system recovery kicks in on boot

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stuck
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system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by stuck »

A while ago now I started this thread about problems getting a brand new laptop to boot. The thread ends with me getting a full refund for the dud hardware.

This thread is about another HDD issue with the replacement laptop that I got with the refund. It has been fine for 18 months but now twice in the last week the Win 7 system recovery tool has appeared on boot. On both occasions it has 'fixed' the problem (what ever it is) and the latop has worked as expected subsequently.

We left the laptop doing a chckdsk overnight last night and the log does report a few bad sectors, which I presume it flagged so Windows will always leave them alone now but I have a nagging feeling it's only a matter of time before there's another boot failure.

I know (in theory) that appropriate backup software can image the drive to an external HDD and then restore the image to a new/different HDD so I'm wondering if now is the time to attempt this sort of thing before more boot issues surface.

My question is, assuming such a back-up image and restore process goes smoothly, will Windows and the applications so transferred to new hardware be none the wiser of their move or will they require reactivation from MS before they will work again?

Ken
PS This is Win 64 bit Home Premium and yes, I have a mirror of all the data on the disk

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jonwallace
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by jonwallace »

I thought that cloning the disk would do the job nicely, but then I "famous-search-engined" and found this useful article.
Have fun.
John

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― Teddie O. Rahube

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viking33
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by viking33 »

The image should not affect any activation or other special tweaks of your programs. Just keep your images up to date, since restoration will only get you back to the time you made the image.
BOB
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stuck
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by stuck »

jonwallace wrote:...found this useful article...
Thanks, it does look useful.
viking33 wrote:The image should not affect any activation or other special tweaks of your programs.
Thanks again!

Ken

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stuck
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by stuck »

I never got round to making the image so the inevitable happened at about 3:00pm yesterday afternoon; the laptop failed to boot and the recovery options could not fix the issue.

To cut a long story short we (stuckling2 and myself) got it working again by resorting to the (nuclear) OEM system restore option. This is an Acer laptop so that meant Alt+F10 as soon as the Acer splash screen appeared. By the end of the evening we had reinstalled all the 'Important' Win 7 updates, removed (with Revo free) McAfee, installed MSE and a chkdsk scan was close to completion. There are a few more 'junk' applications to remove before we are ready to start reinstalling other applications again but we are getting there. All the data is on an external HDD so there's no major harm done, just the inconvenience of having to start from scratch.

Meanwhile, too late to help us this time but for future reference...

There are many, many search hits about this Win 7 boot failure, most leading nowhere and many missing the point but this morning I have finally tracked down a thread over at Microsoft Answers that appears to fit our problem and give a reasonable explanation of why this particular Win 7 boot failure happens. It also points to a MS KB article about it. In outline the file:
%SystemRoot%\system32\codeintegrity\Bootcat.cache has become corrupt.

Why this file becomes corrupt though seems to be unknown. Many but not all of the posters on the MS Answers thread cite Systematic Endpoint Protection (SEP) as a common factor. One person mentioned the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller driver that is available as a 'recommended' update from Windows Update. A bad MSE definition file was also suggested as a possible cause. A disk fragmentation was mentioned as well. In our case my best guess is, no idea! Yes, stuckling2 did use Defraggler and soon after the boot became flaky but fixed itself twice before total collapse. Yes MSE was in use. Yes the laptop was set to receive both Important and Recommended updates and the flaky boot started just after a Patch Tuesday so perhaps there was a Recommended update that made it choke but this is all speculation. The only truly common factor is that the PCs were fine, users didn't do anything and then on the next boot the machines died.

Fixing this corrupt bootcat.cache file is not straightforward as the nature of the failure means the getting access to the c: drive is convoluted but the thread at MS Answers does give full details (whereas the MS KB article doesn't, it just says delete the file).

I hope this helps others.

Ken

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viking33
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by viking33 »

Another good solution is to make that image copy as soon as you get back to normal again and also keep the image up to date. That's my "I told you so" for today. :evilgrin: :smile:
BOB
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jonwallace
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Re: system recovery kicks in on boot

Post by jonwallace »

jonwallace wrote:I thought that cloning the disk would do the job nicely, but then I "famous-search-engined" and found this useful article.
Have fun.
A funny story...

A week after these posts, my Samsung HD in my desktop running Windows 7 started glitching, every second boot. it needed to be checked for consistancy. I ordered a new Western Digital drive and prayed that it wouldn't fail in the meantime. Just to be on the safe side, I used Windows Backup to image the disk. Then I remembered that WD supply tools to migrate to a new disk and downloaded a WD version of Acronis TrueImage from the Western Digital website.

Cloning the disk took two overnight sessions. The first attempt failed because of errors on the old HD, so I ran chkdsk /r overnight to effect repairs. Then I stuck the new HD in a USB SATA drive cradle and plugged it into the desktop, this allowed me to run TI (it needs to see a WD disk before it'll run) to clone the old disk to new one. This took overnight again (and part of a morning to recover from the error that occurred about 60% into the cloning). This evening, I swapped out the old disk for the new one and the PC booted first time. Just to be on the safe side, I ran SFC /scannow to detect and repair any corrupted Windows files, which required a reboot to complete. And everything seems fine at the moment.

So, I was right, cloning did the do the job nicely, even with a faltering source drive. Yay!

Bob's right as well, of course, backup and keep current.
John

“Always trust a microbiologist because they have the best chance of predicting when the world will end”
― Teddie O. Rahube