Stuck in Getting Windows Ready - Now What??

[requiemdream]

So, I used your program at the advice of a Avast forum member and now my laptop is stuck on Getting Windows Ready for a half an hour. What do I do now?

[requiemdream]

OK did a hard reboot and it let me get to where I could do a system restore. How long should that take before I panic?

[Boggin]

Probably about now.

I've been stuck on a restore point a couple of times and did a power shutdown where I ended up with just a black screen and a big white arrow.

The first time it happened it would only boot up with a Kaspersky Rescue Disk which took about 9hrs to scan my system.

When it had completed, I hit the restart and went to make a cup of coffee - just to return to find it was running a chkdsk which fixed it.

The second time was just recently when it restarted following restoring with a system image, it just black screened with the big white arrow and had to take it in for repair where they needed to change the North Bridge chip.

I think there was a problem with the external HDD I was using which I've since had replaced under warranty.

You haven't said which version of Windows you are using.

Sometimes you can get it to boot up with a system repair disk where you can select the command prompt to run a chkdsk /f or /r but you also haven't said why you needed to run Windows Repair and I'm loathe to suggest you power shutdown, but if your HDD is failing or failed, you won't have a great deal of choice.

[requiemdream]

unning . Tried a hard reboot and it let me log in, albeit really really slow. Then I get a message that system restore did not finish. So, I am trying it again. Is there anyway that I can find that backed up registry file I made during the program and just reimport it?

[Boggin]

Sometimes trying a restore point in Safe Mode is better because an AV program can interfere.

Open Windows Repair and go to Option 5 where you will see the buttons to restore with the registry back up etc.

If when you select the Registry Restore from the menu bar and the dropdown box is empty, just click on the button to expand.

You haven't answered why you needed to run WR.

[requiemdream]

How do I get to Widows repair? BTW, I can hear my HD chattering away like crazy while it says 'restoring files'. But it has been an hour now. I started all this because my CPU was running at 100% and we could not figure out why.

[requiemdream]

that may not be my hd running. sounds like static?

[requiemdream]

OMG OMG OMG there's nothing there! I hit the back up button. I did both! WTH? OMG! Now what??? Is there anything I can do?

[Boggin]

It sounds as if your HDD may have failed, but you may only be able to determine that if you have access to another computer to download and create a bootable Seatools for DOS disk.

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/item/seatools-dos-master/

You haven't said which version of Windows you are using or make and model of computer.

If you are using Win 7 then you can create a System Repair disk on any other Win 7 machine providing it is the same 32 or 64 bit as yours and you may be able to boot up with that.

To find out what could be maxing out your CPU you should have checked Task Manager by right clicking in the task bar and clicking on Task Manager.

Under the Processes tab click on Show all processes then on the word Memory and that will sort them to the highest first.

Right click on the top one then click on Go to services and the culprit will be what is highlighted.