I have a Win7-64 machine (using EFI boot) that was working OK, but has developed a boot loop. It reboots, enters Startup Repair, and fails with ExternalMedia, CorruptVolume.
I booted the Win7 install disk (straight-from-Microsoft Win7 Ultimate, using UEFI boot) and entered Repair. chkdsk -v -f c:
finds no errors, but sfc /scannow
refuses to run, saying that there's a repair pending.
I tried many of the dism
recipes to rollback pending updates, etc., and the bcdboot
and bootrec
recipes for fixing the boot record. No change.
The disk itself appears to be OK: I made a clone using a disk-to-disk docking station, and the clone behaves exactly the same way as the original disk.
The user data appears to be OK, so I could just do a fresh install, install all the programs, and then copy the user data over, but that's a LOT of work. Is there any way to:
Fix the boot loop enough that I can make an up-to-date system recovery image before a fresh install?
Copy programs and user data (for several different users) from the broken-boot disk into a fresh install, without having to fix endless permissions problems?
winsxs
directly. There are ~18700 directories (apparently info about previously-applied updates?) and filesStarter.xml
andUltimate.xml
, but no directory or file namedpending.xml
.Starter.xml
andUltimate.xml
are inC:\Windows
. Inwinsxs
, there wasreboot.xml
. I renamed it and restarted, but it didn't make any difference. The Startup Repair process fails with EventNameStartupRepairOffline
, Signature016.1.7600.16385
, Signature05ExternalMedia
, Signature0615
, Signature07CorruptVolume