Vista black screen with cursor

[carnageX]

Ok, so a client brought in their computer and it wouldn't boot up fully. It would get to the loading bar and just sit there and sit there. The HDD activity light would blink once every second steadily. I let it sit there doing that for a while, while I did other things. So I tried the Startup Recovery option, and that gave me this error in the log:

Root Cause Found:
Unspecified changes to system config might have caused the problem
Repair action - System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed; Error 0x2

So I grabbed my copy of SpinRite and loaded that up...I let it go through its thing 2 different times, once which found some Unrecovered sections, and then I ran it again in recovery mode...the graphic log showed good. Tried to boot up now, and now I get passed the green loading bar, but it stays on a black screen with the mouse cursor. Cursor can be moved, but nothing else works (Ctrl+Alt+Del is nothing either). Tried to boot up into Safe Mode...does the same thing. It hangs on crcdisk.sys for a few minutes, then continues to the black screen with a movable cursor. Tried to enable boot logging, but I don't know where it puts the log file (or if it even successfully made a log file).

So now I have the drive in a external enclosure copying off files so I can reformat... Does anybody have any ideas on what I could try before I reformat this thing? I've tried everything I can think of. Ubuntu won't even mount the drive, as it says it was improperly shut down, so it won't mount it. *sigh*

When I asked the client if they changed anything, they said they didn't think so, because it was doing this for a few months now, and had just gotten around to trying to get it fixed now.

Help is greatly appreciated, as I'm out of ideas.

Specs are as follows:

Compaq SR5110NX PC (specs here)
Vista Basic

 

[KSoD]

Well it could be one of many things. Virus, spyware, rootkit, a update among several other things. A change to a system file is very vague. Not to mention with the new protection in Vista this makes it more curious.

So i would have to think either a update or a root kit.

 

[carnageX]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well, but they're not sure what happened. Was going to try a system restore, but apparently there are no restore points to go back to, so that doesn't help me any.

Is my best option to format right now, rather than keep trying to troubleshoot it? I asked them the other day that I may have to reformat it, but I'd backup all their info and she was fine with it...so I may have to end up doing that.

 

[KurrentEweser]

From a boot cd I would try manually restoring the backup of the registry.

 

[carnageX]

Where is the registry backup located? I didn't think it automatically created registry backups...must be mistaken I guess.

 

[KurrentEweser]

Where is the registry backup located? I didn't think it automatically created registry backups...must be mistaken I guess.

C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack

Those files are backups from the last successful boot. Use those files to replace the equivalent files in the C:\Windows\System32\config folder. Instead of deleting any files just add a .sav extension on them.

 

[carnageX]

Ah ok. Will do, thanks for the help Kurrent (and Mak ). Files are being backed up on an external HDD right now, so I'll try it when I put the HDD back into the PC. Will get back to you with what happens.

No go on that one, Kurrent.

 

[KSoD]

I figured it wouldnt work. There was a change made. So even the last known good boot information wouldnt help recover the system cause who knows if the last boot was successful. From the sounds of it this system was heading down hill for a while before it finally crashed and they did nothing to try and fix it before it got catastrophic. From the sounds of it a format is the only way this sytem will be fixed.

 

[KurrentEweser]

At least registry corruption has been eliminated. A nasty virus could have hosed things up pretty bad. A fresh install would surely let you know if there's any hardware going bad.

 

[carnageX]

All right, thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it. Glad this thing has a recovery partition, because they didn't bring restore discs in, and mine are at home lol.