Last year, my friend was given an old laptop by our local school who was replacing it. We opened it up to salvage for parts (there wasn't much useful in it) and he allowed me to keep the hard-drive to add some storage to the Linux machine I recently built (specs below). Before I wiped it, I wanted to see if there was actually anything on it, and I was pleasantly suppressed: the hard drive contained a copy of windows 7! There are some softwares that I could use that can only run on windows, so I decided not to wipe the hard drive. When I boot it up, though, it asks me to boot in recovery mode, runs through several dialogues, and invariably ends up at a "Windows cannot repair the computer automatically". Running windows normally simply reboots the computer, and (again) asks me if I want to run windows in recovery mode. (spoiler alert: again choosing to run windows normally again reboots the machine and so fourth...) The error message and my computer specs below:
Specs:
AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor
Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard
Asus GeForce GTX 650 2GB Video Card
EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
2x Seagate Barracuda 1500GB Hard Drives (both removed temporarily).
Error Message:
Startup Repair diagnosis and repair log
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Last successful boot time: 4/25/2015 2:56:06 PM (GMT)
Number of repair attempts: 7
Session details
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System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = D:\windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1
Test Performed:
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Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 31 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 187 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 344 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 93 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 63 ms
Root cause found:
--------------------------
Startup Repair has tried several times but still cannot determine the cause of the problem.
--------------------------
--------------------------
Session Details
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System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = D:\windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 47 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 187 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 359 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 0ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 109 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time Taken: 47 ms
Root cause found:
--------------------------
Startup Repair has tried several times but still cannot determine the cause of the problem.
--------------------------
--------------------------
Session details
--------------------------
System disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = D: \windows
AutoChk run = 0
Number of root causes: 1
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 31 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 203 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 359 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 93 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 63 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Boot status test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 31 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Setup state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 546 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Registry hives test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 3037 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Windows boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Bugcheck analysis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 843 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Access control test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 10420 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: File system test (chkdsk)
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 47082 ms
Test Performed:
--------------------------
Name: Software installation log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms
Root cause found:
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A recent driver installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from starting.
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