hey, anyone up for a little troubleshooting?

Ok, first off specs in sig...

Issue: Windows Vista x64 refuses to load completely

What I am doing:
Press power buttion and post > pass
select "windows" in GRUB > pass
Windows splash > pass
Windows log in > pass
after sign in > frozen, just a white screen the hard disk light 'flickers' every 3-4 seconds...

I managed to get into safe mode once. but now it won't finish loading that either.

here the funny part, it's not hardware... atleast I doubt it... Ubuntu 8.10 works flawlessly... and I could load windows this morning, just not now. I have made NO hardware changes, NO Software changes in over a week.

any ideas?

so far I have tired with both battery in, ac power, both, all the same result.

 

There are a couple of recovery options. The one I would NOT use is a repair install...I have tried it twice and both times it caused major issues during after. Have you tried the start-up repair utility on a Vista install cd? Possibly a check disk as well. I guess safe mode is not working as well? I have seen Vista hang for a while after log-in, but it has usually completing within 60 seconds (max).

 

I'm just looking for my windows disk... and I'll try the repair... it's been haning for about 10minutes now...

 

found the disk... "Start up repair could not find any problems".

any other ideas?

worst case I could re-install, but I'm trying to avoid that.

 

So safe mode and/or check disk? You can run check disk via command line from that same repair area of the DVD if you cannot get into safe mode. If you can get into safe mode, check your logs.

 

Safe mode does not work at all(well it gets to the desktop and freezes)

Check disk is running... it looks ok, but I'll try and boot now...

so far no luck, check disk found nothing significant from what I can tell. and it still won't boot.

 

Have you applied any Windows Updates lately?

 

yah, on Tuesday... I remeber, because I lost an hours worth of work when it restarted itself... there was an update availible this morning but I didn't install it.

 

Hmm, well if it was applied that long ago then your problem isn't likely caused by it. If there are no more suggestions, you may want to install Windows again.

 

one more idea... antivirus could have detected & quarrantined some file vital for correct windows startup. AV can be updated several times a day, so that it most probably was also shortly before the issue happened. but the stupid thing about this theory is that if you cannot boot even in the safe mode, you probably won't find out which file is missing in such case...

 

I though about it being a virus etc. but your rigth even if it is, there is nothing I can do if I can boot my computer...

 

it could have been the windows update. It hosed my system and I had to remove TrueCrypt, start in safe mode and remove the 2 windows updates. They were both Security updates for Vista x64, dtd 10 Mar 09.

Now it is again working beautifully...... But, it only happened on 1 of my 4 machines.....

 

sounds great... I can't boot into safe mode...

 

Possibly create a Windows Live CD (I think its called BART) to go through and uninstall those updates. I have never done it, but I have heard it is possible and useful to some users. Not sure how it would work with vista, if it is even supported.