Vista will not boot normally

Running Vista Home Premium 32-bit, SP1.

Vista will not boot normally. I get to the black screen just before the Welcome, and then... nothing. Just a black screen.

I CAN start in safe mode with networking, however. I disabled EVERYTHING in the msconfig startup, as well as all non-Microsoft service, to no avail.

When I run ComboFix, I get the msg 'ComboFix is preparing to run', followed by 'Access Denied. Administrator permissions are need to use the selected options. Use an administrator command prompt to complete these tasks'. I did right click on the CF icon on my desktop, and selected 'run as administrator' but got the same result.

If I just let it run as is, I get the usual 'Scanning for infected files... This typically doesn't take more than 10 minutes, etc...', but NOTHING ever happens for at least 15 minutes after which ComboFix finally does start. However, while its running through the 50 stages, embedded in those stages is the occasional ''Access Denied. Administrator permissions are needed....".

The completion of CF and subsequent restart did absolutely nothing to change the boot problem.

I do have a MS Vista install disk, and I've run Startup repair. No change.

I have tried a system restore because its one of the easiest things to do. But even going back a month, which is the earliest restore point I have (and which seems to correlate to the beginning of my problems), made no difference.

One thing I hadn't mentioned, and I have no idea of its relevance: Just about the time the PC stopped booting normally, I noticed that Vista boot screen had about 10 groups of blue vertical lines (5 lines in each group) on the page. The lines disappeared after I entered safe mode or if I booted from the CD. Don't know what it means, but I thought I'd mention it.

Anyway, I have continued to play with safe mode & the vista boot disk, running sfc /scannow, running chkdsk /r, and running a series of bootrec commands at the command prompt accessed from the Vista boot disk, and still nothing....

Everything I try seems to tell me that there's nothing wrong with the PC, except for the fact that it won't boot normally. I just don't feel that this is virus or malware related.

After one of those failed attempts, I rebooted into safe mode and went into Event viewer, and I saw the msg:
The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 8007043c from line 45 of d:\vistasp1_gdr\com\complus\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp.

Could someone please give me some guidance?

 

From your safe mode, I'd recommend that you get ALL of your wanted data saved. You are lucky to have that available.

Then, run through the Read and Run Me First steps;
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

You have multiple symptoms of a malware problem. "Only boot in safe mode" "Can't run combo fix"

On the other hand, the groups of 10 vertical blue lines sounds more like a video card/driver issue, but this could also be corruption from malware. Do you have any errors in your device manager? Also, are you booting from your D drive? :wave:wave

 

Probably turned something vital off with msconfig.
Instead of disable, try turning to manual.
Undo what you did in Safe Mode then change them to manual 1 at a time to see what happens.

 

Absolutely

As I mentioned, ComboFix did finally run, albeit with all those ''Access Denied. Administrator permissions are needed...." embedded in the 50 stages. It did delete some items, but it made no difference to the boot problem. A full scan using the latest MalwareBytes revealed no malware.

No errors in device manager. The D: drive is the CD drive on this machine, and I can boot from that using the MS Vista CD. When I boot in safe mode (or attempt normal mode) I am using the C: drive.

 

And if you do a search with the terms, "combofix access denied", inevitably you will see this is related to malware. There is even reference to a work around this by renaming the program.

And it is quite common for infected machines to only boot into safe mode.

That's two pretty strong symptoms of an infection. You should run through all the steps then start a thread in the malware forum with your logs attached. :wave

 

The situation is now considerably worse.

Since I could not get around the boot problems, I backed up all my data in safe mode to flash drives, and reinstalled Vista. For some unknown reason that makes a reinstall of Vista different from a reinstall of XP, I ended up with 2 Vista OS's on this machine. When it booted up after it finished the installation I got a brief flash of blue screen of death, then it went back to the all black that I'm used to when it tries to boot normally.

Thinking that the 2 OS's might be confusing the machine, I reformatted the hard drive, and once again installed Vista. This time the install went much faster, although I once again got that brief flash of blue screen of death, when it rebooted, followed by the all black screen.

Now, however, I cannot even boot into safe mode, When I attempt it, it gives me a msg box saying that I can't boot into safe mode until Windows is done installing(?????). I have restarted again with the disk in there, but it seems to be finished installing. If I attempt a startup repair from the Vista CD, I get a msg stating that startup repair could not detect a problem.

Now I am completely lost...

 

When you reformatted, did you do a "quick" or "full"? Should be full, (or maybe the term is complete, don't remember.:confused)

Those vertical lines from earlier indicate the possiblity of a hardware issue. Assuming this is not a lappy, unplug it, hold the start button in for 15 seconds, pull off the side, clean if needed, reseat all connections you can find, especially the ram boards and the hard drive connectors and any video cards. When I say reseat, the best is to unplug, but some of these are difficult and just pressing the connections together may do it. Find and remove the battery, wait 20 minutes, put the battery back in. Start up machine and verify that the fans are running.

Then, with a full format, try reinstalling the Vista again. :wave:wave