win7 netbook won't boot - moved out of another topic.

[DavidR]

Thought I might have been hit by the bad KB update in win7:

@bob3160 post:2493

Microsoft pulls Patch Tuesday security fix –
Microsoft recommends that users uninstall the patch, and warns that another issue with the security update may cause anti-virus programs cease to work correctly.
The Redmond giant says that Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Workstations and Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Servers versions 6.0.4.1424 and 6.0.4.1611
may display an error message stating that licenses for the products are not valid, and so the software will cease to function.
The question still remains:
Has this also affected the avast! users that have flooded the forum with problems since this MS update ???
Are those problems an avast! problem or, a problem caused by MS and Avast is getting the blame as did Kaspersky ???

@DavidR post:2495

I’m going to need this as it looks like it has bricked my win7 netbook, not boot just black screen. Now the right royal pain in the rear starts. With no optical drive, I have to investigate bootable USB to see if I can get in and remove it.

Essexboy gave me the tools and info to create a boot USB http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=121199.msg927152#msg927152.

@DavidR post:2500

@essexboy post:2498

Yes download on another system to create the bootable USB
Then boot the recalcitrant computer with the USB

Sorry by desktop, I wasn’t saying my desktop PC, but the physical desktop location, I save all downloads to a specific folder.

My question was poorly framed, can I run them from any location, if I save them to my downloads folder rather than the desktop (I presume this would be correct) ?

Just been toying with booting my netbook and I can’t intercept the boot to go into safe mode (F8) - also tried F12 for “Press F12 to Choose Boot Device” - also tried pecking away at the DEL key and none of those got any sort of response, so this may well be something other than this KB issue.

Hard to tell if the drive is actually spinning (I can hear the fan running, which would mask the drive activity), but no drive light activity. Perhaps this could be a coincidental hard drive failure ?

• Acer Aspire One, Win7 Starter (32bit), 2GB DDR3 RAM, Intel Atom N255 (1.5GHz dual core) CPU.
  

Whilst awaiting a response I tried burning the win7-32bit rc.iso using ImgBurn on my XP Pro system which has an optical drive and ImgBurn is only listing my optical drive and the drop down list doesn’t show any other devices (my USB stick).

So currently ImgBurn is incapable of burning the ico to the USB.

All of which may well be moot if the netbook hard drive is toast.

[essexboy]

Rufus is designed to create a bootable USB

I always save to my desktop as I know where they are then… And once used are easy to delete, as neither programme installs

[DavidR]

Well I ran rufus OK and used another burner app, Passcape ISO Burner at first it wanted to over write the contents of the USB and I allowed it to do that. This appeared to be somewhat lacking after running it, so I ran rufus again and then this tool again but with another option to unpack the contents of the iso to the usb drive.

See images of the main root directory and the sources sub-directory, I don’t know if this is what it would look like or not. I haven’t copied the FRST.exe file to the root directory yet, I though I would wait for confirmation.

This said, this is looking more like a hardware failure than anything else right now:

1. Drive activity light doesn’t come on.
2. Can’t tell if it is just the led (unlikely) as I cant tell if the noise I can hear is the fan or drive.
3. Having closed the lid, that is meant to put the system into sleep mode. Though the power light is Blue and not Orange as it should be if it were in sleep.

Now I guess most of these (2&3) could be related to the system not booting, number 1 should see some drive activity as it tries to boot, so the jury is still out.

[essexboy]

I would tend to go with a coincidental drive failure on this, as the USB has all the necessary files to boot a windows 7 system

[DavidR]

@essexboy post:4

I would tend to go with a coincidental drive failure on this, as the USB has all the necessary files to boot a windows 7 system

Well I haven’t tried to boot to it yet as:

1. I don’t know if the default settings in the BIOS allow for a USB boot and I can’t access them to even check.
   Given your note:

Insert the USB into the sick computer and start the computer. First ensuring that the system is set to boot from USB Note: If you are not sure how to do that follow the instructions Here

2. I haven’t copied over FRST.exe, but that is a few seconds and has now been done.

So I will just boot with it in and see if there any response.

[essexboy]

OK although I do not believe it to be an infection or Avast … Mayhap the MS update, but the RC will allow you to remove it

[DavidR]

Well good news of a sort, win7 is up and running again, but it wasn’t the bootable USB or FRST that did it.

Having said that I will just shutdown plug in the USB and see what happens. Well there was a little activity flash on my screen followed by the ‘Your system didn’t shutdown correctly’ or words to that effect, I chose to boot into safe mode with networking.

When I got in I did a windows Run wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:2823324 /quiet /norestart as mentioned in an article Bob posted the link to http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-pulls-patch-tuesday-security-fix-7000013942/ and left it for a little while. I then did a restart and windows said it was still updating and when complete rebooted.

On the restart I got the usual finalising an update screen and finally Logged on. So fingers crossed this was that bad KB and that the removal command did the trick.

Thanks for your time and patience.

[essexboy]

No problem, I am one of the lucky ones it did not affect

But the USB could be handy to keep as it has the recovery console on it

[DavidR]

@essexboy post:8

No problem, I am one of the lucky ones it did not affect

But the USB could be handy to keep as it has the recovery console on it

I’m definitely keeping it, it is a massive 16GB so room for more tools, any recommendations ?

[essexboy]

Not really as most tools are updated regularly

[bob3160]

So that command did do the trick from what I’m reading.
Now I’m wondering how many of the Avast customers running Windows 7
are blaming Avast for Microsofts mistake ???
How can we figure out if this is an avast! problem on a Windows 7 system or a
Windows update that screwed up their OS ???
I guess having the customer check if they have kb:2823324 installed would be one bit of needed information if the problem
on the Win 7 system started shortly after a windows update

[DavidR]

It would appear so and certainly MS have been pretty quiet about this one, well the reasons behind it only reporting the error number and ID. But it appears that this issue is with 3rd party applications and more so 3rd party security based applications.

So yes it is possible this could be unknowingly effecting avast users and they would naturally blame avast, no one thinks about hang on this only happened after a windows update.