Different instances of Vista after boot failure

[wolluf]

Not so much a question, more a muse...

Couple of weeks ago my vista installation failed to boot (corrupt ntfs.sys it said) - no obvious reason why. On restart it did boot - after saying there was a failure - but the boot entry showed vista (recovered). Then after that it booted ok. So I edited the recovered out using Vista Boot pro.

Around the same time my Acronis backup started failing to read a particular sector - finished ok if ignored. I ran chkdsk - but it found no errors.

Yesterday the Acronis error resurfaced, and today the boot problem reoccurred. This time 'last known good' worked, so I ran another chkdsk, which found no errors, but after complete no option would boot. So I used the repair feature - and it finished saying it had failed to effect repair. I attempted a system restore - but it said there were no restore points available. However, after failing to repair, my system did boot after selecting the (recovered} boot option. Once back in I checked system restore and found 2 entries for C: drive - one saying 'missing' but ticked to enable restore, the other unticked and obviously the current. So presume a second 'instance' must have been created at some point (when creating (recovered) boot entry perhaps) leaving the original not attached to any actual filestore/restore option.

I have restored to a pre-Acronis failure backup, ensured system restore enabled & checked Acronis working ok, and everything looks ok, but obviously will need watching.

Thought I'd share this - and see if anyone has seen anything similar/would like to comment.

Note: I have had a couple of customers whose vista installations developed boot problems for no obvious reason - repair didn't work either and with no backup strategy I had to do a clean install/image recovery in both cases.

 

[vacunita]

If I where you I'd look into the Hard Drive's manufacturers website for their diagnostic tools. It seems to me the drive is developing some bad sectors which is causing the failure. Once it restores, it places the damaged files in other locations, and moves on, until they are damaged as well.

So in short run drive tools just to be sure the hard drive is o.k.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[linney]

Being a Vista machine I take it the the suspect drive and the machine itself are still covered by some warranty from the manufacturers?

There is also some anecdotal evidence of running ChkDsk on Vista can cause specific (non-booting) problems due to a bit of a bug. It makes me loathed to run ChkDsk other than in read-only mode, in the first instance, to just check on the error condition of the drive, before using the more powerful parameters such as /r or /f etc.

Is ChkDsk still a worry when run in Vista?

http://social.answers.microsoft.com...s/thread/73df6210-7818-45fc-b9e6-d266541b96ae

 

[UUVGuy]

I had a similar problem. My machine froze solid and I had to use reset to get it started again. I was in a dual boot configuration with XP as the second OS. Upon restart, Vista said there had been a problem and ran CHKDSK on its own.
After it completed, it seemed to boot up normally as I got the login screen. I opted to do a restart from there in order to get a clean shutdown and restart but after the reboot, Vista said the BSD boot file was corrupt. I tried the repair option on the install disk and that just made it worse since it now said that I had a missing digital signature on my ntoskernl file and no amount of safe mode or trying to boot by bypassing the signature would allow it to boot. I have since reinstalled Vista on another HD.

 

[wolluf]

The drive doesn't have any problems (sorry, should have mentioned, my first action on a suspect hard drive is always to run manufacturer's diagnostic).

The machine, like all I use is a self-build - but I'm 99.99% certain there's nothing wrong with it (XP dual boot on same machine has no issues). After restoring from earlier backup, Acronis has no problems. I don't think the original issue was physical - suspect possible interaction between apps, but don't know what.

The main reason I posted was the loss of system restore on the drive without me being aware - obviously not a good thing - and it would be nice to know if it was caused by Vista's creation of a (recovered) instance in its boot menu.

Linney - I wasn't aware of possible issues with vista's chkdsk - and when I ran it, it found no problems (so you'd hope it made no changes, but obviously something changed). I'll certainly treat it more circumspectly in future!

 

[UUVGuy]

I noticed that once I was able to get back into my Vista drive, CHKDSK had moved all of my document files into a found0000.chk set of files as well as all my program files. I had about 53 of these files on the disk. I was never able to restore so did a clean install and all seems to be working now. I now have an external drive to do backups on!!