Vista Startup Problems
I just went through a particularly bizarre sequence of creating a problem and fixing it, with Vista, that I thought I’d relate.
My freshly built Vista media center was giving me file system errors. From the event log:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume C.
Simple enough… “chkdsk /f c:”. It scheduled it for the next reboot, and I rebooted.
Instead of booting into chkdsk, the system booted to a black screen with a flashing cursor. Hmm. I left it that way for a while, but it wasn’t doing anything. A few reboots, then attempts to press F8 to get a command prompt, and nothing was working.
So I booted the Vista DVD. It has a special repair menu now, and one of the options is to repair startup. It promises to reboot your system several times, if required, to figure out why your system won’t boot. Sounded good – so I gave that a shot, and it worked!
Next reboot, it went through chkdsk and then booted.
But what I want to know is how did invoking chkdsk lead me to an unbootable system in the first place?
March 14th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I had EXACTLY the same problem except I had only image CD’s to work with. Lenovo sent me a new HD. I restored Vista and booted. Did a Vista restart after a few minutes; got the black screen. No resolution yet!
March 17th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I am having the same problem now as well. Not sure why, but I can narrow it down to 2 things. 1) Changed the registry to remove the shortcut overlay. 2) Vista prompted me to install updates after a reboot, so I did.
I too had to go into the special repair menu. I chose to boot from the last known good configuration. That worked fine. But I know have to do that every time I restart my PC!! That doesn’t sound right. I’m researching the problem now and will post back if I find anything.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Many people have run into this type of issue. Most PC’s Vista PC’s not only have the vista startup repair but also the manufactuer has a non detructive repair. The Vista startup repair should be used first. If that does not work tyr booting into safe mode and doing a system restore. If that does not work see if your manufacturer has a non destructive option to re-load the OS