?

 

Thanks. Managed to get my computer started up in Safe Mode with Networking and added my system specs from the software you linked me.

Startup problem in normal mode persists, clicking anything on the desktop or taskbar crashes the whole PC. Safe mode seems to work fine however (that's where I'm posting this from ).

 

Ok. But a little issue (maybe) about the DDS Scan - I can run it and get the logs saved in safe mode. However in normal mode where the issue persists where it freezes when I press any icon on the desktop or taskbar, I can't open it without the PC crashing on me. Will the safe mode logs be helpful to you?

If so, I'll be sure to post them in the Malware and Virus Removal board.