Hi all,
Firstly, thank you for your input on this, I've been pulling my hair out over it for days!!
Okay, so I have a Dell Lx laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium bit. Last week I found out that the laptop in question was riddled with malware and viruses. I am 99% sure everything has been removed and that the system is clean again. However, over the weekend, the laptop has gone through a series of issues, but the bottom line is that Windows will no longer boot.
At one point I was getting the black screen message of No BootMgr found, or No NTDLR found. I would run the Windows 7 disk to repair the issue, and for days on the end, the box that pops up while the system checks for Windows installations would ALWAYS come up blank. However after testing a number of different Recovery disks - Norton, Kaspersky, BitDefender to name a few - it would seem that Windows is now being detected - huzzah!
However, it is still not enough to boot. Upon running the Start Up Repair option within Windows Recovery mode, I get the following;
Boot critical file c:\Windows\System32\drivers\bharathealthcares.com is corrupt
Now upon Googling this .sys file, it returns not one single result, which is bizarre, as well as disheartening.
No amount of system repairs seem to resolve this, and I have tried SFC /Scannow (no issues) and BOOTREC commands over and over (The /ScanOS and /RebuildBCD switches return saying there is no Windows installation found, even though it appears in that initial box mentioned above).
Some things worth mentioning
- There are NO System Restore files, I have a feeling I disabled this a long time ago, and it will be the last time I make that mistake
- In late last week, the Windows drive was apparently E:\, when it should be C:\, while the mb System Reserved partition was on C:\ - Today Windows is reportedly on D:\ whereas now it has no letter assigned. If I try to manually correct this, it only reverts upon reboot.
I have 2 hard drives, Windows is on C:\, a GB SSD, while I have a Gb SATA for extra storage. I could attempt to copy my files across to external hard drives, but ideally I want to recover this instance as it would save me ALOT of pain and heart ache getting my settings, templates and other files back into place.
Thanks so much guys,
Mark
Well I fixed it.
And the way by which I fixed it was embarassingly easy.
No tools, nout
Basically, using the Mini Windows XP mode I browsed to C:\Windows\Drivers and saw the file. I jumped in, added 'Everyone' to permissions, gave full access. I then changed the Full Ownership from Administrators to SYSTEM, chose to remove permission inheritance, applied, deleted the file et voila.
Now obviously I may now be out of the woods yet in terms of infection, but atleast I'm back in my own Windows session!!
:D
Thanks everyone for your help, really is much appreciated!
Mark
11 Replies
I'm going to go out on a limb here- but either it wasn't clean (more than likely), the hard drive is damaged (very likely), or the laptop has other issues (possible).
Solution? wipe and reload from scratch. If the issues continue, replace hdd. if the issues still continue after that, replace the ram. at this point, it's getting to the point of not being worthwhile. If it's still in warranty at this point, get it dealt with.
Copy everything off the hard drives, reformat the laptop. Make sure you delete the old partition so that way you know it's gone for good.
However if that does fail put a new hard drive in the laptop.
Thanks guys,
I realise the easiest thing is to backup and reformat, but I feel I'm so close ><
I hate being defeated because there's almost always a solution out there, I've just not found it yet =[
I guess it's possible it's a hard drive issue, maybe something I'll look into, but it's only a year old, if even.
Assuming this isn't the result of a virus or some other software related problem a damaged HDD is always a possibility (regardless of age).
+1 for a fresh reload and then replace the HDD if that doesn't work. If it's a HDD problem the format and reload of the OS will very likely turn up the issue immediately.
The "riddled with malware and viruses" bit? Backup, wipe, and reload. In the long run, it's faster, easier, and entirely more reliable than trying to chase down and fix the issues caused by the infection.
However, before nuking the drive from low-Earth orbit, consider booting to the WRE and issuing the following commands from a command prompt:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
Reboot when complete. Boot sector viruses are on the uptick again. The commands above will write a clean copies of your boot sector and master boot record to the drive. If you're still having trouble, wipe and reload.
The first thing I would do is at boot up press F12 and run the onboard diags. The possibility of bad sectors in the location of the file could definitely cause problems. Depending on the drive make, (most dells are seagate drives), you can download and run seatools from disc and try to repair the bad sectors.
Larry_76 wrote:
The first thing I would do is at boot up press F12 and run the onboard diags. The possibility of bad sectors in the location of the file could definitely cause problems. Depending on the drive make, (most dells are seagate drives), you can download and run seatools from disc and try to repair the bad sectors.
Well my primary drive is a Crucial SSD so I'm afraid it wouldn't be Segate.
As an update, I'm currently running through tools found in Hiren's Boot CD, which is actually a fantastic tool. Turns out the .sys file in question is a rootkit infection, I just need to remove that and hopefully that will help. It seems it is sitting in the MBR, hence why the BootRec commands aren't working.
Ewww. Good luck with that. Hiren's is a great tool.
Well I fixed it.
And the way by which I fixed it was embarassingly easy.
No tools, nout
Basically, using the Mini Windows XP mode I browsed to C:\Windows\Drivers and saw the file. I jumped in, added 'Everyone' to permissions, gave full access. I then changed the Full Ownership from Administrators to SYSTEM, chose to remove permission inheritance, applied, deleted the file et voila.
Now obviously I may now be out of the woods yet in terms of infection, but atleast I'm back in my own Windows session!!
:D
Thanks everyone for your help, really is much appreciated!
Mark
This sometimes happens when you clone a disk to another too.
The driver that gets corrupted is either the one of the disk's driver or the power management driver.
Simply deleting it will force windows to reinstall it fresh and solve the problem. (either by booting Hiren or other 3rd party boot tools that lets you access the partition of your OS)
We offen encounter this when cloning disks for customers or changing from normal HDDs to SSD.
Good day,
Adam
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