Windows 7: Startup Repair Loop

An interesting call came in this week; I say interesting but in reality it is a call we all dread. A user that is reporting that the computer keeps displaying “Trying to recover Windows” followed by the inevitable “Unable to recover Windows”. Unable to remote on and look, there was no choice to bring it into the office.

On first inspection it was indeed booting to the recovery console, and displaying recovery choices including 4 restore points. These were the first port of call but were all unsuccessful. This machine has been in use by the user for many years, and so had many years of settings and obscure software installed, so there was a lot to gain from repairing the issue instead of a full Windows re-install.

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