Ive got a friends computer I'm trying to fix for him. Windows 7, AMD AM2 CPU of some sort, nvidia based board. It only starts up into start up repair mode. Ive tried safe mode, debugging mode, all do the same and load up Startup Repair. The startup repair doesn't find anything usefull. I did a memory test, HDD diagnostic. As far as i can tell nothings wrong with the hardware. What's interesting is I took the HDD out and booted to it in my intel Q6600 system and it loaded up windows without a problem. I thought it might have been a Windows update that installed recently that's causing the issue. So I removed a few of the most recent updates without any success. (with the help of my Q6600 system). This is the second time this has happened. Last time I backed everything up and reinstalled windows. This time I'm attempting to avoid making the same mistake twice. Is there a way to see what's causing windows to stop loading windows normally and load up startup repair? Where the boot process is failing? Any Ideas? I'll see if I can provide some more specific details.
Wow.... I realised the Bios was about a year old. Updated, and it started up first try. Still a little confused as to why it would decide to stop booting like that. Will update if i run into further issues. Board was a Asus M3N78-VM.
Might be worth a full scan with a decent AV. The recent windows update boot-up failure was due to Alureon rootkit infection, not the update. Article here.
