windows won't boot - stops after aswRvrt.sys even in Safe Mode

essexboy:

forum won’t let me send personal messages, assuming because my account is new. Can you PM me a link to the win7 64bit ISO? I tried using my Windows 7 DVD and a flash drive to run FRST and am just failing miserably.

When you use the windows DVD that you have what errors do you get, as the ISO contains part of the windows DVD

I don’t get any errors, I just can’t see the flash drive after booting from the DVD. I’m guess its not getting mounted. Figure this wouldn’t be a problem if I could just boot from the flash drive with the ISO.

OK so the DVD gets you to the recovery console

But the USB is not detected is that correct

At the command prompt type the following :

notepad and press Enter.
The notepad opens. Under File menu select Open.
Select “Computer” and find your flash drive letter and close the notepad.
In the command window type e:\frst64.exe and press Enter
Note: Replace letter e with the drive letter of your flash drive.
The tool will start to run.
When the tool opens click Yes to disclaimer.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/FRST%20Start%20scan.gif

Press Scan button.
It will make a log (FRST.txt) on the flash drive. Please copy and paste it to your reply.

Right, when I look in notepad, the flash drive is not there. The only drives available are C - the OS harddrive, D - the Windows 7 DVD and X - the repair partition. I can’t run FRST on the flash drive because I can’t access it. If I could boot from the flash drive instead of the DVD, I’m sure I’d be able to see it then but I can’t find the Win 7 ISO to make the USB drive bootable

Ah OK check your PM in a minute

Download Rufus to your desktop

Insert the USB stick Then run Rufus

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/rufus.JPG

Select the ISO file on the desktop via the ISO icon.

Press Start Burn

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/RufusISO.JPG

Then copy FRST to the same USB

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/frstwintoboot.JPG

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

So when I boot from the USB drive, the ISO creates a boot drive under drive letter X. I’m assuming it’s a RAM disk that the Windows repair console runs in because I can pull the flash drive and I can continue to access the files. The USB drive is not actually mounted. I can run FRST from a DVD but then there’s no way to get the FRST.TXT file off of the computer because it won’t boot. This process is extremely frustrating. I can’t figure out a way to mount a drive from the repair console. Does the repair console even load the proper drivers to mount a USB drive?

So even booting from the USB and windows does not recognise it … That seems a bit weird as all the required drivers are loaded
The X drive is now part of your hard drive as an additional partition

Could you run the following command from the recovery console

chkdsk c: /r

If that fails I will investigate a Linux programme that we may be able to use

When looking for a solution to the same issue the first search hit was this one. I came across a very similar issue to the one described here, but my conclusion is that it’s actually some kind of incompatibility affecting or caused by Avast free version. My first suspicion had to do with an Epson scanner twin driver, which now seems to have been a pure coincidence.

Tracking messages in logs the following can be noticed:

  • an Avast service doesn’t respond and lead to a timeout
  • an effect is that the service TaskScheduler stops
  • after this a number of other services malfunction
  • for some reason this also leads to an atapi controller error which normally indicates a hardware problem

I’ve removed Avast and run several diagnostic tools to determine if there’s cause to suspect hardware problems, in this case a Samsung F1 sata-disk, but the outcome is so far very clear: no hardware issues detected. I’ve also plugged in the Epson scanner to make sure it’s not the culprit.

With Avast removed the precious errors don’t affect the system.

Unfortunately I’ve not time enough to give further help in tracking down the real cause of why Avast service is malfunctioning and how a timeout can lead to such severe problems.

i had this problem too, after check the file aswrvrt.sys i noticed that the file size was 0 (zero) bytes. after reinstall avast, the file size was 64,2 KB and windows started normaly.