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My computer crashed when running system restore. Now the system will display the windows boot animation (for a longer period of time than usual) followed by turning the monitor on and off and displaying a black screen with the cursor. All combinations do not work. The symptoms occur with any of the windows safe mode options (including low graphics, etc.).

What I have tried:

  • Windows Repair CD - Startup Repair (No problem detected)
  • Windows Repair CD - System Restore (Tells me to enable system restore :p )
  • Windows Repair CD - icacls (I think I messed this up)
  • Windows (on another partition) setting permissions for Administrators to Full
  • Inspecting the registry hive files for corruption (Loaded them in Windows Pre-Install Env, it appeared OK)
  • Windows Repair CD - system file checker (11MB log but no "corrupt file" etc. found)
  • Disconnecting almost everything (except power cord)

Other notes:

  • My Computer: Windows 7 Home Premium (Laptop)
  • I can read the partition from a parallel Ubuntu install. In fact every file appears to be there.
  • I cannot read the partition from a parallel Windows partition (Access Denied) even after altering the permissions.

Does anyone have suggestions on what to inspect or on next steps?

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Define “cursor”. Is it the pointy graphics-mode mouse cursor or the blinking text-mode underscore? Is there anything else on the black screen? Is it black only for Safe-Mode or for normal mode too? Do you have a wallpaper or is your desktop a solid black color? Do you use a theme that sets the desktop color to black but then covers it with a wallpaper? – Synetech Jun 12 '11 at 6:03
It was the graphics-mode pointer, black in both modes, no black wallpaper or theme. – ThatGuyYouKnow Jun 16 '11 at 2:21
Was there anything else on the screen, like writing (in the corners or at the top)? – Synetech Jun 16 '11 at 20:04
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I was able to repair my installation to the welcome screen by using the windows repair cd and running icacls to set the permissions of the \Windows folder and sub-files and folders to all users (*S-1-1-0 I think) have full permissions. On my next boot I was able to see the welcome screen but no accounts can logon, I get "The User Profile Service service failed the log on. User profile cannot be loaded". At this point I may be able to use the other repair features.

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