problems after installing some Eindows update

[MushroomNZ]

after installing several windows updates i get a message when i boot
up :
unexpected i/o error 0x00000E9

I can slso get a message saying windows didnt start normally and to
check for errors or
to continue starting. If I continue
with start it comes up ok.
i turned on boot loggibg.this message
nappens before the drivers are loaded.
No viruses, disk is fine .checked it with diskpatch
and chkdsk. PC then operates normally.
nothing in event viewer.

any odeas?

 

[Paul]

after installing several windows updates i get a message when i boot
up :
unexpected i/o error 0x00000E9

I can slso get a message saying windows didnt start normally and to
check for errors or
to continue starting. If I continue
with start it comes up ok.
i turned on boot loggibg.this message
nappens before the drivers are loaded.
No viruses, disk is fine .checked it with diskpatch
and chkdsk. PC then operates normally.
nothing in event viewer.

any odeas?

In a quick search, the error seems to involve:

1) Happens early in boot process.
2) Before full OS is running.
3) In some cases, mentions "bootmgr".

Your Windows 7 installation, may consist of one or two partitions.
For example, my laptop has a 100MB "SYSTEM RESERVED" partition and
the 40GB main C: partition "ACER".

Both partitions are NTFS file systems. You should be able to
CHKDSK both of them.

The 100MB partition is only partially filled. While it has a
"System Volume Information" folder, the System Restore shouldn't
be adding things to that folder. If it were to do that, there have
been cases where the 100MB partition fills up. That's never happened
on my laptop (filled up).

The SYSTEM RESERVED partition is part of the boot sequence. It
exists to get around applications of BitLocker full encryption
to C:. When the system starts, it needs some unencrypted space
from which to bootstrap itself. And that's what the tiny
partition provides.

You can also do an installation, where the "boot" folder ends up
on the main C: partition. Which doesn't hurt anything, except if
you wanted to use BitLocker at some future date.

*******

I'm not writing this from the laptop. Normally, I'm using a WinXP
machine. I keep copies (made by System Image) on my desktop machine.
And that's how I can examine the file system on the laptop - I'm
looking at a copy of the file system.

This is the current state of my two laptop partitions, as seen
in a Linux VM (that's how I mount the .vhd files, imaged from
the laptop).

1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted
104422 58070 46352 56% /media/SYSTEM RESERVED
41943132 32932280 9010852 79% /media/Acer

The SYSTEM RESERVED is around 100MB, and a bit more than half used.
And I don't think that changes in a major way.

This is a listing of the contents of SYSTEM RESERVED partition.

drwx------ 1 <username> 4096 2011-05-13 12:08 Boot
-rw------- 1 <username> 383786 2010-11-20 03:40 bootmgr <--- pretty important
drwx------ 1 <username> 4096 2012-08-09 10:58 System Volume Information

../Boot:
-rw------- 1 <username> 28672 2012-08-09 10:58 BCD
-rw------- 1 <username> 25600 2012-08-09 10:58 BCD.LOG
-rw------- 2 <username> 0 2010-06-06 07:45 BCD.LOG1
-rw------- 2 <username> 0 2010-06-06 07:45 BCD.LOG2
-rw------- 1 <username> 65536 2010-06-06 07:45 BOOTSTAT.DAT
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 cs-CZ
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 da-DK
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 de-DE
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 el-GR
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 en-US
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 es-ES
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 fi-FI
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2010-06-06 07:45 Fonts
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 fr-FR
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 hu-HU
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 it-IT
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 ja-JP
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 ko-KR
-rw------- 1 <username> 485760 2010-11-20 03:30 memtest.exe
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 nb-NO
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 nl-NL
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 pl-PL
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 pt-BR
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 pt-PT
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 ru-RU
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 sv-SE
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 tr-TR
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 zh-CN
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 zh-HK
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2011-05-13 12:08 zh-TW

../Boot/cs-CZ:
-rw------- 2 <username> 89168 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/da-DK:
-rw------- 2 <username> 87616 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/de-DE:
-rw------- 2 <username> 91712 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/el-GR:
-rw------- 2 <username> 94800 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/en-US:
total 131
-rw------- 2 <username> 85056 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui
-rw------- 2 <username> 43600 2009-07-13 22:11 memtest.exe.mui

