Windows 7 bluescreens, even in safe mode and repair

Delzhand

It's been so many years since I've had to deal with a BSOD, but my wife's computer refuses to boot up and it fell to me to deal with it. Also, since I so rarely need help with my own computer, I sorta don't know what the protocol around here is for tech support threads. I thought H/A had a collective computer thread, but I don't see it.

Anyway, like the title says, Windows 7 refuses to start. If I try to start it normally, it gets to the logo animation and quickly freezes up, then restarts. If I try to boot into safe mode, it blue screens with a memory error (something related to ntfs.sys, I'll grab the exact code if that helps). Same thing trying to go into repair mode.

I've tried googling the issue, but every single link google returns basically says "use start mode" or "system repair tools", and I can't figure out how to google for "windows 7 bsod safe mode doesn't work, fuckass". I just want to be pointed in the right direction - If I can figure out some better search terms and get some slightly more relevant results, that would help.

Darkwyndre

ntfs.sys is the file system driver. If it is corrupt, you will not be able to do anything.

If you have the Windows 7 CD; however, you can boot from the CD and run the repair tool from there, which should allow you to repair the problem.

Ego

Yeah, sounds like either the file system or a memory error from a bad stick.

If it's crashing this much, I would generally just consider the problem to be one of the following:

-bad stick of memory
-bad hard drive
-bad PSU
-bad GPU (though it has to be pretty broken to crash a system that much, and you'd normally expect artifacting as a symptom.)
-bad mainboard

You can narrow this down immensely by grabbing the memtest iso, burning it onto a CD, and booting it in the problem system. This'll help you eliminate both the file system and the memory as problems.

If you get memory errors on memtest, pull your RAM and test one stick at a time. If you get crashes before a test can be run, pull your memory and try your system with one stick of memory at a time booting up to memtest.

If you can't get memtest to run, even cycling memory, you can be pretty sure that it's a PSU/GPU/Mainboard problem.

If you have multiple systems, you can swap the PSU from a working one pretty easily to further narrow this down. Ditto if you have a spare GPU.

Hope this helped.

Darkwyndre

It's almost certainly a corrupt driver. That particular error comes when that driver file gets corrupted. If it was bad memory, it would not crash every time, as that particular file would not be addressed to same bad memory every time.

It's not easy to say why the file is corrupt (Could be several things) but that particular error with that file only happens if that file is corrupt and cannot be read.

Delzhand

Couldn't find my windows 7 disc anywhere, but I was able to fix it by booting with an ubuntu live cd and running ntfsfix.

Thanks for the help! Thread can be locked.