Fixing Win7 Not Booting? (attempts Documented Inside)

Background info: I was looking for an alternative to iTunes earlier this week for podcasts and came across two that were highly recommended—I believe they were MediMonkey and dr.fone?—but in the process of installing and/or uninstalling them and iTunes, it would appear I inadvertently harmed my system.

The same evening after trying out those two, my computer failed to boot into Windows. It would get partially into the beginning welcome screen, where the colored dots come together to form the Win logo, but it quickly blue screens and reboots, in an endless loop unless I step in.

Some more info...

• I'm running Win7 64-bit (or "was running" I suppose, since it's currently not...).
  
• Trying Last Good Configuration and all the variations of Safe Mode also fail; if I do Safe Mode where it lists all the 'stuff' loading, it seems to consistently fail on avdevprot.sys.
• I've tried a couple System Restores but the only available points appear to be after I'd been trying out the podcast programs, so I think the issue had already taken place. Regardless, each Restore hasn't fixed the boot issue.
  
• I do have a repair disk and can get into the repair environment, but I've run nearly a dozen startup repairs over the last few days. I've lost track of all the various replies, but it's returned a mix of not being able to repair the system and then not finding any issues. I've read a few threads where you need to do three startup repairs in a row, which I have; no change.
  • The latest repair just now spit back a "Windows cannot repair this computer successfully" message. Details give this:
    • A recent driver installation or upgrade may be preventing the system from starting.
    • Repair Action: System files integrity check and repair
    • Result: Failed. Error code = 0x490
• I've attempted various iterations of repairing MBR and BCD; the one concrete thing I can report there is that the /ScanOs command returns that there are 0 Windows installations; I'm trying to fix that now as well.
  
• Chkdsk appears to be fine.

The end results is that attempting to boot normally still gives a quick blue screen at the "starting" screen.

So that's all I can think of for now... As you can tell, I'm trying everything I can think of, with no luck. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong, or what else can be done? I'd be happy to try specific steps or report back with error messages/codes, if that would help.

Thanks ahead of time...

 

One more bit of info: I disabled BSOD auto-restart and see that the relevant error appears to be...

"SYSTEM_LICENSE_VIOLATION
Technical information:
*** STOP: 0x0000009A"

Also ran /sfc last night and it didn't find anything wrong.

 

Also run a disk check from Command Prompt.

Code:

chkdsk /r C:

 

Thanks Eldon, but I did that already and it didn't return any errors; apologies if that line wasn't clear in the first post (last bullet):

 

Sorry, I missed that.

Having another look at all you have done, it's possible that the drive is failing.
Before trying any other possible repairs, remove the drive, attach it to another PC using a SATA (or IDE) to USB cable, and copy your important files.

Have you tried all of these options?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-za...the-windows-re-to-troubleshoot-startup-issues

 

The details on the blue screen should help track down the cause: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...gger/bug-check-0x9a--system-license-violation

 

Since this is an "old-fashioned" hdd, I've been thinking of swapping it out for an SSD anyway. If I were to procure an SSD, would copying/mirroring the potentially failing drive's contents over be feasible? Is that even possible when I only have access to a command prompt and/or DVD/USB bootup?

That appears to be what I tried yesterday, but I jotted down the specific results today...

• Bootrec.exe /fixmbr: Operation completed successfully
• Bootrec.exe /fixboot: Operation complete successfully
• Bootrec.exe /rebuild bcd: Total Windows installations: 0; Operations completed succesfully

The full SYSTEM_LICENSE_VIOLATION error appears to be *** STOP: 0x0000009A (0x0000000000000003, 0x00000000c0000034, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000), but I honestly have no idea how to compare the error I'm seeing with what's listed in the link you provided: the content is pure Greek to me...

 

I would copy any data to another hard drive using an external enclosure, and then think about the following....
This problem seems to point to copying data to another computer, and re-installing - But I did see a possibility (I have not tried it)
https://social.technet.microsoft.co...9868/recovering-windows-7-registry-hivesfiles
Best solution seems to have been From karls093, using the dvd ......
karls093 solution seems to have been successful several times, but if your data is important, then a data copy would be a lifesaver

 

Your second parameter 0x0c000034 (could you double-check your string please, it has too many 0's?), doesn't show in that table, so I'm unsure of the exact cause.

Note that almost all the causes there are down to Windows licensing problems, are you sure the key/product type is legit and you didn't attempt to change the key last time it booted to Windows?

The Reg. hives recovery should fix an error with incorrect key changed during the last working session, or corrupted registry issues linked to the key or product type.

 

I would go with a fresh installation because we don't know what the problem is.

This is confusing.

 

HOLY COW, success! That did it! THANK YOU.

To be honest, I went out on a limb—having no idea what "hives files" are—but figured it was worth a shot since I'd done every other option three times over and the last resort would've been a clean install... I'm going to read that thread next and digest exactly what karls093's solution "did", so I can understand it beyond "the registry was reset".

Answering the other question(s) that came up in the meantime... My PC's been pretty much unchanged for months; literally the only change I've personally made i those months was installing the podcast software last week, so I guess one one of them must've broken the registry. No clue how the overall Windows product key would've changed though, if that was the problem: I checked it via the repair console and it still matched the original when the system was built, as far as I could tell.

In addition to appreciating baklogic's ultimate solution, thank you so much to everyone in this thread for taking the time to read my rambling notes and offer directions to try.

 

I am pleased that karls093 solution solved it.
I offered it, because in the days of XP, and Vista, I often played with copying system 32 into the faulty pc, and had some success. I had an inkling it was worth the try, as karls093 described it so well. Everybody at majorgeeks tries so hard to solve problems, and they all appreciate your thanks -it is often teamwork, that solves it, as you saw.