../Boot/es-ES:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90192 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/fi-FI:
-rw------- 2 <username> 89152 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/Fonts:
-rw------- 1 <username> 3694080 2009-06-10 16:31 chs_boot.ttf
-rw------- 1 <username> 3876772 2009-06-10 16:31 cht_boot.ttf
-rw------- 1 <username> 1984228 2009-06-10 16:31 jpn_boot.ttf
-rw------- 1 <username> 2371360 2009-06-10 16:31 kor_boot.ttf
-rw------- 2 <username> 47452 2009-06-10 16:31 wgl4_boot.ttf

../Boot/fr-FR:
-rw------- 2 <username> 93248 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/hu-HU:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90688 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/it-IT:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90704 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/ja-JP:
-rw------- 2 <username> 76352 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/ko-KR:
-rw------- 2 <username> 75344 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/nb-NO:
-rw------- 2 <username> 88144 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/nl-NL:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90704 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/pl-PL:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90704 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/pt-BR:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90176 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/pt-PT:
-rw------- 2 <username> 89664 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/ru-RU:
-rw------- 2 <username> 90192 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/sv-SE:
-rw------- 2 <username> 87616 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/tr-TR:
-rw------- 2 <username> 87104 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/zh-CN:
-rw------- 2 <username> 70720 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/zh-HK:
-rw------- 2 <username> 70224 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../Boot/zh-TW:
-rw------- 2 <username> 70208 2009-07-13 21:17 bootmgr.exe.mui

../System Volume Information:
-rw------- 2 <username> 65536 2012-08-09 10:58 {3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
-rw------- 2 <username> 33554432 2012-08-09 10:58 {e6b86325-e231-11e1-836a-705ab6fd80b9}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
drwx------ 1 <username> 0 2012-08-09 10:58 SPP
-rw------- 1 <username> 20480 2010-10-22 19:17 tracking.log

../System Volume Information/SPP:
-rw------- 2 <username> 37152 2012-08-09 10:58 metadata-2
drwx------ 1 <username> 4096 2012-08-09 10:58 OnlineMetadataCache
-rw------- 2 <username> 7104 2012-08-09 10:58 snapshot-2

../System Volume Information/SPP/OnlineMetadataCache:
-rw------- 2 <username> 7104 2012-07-09 00:37 {1652701e-b135-43c3-8283-9204a94eac8c}_OnDiskSnapshotProp
-rw------- 2 <username> 7104 2012-08-09 10:58 {690188eb-b30b-4afd-ab9c-70ecd65cb8a2}_OnDiskSnapshotProp

HTH,
Paul

 

[MushroomNZ]

i can see the 100 meg partition.
it shows as "system reserved" it is 100 meg with 70 megs used.
In computer management it shows healthy but that may not mean much.
it shows system active primary partition
but my C patition shows boot so i dont knw if i am booting from there.

if i right click on "system reserved" go to tools and try to
do error checking nothing happens.
dont know how to do chkdsk on it and
dont want to take a chance by assigning a drive letter

also notice i dont have a problem if i retart windows, only if PC
is shut down and i start it up by hitting switch, although both
methods go
through the bios again.

any ideas

thanks

 

[Paul]

i can see the 100 meg partition.
it shows as "system reserved" it is 100 meg with 70 megs used.
In computer management it shows healthy but that may not mean much.
it shows system active primary partition
but my C patition shows boot so i dont knw if i am booting from there.

if i right click on "system reserved" go to tools and try to
do error checking nothing happens.
dont know how to do chkdsk on it and
dont want to take a chance by assigning a drive letter

also notice i dont have a problem if i retart windows, only if PC
is shut down and i start it up by hitting switch, although both
methods go
through the bios again.

any ideas

thanks

See if there's a mountvol utility on Windows 7 ? I
haven't checked, but there should still be one.

I was playing with that on WinXP a while ago. Message
is archived here.

http://al.howardknight.net/msgid.cgi?STYPE=msgid&A=0&MSGI=<[email protected]>

You'd see if you could use mountvol to list all the
volumes. And see if the SYSTEM RESERVED was referenced
or not. When they use the SYSTEM RESERVED scheme, in
fact there's no reason to keep it mounted. (Linux
uses a similar idea, and their equivalent of
SYSTEM RESERVED is unmounted when the OS is running.)

Anyway, if you can get mountvol to give you an
identifier, you can run CHKDSK using the mountvol ID.

