Can't boot into Windows after power failure...

I've done a lot of googling and I have been unable to find a solution to my problem. At 8:00 AM yesterday, I had a power failure. My desktop was suspended in sleep mode while the outage occurred and successfully booted up once after the power failure. I noticed there was no sound so I tried rebooting the computer a second time and then my computer booted straight to start up repair. It was unable to fix any problems and continues to boot to start up repair with the same result over and over. I have not installed any new hardware and am running out of ideas.

Here is what I have tried so far with no luck:
bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot, bootrec /rebuildbcd
booting into safe mode
booting to last known good configuration
unplugging all usb devices at sttartup
setting bios to default settings, changing boot orders
memtest
chkdsk /r

Here is the message startup repair provides:
Problemm Signature:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7100.00
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7100.00
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: 21201254
Problem Signature 05: AutoFailover
Problem Signature 06: 21
Problem Signature 07: CorruptFile
OS Version: 6.1.7100.2.0.0.256.1
Local ID: 1033


I am running Windows 7 RC 7100 64 bit on a custom built pc (Intel e8400 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, Nvdia 8600 gt, asus Striker II mobo). I got the official release from microsoft. This is the first and only problem I have had with Windows 7 . I was planning on making my first backup this week as well so my timing couldn't have been worse. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

It looks like you have done alot already, i cant suggest really annything else, but to do a clean install, sorry bout the unhelpful advice.

Not unhelpful, I was just hoping to avoid that because I have a lot of files and programs I don't want to reinstall

I just ran the command sfc /scannow and it keeps giving me an error message along the lines of "A repair is already scheduled, please reboot". I have tried running the command off the built in system recovery console and the one from the windows 7 dvd and they both give this message. Is there a way to disable or stop this pending scan its talking about?

Hi bprrccllo,

Hmmm... your power failure may have caused wierd file corruption. I would try doing a chkdsk scan. it may repair/fix system file errors. It will run at next boot... let it do its thing ;-)

you can use the command prompt option in your Start-up Repair menu to do this too:

type in this command:

chkdsk /r

not sure if it will fix your issue but it cant hurt to try :-)

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have tried this and it says there are no errors

Have you tried all of this from a Windows 7 install disk already? I would have thought if you used the install DVD to run the repair it would take precedent and complete the repair.

You've tried everything I already know of! I have heard of this issue before where a power loss during a sleep state wreaked havoc with someone's install. It's why I suggest either shutting off the machine or using hibernate since all RAM data is written to disk and doesn't require power to be safe.

If you have a spare hard drive you might install W7 on it, and that should give you full access to the original drive contents and original OS. You could then use the new OS to run W7's version of chkdisk on it to find any corrupted files, but I'm not confident that would help. If you could track down what OS file to delete this method would also let you do so to disable the scheduled repair... that's about the last of my ideas though, sorry.

oops sorry.... must've missed that fix in your orginal post ....


Olg207 maybe right about the clean install... :-(

Did you inspect your computer for any damage because of power outage? maybe it zapped something. I had that happen on a old pc that had XP on it. power outage took out the onboard network . jsut a thought..

I tried everything from both the install DVD and the repair console that is built in. I will try and get my hands on another HDD tho since that seems to be the only other thing I can try at this point. Thanks for your help.

No worries

I looked around and everything seems fine. Nothing looks damaged, no strange smells or smoke. I think somehow, the power outtage corrupted some system file and I'm hoping there's still a way to repair it : \

I also ran bcdedit /set {default} recoveryenabled No which stopped startup repair from starting, but now I get an error message telling me "Windows failed to load because a critical system file is missing or corrupt" and it says the file is \Windows\system32\DRIVERS\nvstor64.sys. It just tells me to use the Windows DVD to repair and has me running in circles. I am really hoping there is some magical command I can run that will repair the corrupted files and let me back into windows

did you try doing a repair installation? it works just like a upgrade... all files and user setting are saved...

Startup Repair

hope this helps