Insanityville

How to fix unbootable Windows from the Recovey Console

By in-sanity on May 21st, 2010

This is an update on my unbootable laptop. For the initial repair operation you can read here: Ubuntu saved me once again. It seems that my fix using the Ubuntu was just temporary Today when I arrived from work, started my laptop but surprise, it didn’t boot again.

It entered the recover console again. I waited until it was finished trying to repair my system and the I read the generated report. Again there were some reminiscent files from the bad game installation. I wrote them down on paper so I could locate them after a reboot.

These files that kept me busy for 2 days are:

sfsync02.sys
sfvfs20.sys
sfhlp02.sys
sfdrv01.sys

I should mention that the recovery report only contained 2 files at a time… so I had to run it a couple of times. After the first restart, I booted into Ubuntu and followed the steps mentioned in the previous posts but after restart, it still didn’t boot. After another restart the problem persisted but I had identified all the bad files.

I found myself face to face with the recovery menu so I chose to get into the command line. I navigated using the cd command to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers folder where the bad files were located and I deleted them using the following commands:

> dir sfsync02.sys # will display the file if it exists
> rm sfsync02.sys # will delete the specified file

After removing all the files, I went to C:\ and noticed a suspicious folder named .Trash… something. After looking into it I found copies of the files I had just deleted.

I removed the folder using the following command:

> rmdir /s .Trash # will delete the folder and all subfolders and files

After all of these operations I rebooted and my Windows 7 x64 Professional finally booted normally. I double checked this time to prevent an unpleasant surprise later