I have a repair disc. Yesterday, my computer suddenly started acting slowly, and so I restarted it, and then got the message that Windows failed to start, and so I launched recovery. When I attempted a repair, it said it could not do so automatically. When I attempted to restore, it failed; the message saying there was some type of error. After that, I restarted again, using the repair disc, and when I went to try restore again, it could not locate my operating system and therefore, I could not do a restore. Then, I tried using the command prompt command sfc /scannow, but it claimed there was a repair in progress, even though there was not. So, now I am at a stalemate. My only options seem to be to come here to ask for aid, take it to someone who could repair it, or try to reinstall Windows 7 and see if that works. Id that enough information?Most laptops have there own recovery/restore utilities with the necessary files already on the hard drive. Have you checked to see if you could use any of those?
Could you explain the problem that made you feel you needed to do a Startup Repair? And are you referring to the Windows 7 Startup Repair from the Windows Recovery Environment? But have you tried running a Chkdsk to see if it would help with some type of corruption?
Can you borrow a Windows 7 Install DVD? You can download and burn one from the link. You could use that to boot into the recovery environment and run some utilities from Offline.. Using it to reinstall would still require a key of some type, so if you do reinstall, try the factory supplied one.
Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life
A message said "Windows failed to start, a recent software or hardware change may be the problem". I keep on trying to run sfc, but it fails, saying Windows Resource Protection cannot complete repair. I can only boot up the Recovery; I have no options for Safe Mode.Try running the SFC from Offline.. You can use the downloaded and burned DVD.
How to Run the System File Checker (Sfc.exe) Offline in Windows 7 and Vista - The Winhelponline Blog
Have you run any virus checks?
Do you have any options to start Windows in Safe Mode, or can you type msconfig.exe in the command window or taskman.exe and and use it?
What options do you have the manufacturer gives you for recovering a system?
When it doesn't start, exactly what happens? A black screen with some type of cursor, a message of some type?
I tried that, too. It failedOne of the repair options you might see is "Last Known Good .." That will replace the registry with the last one that successfully booted the system.... Hopefully that will roll back any device driver changes or some other problematic changes.