Vista - Vista hangs during startup

I have built up a new system...been running perfectly since August 2008.

2 nights ago I had just finished an update to itunes and some other apple software which required a restart. Upon restart, the system hung while booting...didn't get to the user account log-in screen....it froze with a blackscreen with the mouse cursor sitting there in the middle.

I have done the following things and observed the following behaviour:

• I have not added any hardware to the system
• Windows Update has doing automatic updates
• the systems boots and runs perfectly in safe mode with networking
• I have reverted to a couple of different restore points prior to installing the apple software...no change
• I have disabled all non-Microsoft software from starting up via Windows Defender...no change
• I can get the system to boot to where it displays the user accounts login screen. When I click on an account and enter the password it will hang at that point. Mouse continues to respond but no further response. Disk drive light goes solid but no sound of the disk operating
• If at the user account log in screen I select to shut the system down it will hang during shutdown
• checking the event logs shows a range of various fatal errors....I can provide more info on this at later posts if needed but the messages look quite similar to other posts given for a range of different behaviours so I am not sure which if any are relevant.
• Booting to the Vista CD and doing a repair found no errors.

In short, my perfectly happy and functioning system has suddenly gone mental for no obvious reason.

ANy suggestions greatfully appreciated.

Run memtest.

Hi Barryco,

Seems the Apple updates have caused some damage somewhere.

The startup repair did not help, because the problem occurs after Vista has booted. System restore only restores the o/s settings to that point. Seems other applications/ drivers have been affected.

You could try a variety of things like checking drivers in device manager, uninstalling all apps. one by one to see which may have been corrupted, running SFC, analysing event log errors...

Or you could do a Repair install which takes just over 20 -25 minutes

Repair Install For Vista

Hope it helps

SIW2

Thanks for the feedback.

SOme questions:

• how do I run memtest?
• What's SFC?
• I can't uninstall the Apple apps because in safe mode when I try and deinstall them I get an error "The Windows installer service is not available in Safe Mode. Please try again when your system is not in Safe Mode or you can use System Restore to return your machine to a previous good dtate"

Re: System Restore I don't understand the earlier post. Isn't the whole point that it takes you to an earlier version of the systm? SO if I do a system restore to a time before I did the Apple updates, shouldn't the system be like the updates were never applied?

My head hurts....

Thanks
Barry

Hi Barryco,

Suggest you try going into safe mode by tapping F8 after the Bios screen ( black writing on white screen ) and before Windows loads.

Arrow down to Last known good configuration and press Enter.

Hope it helps

SIW2

If nothing above helps, you probably need to reinstall Vista. Hope you have backup your data. Good luck.

Hello Barryco, welcome to Vista forums!

This is a tutorial about the command "sfc /scannow" have a look at the link below.

System Files - SFC Command

Also here's one about "System Restore".



Keep us informed!







Later Ted

Alas SFC found no errors.

I think I will go for the repair install.

I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks again for the advice.

Hello Barryco!

Thanks for the update; yes keep us informed!















Later Ted

Well it's sorted out but I am not quite sure what happened.

I found that if I waited when the system appeared to hang at login it eventually came back and ran OK after 10 mins or so. At that point a window popped up to tell me that Windows Update needs me to shutdown.

AFter doinf the shutdown things are good.

I'm guessing that what happened was that Windows Update was in the middle of doing some damn thing and what I took for a hang was actually it doing its thing installing, cleaning up or whatever. I'm used to snappy response on my PC as it is a fairly high spec machine so I am not used to waiting for more than a second or two for anything.

I have now set it to download automatically but ask me to choose what I install so that I have somecontrol over the process.

Thanks to you all for your help.

Barry