Booting Issues

I was on my laptop, An Acer Aspire, a few days ago. I was running Google Chrome, Itunes (which was downloading a software update for my ipod) and I had just downloaded and installed windows Live 11. Another update was in the middle of installing, but I am not sure if it finished or not.

My laptop over heated, and after waiting for it to cool down I tried to reboot. It would not start, to my surprise. It got up to the load screen with the scrolling green bar, then a black screen showing my mouse pointer appeares, and then it goes black. A couple seconds later it goes to a screen informing me that Windows failed to start properly, and suggests that I do a system repair on it.

System repair runs, and it finds a problem. It tells me to run a system Restore, which I have several restore points for. I have tried them all, going back to october 16th. The latest one I have is a system checkpoint, and the earliest is for the morning of the problem, which installed an update.

Since System Restore did not work, I went and tried to boot into Safe mode. none of the options for safe mode worked. I then tried to go back to the last Known Good configuration, which also didnt work. It just kept bringing me back to the system repair screen.

I clicked on the information and diagnostics, and about near the bottom it says that Windows failed to load due to a bad patch. I contacted microsoft tech, and they sent me an email thinking it was an issue where it gets stuck on a update loop. It is not. It does not get past the black screen with the scroll bar at the bottom.

I have a restore disk, and tried booting from that. It takes me to system repair, and still known of those options work. I can get intoComman prompt and see that all of my files are still there. Is there any way to fix this? Tech told me to try to rename pending.xml, but windows could not find that file. Is there a way to find the failed update via command prompt or notepad and remove it?

Help?

I need to give your problem thought, before giving an answer. If you did overheat, there may be major hardware problems.
Until your computer is up and running, please be aware that there are major known issues with ITunes and Vista. Many articles have been published. If you insist on using ITunes be sure that you have the most up to date version.
BSOD, being the most serious
http://gizmodo.com/5047721/itunes-8-causing-huge-problems-bsod-for-vista-users

Tuscansam,

There's no way to use Command Prompt to remove updates as they spread files everywhere and sometimes/often update the registry.

Go to Command Mode on the disk, cd to C:\Windows\System32. Type sfc /scannow and enter and let it run. It will scan and try to fix some of your system files. Hopefully it will complete with no corruption it could not repair (if there is such corruption post back here or try to analyze it to find the problem file(s) using http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228. Try to attach the report (if you have a way to copy it from the machine (perhaps even to the disc if you have the right kind) and it will permit you to attach it) here so we can see if they can be repaired with good copies from the installation disk (unless there are too many).

While in Command Prompt, type chkdsk /f /r and enter and let it run. It will want to schedule itself to run at the next restart. Answer yes and then reboot to run the program. It will scan and try to fix any corruption or bad sectors on your hard drive and mostly remove that as a potential cause.

Incidentally, when running System Restore, on the screen where you select other date options in the lower left is a box to show more than 5 days worth of restore points. Be sure to check that to make sure you are seeing all the options - you may have more than you realize.

Also cd to C:\Windows\Minidump and copy any .dmp files there as well, zip them up, and attach them to your next reply - they may help us find the problem.

I hope this helps.

Good luck!

In addition to the excellent advice, just given, here is information regarding the dmp files, which were requested.
Applicable to Seven and Vista
Dump files - Upload to Seven Forums - Windows 7 Forums