Hi

Yesterday i installed Alchohol 120 on my PC and when it rebooted it has been BSOD since. It wont let me enter Safe mode (or variants) or start Last Known Configuration, Repair options wont work and only place i can do anything seems to be in Repair Advanced. From there i can launch a DOS window and can manipulate some Windows.

If i try a System Restore i obtain "Unspecified Error" and aborts.

I dont wish to reinstall Windows and lose my C drive as my files are still there and this has only happened as a result of the install that has gone wrong. The System Restore shows Alcohol 120 was installed and files exist in Program Files.



I have an activity log from setupapi.dev.log that shows this install yesterday but i do not know how i may uninstall this software/driver from my limited position.

Can anyone help please?

Nat

Hi,

I realise Alcohol is the baddie but without being able to get into windows other than a command prompt i am a bit limited in what i can do unfortunately.

I found that file earlier and it made no differance either which is frustrating.

Ta

Natalie

In command prompt navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers and delete SPTD.sys

How to navigate: cd Change Directory

How to delete: MS-DOS del command help

Hi,

I had previously renamed that file and it still BSOD unfortunately, i have now also put the new one mentioned above and it has made no improvement.

I have a Repair CD but that wont allow anything to happen, Repair does nothing, Sys Restore fails with "unspecfied error", Safe Modes BSOD, Last known config BSOD so only place i can get access to it is via a command prompt but then seem limited in what i can do.

At that stage i am on a differnt OS instance so regedit is not the faulty registry, devcon (a cmdline Device Manager) is not working on the damaged OS but the good one (The recovery OS).

My files are all good and still there, once i switch to the C drive everything is where it was which is why its frustrating not being able to (or know how to) clean out the install from Friday night as i must be able to manually go into areas and remove them one by one in order to get the OS up, i cant believe the GUI is the only way i am supposed to be able to rectify this.

Guess i need to research a Vista install process and then see if i can access all those points in DOS to remove entries, i did try editing them all out of HKM> Local Machine > Software but made no differanct but maybe there are other keys in other areas, assuming at the stage of the Blue screen that the registry is even being accessed.

Natalie

If you can edit the registry then change the Value of the Start sub-key under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\sptd key to 4

However, considering that you can't even go into Safe Mode - which does not load the SPTD driver at all, I think there might be deeper issues here.

You should back up your data now.

One way you can do this is by using Ubuntu. This is completely free, and has the advantage that it can be run off a USB stick or a CD - saving you having to install it on your hard drive.

You can get it from here: Download | Ubuntu

Step #2 on that page shows you how to create the USB/CD.

Then once you boot into it (choose the option where it just runs off the USB/CD) you can use it to copy your files from the Windows Partition to an external hard drive (Note: Do not copy anything to the Ubuntu Filesystem as it will not be saved on shut-down)

Regards,
Reventon

ippety yaaay!

Well, seems fixed, just did a System Restore back to end of July (which incidentally failed) and now back to the Desktop. Perhaps this is a secondary issue as i am confident i have used System Restore on it.

Anyhoo, in the course of trying to fix this rather than cop out and reinstall i came across lots and lots of threads with similar issues about being trapped in the cycle i was so, perhaps embarassingly simple in the end (hindsight a great thing!) i had started to look into editing the Registry as suspected if Drivers were loading then something must be telling it to do that so most likely a problem i could fix by obtaining some kind of nice Remote Registry app.

Whilst digging around the directory where the Registry lives;

c:\windows\system32\config

I noticed a RegBack directory and in there was a number of registry files entries preceeding Fridays probable last good Boot (17:05) before all the problems started after the reboot during install (18:11).

So, i renamed all the registry files in "c:\windows\system32\config" that were date and timed after 06/08/2010 05:05 and then simply copied the files FROM "c:\windows\system32\config\RegBack" dated 06/08/2010 05:05 (some were older so i left those and moved ONLY the relevant timed ones) to "c:\windows\system32\config", rebooted and wah hey!

I dont know if this would have helped all those that gave up or used other methods, perhaps i had been helped by having rebooted earlier that night but i'm sure that there would be a recent registry file dump in there so if ever stuck in a BSOD cycle then this simple copy method may do the trick.

Natalie

Thank you for that, I had not considered that there might be a Registry Backup. I will remember this post for future use.