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About a year ago, I was preparing to copy files from multiple computers I used into one. Both machines were Windows 7 while the target machine is Windows 10.

tl;dr, Windows 10 fast boot will damage/corrupt Windows 7 drives.

One of my machines survived the process though it refreshed the User Profile on boot. The machine I'm working on now is less expedient in its return.

Last I left it, it wouldn't finish a Startup Repair even after hours of waiting (1 TB hdd 7200rpm). I went in with Parted Magic to see what the partitions looked like (couldn't remember if the whole thing was jumbled). The partition viewer reported in the C partition:

$MFTMirr does not match $MFT (record 0)

and said I should run CHKDSK /f as it would be the best at it.

I restarted and entered the system repair command prompt and ran CHKDSK /f which I hoped would return some normalcy. The CHKDSK failed at 57%. The message at the end was

an unspecified error occurred <696e647863686b2e e19> failed to transfer logged messages to event log with status 50

I ran it several times and it would have the same issue at the same %, give or a take a few records (Verifying Indexes stage 2/3, 2488728 of 2774856) and always around 2488000+).

Some googling said that the partition could be locked or that I have drive errors (ran a quick drive check in pmagic and it came back ok). I opened up DISKPART in the CMD and tried to clear any readonly flags for C but DISKPART said it failed to clear flags. I don't know if there just weren't any or something else was going on.

Some websites said to go into safe mode and run CHKDSK and I tried that but safe mode won't go any further than loading drivers and giving me a black screen with the cursor. I can move the cursor but nothing else happens. I've tried safe mode and safe mode with command prompt.

My question today is "How do I safely reenter Windows 7 after possible file corruption from Windows 10?"

I would preferably like to complete one round of CHKDSK before booting normally.

Additionally, I have available a copy of the HDD from a year and a half ( a little over half a year ) before my initial file copy with Windows 10.

I have the time and some decent technical skill, so I'm all ears.

Edit, Update post 2 hours: I hit "Start Normally" just to see where that would get me, and it ends up the same as safe mode, but it knows my power settings as pressing the power button goes to sleep, which is what I set it to long ago.

Edit, Update post 7 Hours: I ran ntfsfix /dev/sda2 ( sda2: the main partition) while in Parted Magic for the $MFT message it had given. Other than a few attribute edits, CHKDSK reached the same index and stopped. The index number it stops at changes but not more than a few hundred in either direction. I tried to run sfc /scannow, but it wouldn't run as it needed a system restart. Tried to delete the pending.xml but it reported back as corrupt and that I needed to run chkdsk. I ran chkdsk just before this so I am nearly at a complete impasse.

Edit, Update post 8 hours: Forgot to delete pending from X: as well. Deleted pending in C using Parted Magic. SFC ran but found nothing wrong.

Edit, Update post 30 hours: Chkdsk finished Index verification this time around, probably black magic from using pmagic, or that I'm using a Windows 7 disk instead of recovery partition (which may have errors I don't know about yet).

Edit, Update post 3 days: After indexes verified (chkdsk), there were alot of Replacing invalid security id with default id for file ####### of 2207744 messages. Windows still boots into a cursor and black screen. The commands sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\windows reports that "Windows resource protection could not perform the requested operation". No % verification is ever reported, just that it began and will take time. DISM didn't work either from the Win7 disk I used, and the Win7 PE environment doesn't contain DISM. I'm thinking the profile system is corrupted or something. More info would be nice.

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  • If the system files are corrupted, and you are unable to boot into the operating system, there isn't a solution to your problem.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 16, 2021 at 23:54
  • First, the error indicates there might be physical damage to the HDD. However, you can try repairing the HDD using bootable media, rather than from the active OS on the HDD. There are any number of Windows repair disks/USB's you could use; see techtalk.gfi.com/… My personal choice would be recover as many files as possible and install a current OS, such as Ubuntu. Nov 17, 2021 at 0:52
  • Ended up trying the official Windows disk and it's making progress on CHKDSK now. Nov 18, 2021 at 5:00
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    Your last update indicates that due to a hardware failure of the storage device your OS cannot be repaired.
    – Ramhound
    Nov 20, 2021 at 11:48
  • @Ramhound I ran "Last Known Good Configuration" after having tried all other boot options (including boot logging but seeing loaded drivers didn't help), and it ran CHKDSK just before booting this time. Still no change (no errors either). Nov 20, 2021 at 22:47

1 Answer 1

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Long story short, I tried many things in terms of looking around, but the one thing that stuck out was the Users group not being in the Security tab for C:/Windows. I had bought a HDD holder so I stuck it on a Windows 7 VM that I have and found I couldn't even view the drive without first adding the Users group to the Security tab for the whole drive.

After copying the perms from the old drive to the new one, Windows now boots properly to the login screen in safe mode and I can login to my user account without issue, thought the shortcuts on my taskbar are missing, a likely casualty of this whole problem. Possibly fixable, but we'll see.

I look forward to enjoying my old computer once again.

Edit

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Automate the permissions restoration using this simple trick. Historical blurb should it disappear:

So how do I make a backup of the NTFS permissions?

icacls c:\windows\ /save AclFile /T /C /Q

So lets break this command up

icacls = command to run C:\windows\ = directory/file to run the command on /save = command to excute AclFile = where to save the ACLs /T = Recurse the directory /C = Continue even after a single failure /Q = Dont print information about successful files.

What if we need to restore now then?

icacls c:\windows\ /restore AclFile /T /C /Q

So lets break this command up

/restore = command to excute

Problems?

Well a standard problem is that you saved the acls using icacls E:\Shares /save.... and are trying to restore using icacls F:\Shares /restore.... The ACL file does contain the path in the command. So in that case I would suggest changing the directory in the command Prompt so you could run the command as icacls . instead.

Final Edit: Loaded slightly older backup registries for machine (and second machine that faced the same issue). Had to get specialized help for fixing SFC from sysnative.com, good people. One of my media player libraries was corrupted but I'd been smart enough to make a copy when I did the copy procedure that caused this whole deal. Both systems are restored and I can access various things I desired (taskbar, start menu pins, various histories and such). I'm a visual person so I need to see it as it all was.

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