The identifier can be a bit sensitive to the trailing
character. When I tested that, using "dir" as a
command, it needed an extra "\" on the end. Like this.
This is the equivalent of dir C:\ .

dir \\?\Volume{ed012da7-78f1-11e0-a53f-001fc68cdcf4}\\

Such a technique for CHKDSK is shown here. Their
example string doesn't have any trailing "\" so
perhaps the terminator isn't an issue in this case.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457122.aspx

chkdsk \\?\Volume{2d9bd2a8-5df8-11d2-bdaa-000000000000}

You would do that from a command prompt. Go to the Start
place where you type in a command, and enter "cmd" to
get the command prompt program to show up. If the MSDOS
window needs to be "elevated", you can right click on
the thing the search finds, and select "Run as Administrator"
to elevate the whole cmd window. You'd then enter the
CHKDSK command in there, with whatever arguments you want.
Note that CHKDSK takes different parameters, depending on
which OS it is, whether you're in recovery console or
in the OS, and so on. I suppose you can also try
chkdsk /? to get the online help.

And if that doesn't work or isn't getting you anywhere,
do a diagnostic on the disk, and make sure the disk
isn't in SMART trouble or the like (i.e. about to fail).
It could just be a blemish in the file system of the
small partition, but you never know.

Both Western Digital and Seagate, have test programs to
test the disk is OK. They don't give nice English text
when a fault is found, just an "error code". The diagnostic
exists, as a way to prove you deserve warranty help.

There are other utilities that report the current
SMART statistics. But you'll need a little help
to interpret the results, because sometimes they
flag things that are unimportant. (HDTune gives
all my disks a couple yellow "caution" marks, where
there isn't actually a problem. Virtually every
new drive I buy, has yellow marks for the same
two parameters, so it's a mistake. The important
parameters, in my opinion, are Reallocated Sector
Count and Current Pending Sector.)

Paul

 

[MushroomNZ]

was able to use mountvol and get volid,
then do a chkdsk onthat volid . shows the right size and all. No
problems with the file system.

SMART data on the drive says its fine.

 

[Paul]

was able to use mountvol and get volid,
then do a chkdsk onthat volid . shows the right size and all. No
problems with the file system.

SMART data on the drive says its fine.

Well, that's all the easy (safe) things I can think to do to it.

*******

I'm not 100% happy with my understanding of what
damages Windows 7 installs, so I can't advise doing
something more aggressive.

To give an example, if, on WinXP, I have a partition
that gets "stuck" in CHKDSK (can't fix), I might

1) Copy off all the files to a safe place (robocopy)
2) Reformat the partition.
3) Copy all the files back.
4) If the partition was C:, do a "fixboot" to put back the
partition boot sector (which gets flushed when you reformat
a partition).

I'm comfortable doing that in WinXP. But I can't be 100%
certain doing such things in Windows 7 is safe. Part of the
uncertainty, comes from the contents of System Volume Information,
which may not be "regular files". So treating them like regular
files, would damage some of those files. While working
in Linux, I checksummed those files, and the checksum was
zero, implying all the data sectors were returning zeros
and the sectors weren't really there. So some of the files
in there, are not "real files". They're used for tracking
changes somehow (volume shadow service). And I don't know
how to safely handle them.

Windows 7 has "System Image", which you could use to copy
one or more partitions to a backup volume (external disk),
then, using the installer DVD or the system recovery CD
they ask you to burn, you can "put back" the partitions
later. Perhaps the copying and re-writing that does,
would be enough to fix it. That's about all I can offer
in the "likely safe to try" category. If the system is
having trouble reading "bootmgr" file, maybe writing it
back to the system will offer a chance to resolve
bad sectors or whatever. If the system doesn't boot after
doing that, the system repair features should cut in and
fix it.

I've had one case, where the system repair feature didn't
work, even after doing it's max three tries (the repair
does different things, depending on how many tries it's
made to fix things - when it does a full CHKDSK, that
takes a couple hours). So the system repair feature is
not completely bulletproof. And then, you'd be
in serious trouble...

When working on my laptop, I have the option of unplugging
the hard drive, and wiring it up to my desktop. (That's the
machine I'm typing on.) I keep System Restore turned off
in WinXP, so if the laptop Windows 7 hard drive is ever
connected, WinXP won't overwrite anything on System
Volume Information. I do things like make backup copies,
do whatever experiments I might like, then return the drive
to the laptop. Sometimes, it's faster doing it that way,
than using 30MB/sec USB hard drives connected to the
laptop itself. And by having a good backup, one I trust
(a different method than System Image), if the experiments
fail to improve things, it's "back into the WinXP box,
do a restore".

Paul