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original title: Windows Vista 32-bit crashes as system is loading. Safe mode hangs after crcdisk.sys loads. System restore also fails.
My computer (an HP m9200t) no longer fully boots after installing a new windows update. When turned on the computer will begin to load windows and allow me sign in. However, about 30 seconds to 2 minutes after signing in I can no longer interact with my desktop (although I can interact with programs that automatically load upon startup, like windows live messenger). I sometimes receive a screen that says "kbd.exe failed to initialize properly". I have tried to restore my system to a point before the update loaded, but I am told my file system is corrupt. When I run a system diagnostic, I am told there is a problem with one of my hard drives. I have also tried to boot in safe mode, but the system hangs immediately after loading crcdisk.sys
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
@mindee
Pull the drive and back up your files to another machine before you do anything. Optionally, also take a full disk image, which will make reinstalling much easier.
After your files are safe, run tests on the drive (Seatools is good for this). I just had this problem on a Win7/64-WinXP/32 dual boot system, and the drive was incurably rapidly fading.
Get that data backed up before you do anything, because anything you do will lessen the chances of saving data on a failing drive.
I've been getting a few computers having this problem.
After searching and trying for hours I descided to reinstall windows.
This actually works fine and while having the "windows.old" folder there's no need to spend hours trying to backup files as you can just copy-paste it from there.
this IS a vista problem. I have never had such a problem using Windows 7.
I have a similar issue with my vista 32 bit laptop hanging after the crcdisk.sys in safe mode. My interest is also about your statement re: "windows.old". Is this created by installing the OS afresh? This is important to me as I have not backed up a lot of very important recent files.
Any help from the community in clarifying this much appreciated.
David
I've also got the crcdisk.sys hanging problem, on a Vista64 system. In my case, it was a combination hardware/software problem, as failing drive sectors took down the driver, I believe.
The drive is fixed, but the driver is still broken. In recovery console, I've tried the auto-fix, I've tried the bootrec commands, chkdsk, and now the remote SFC command. SFC was not able to repair all problems, and the CBS.log is too large to read via DOS in situ to find out which ones.
I think what I need to do is manually replace the crcdisk.sys file offline. Does that sound right? And where would I pull it from. It would have to be an alternative place from the same drive.
It seems there are many different issues that can cause these symptoms, but as far as I can tell they are all hard-drive related. I had the same symptoms so I'll post my solution.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop
I was reinstalling Vista Home Basic on a new sata hard drive after the old one failed, and after encountering en error message while installing I tried using a the Vista Home Premium install disk I have for my other computer instead. I got no error message but the installation foze somewhere in the finishing steps, and after restarting I ended up with the neverendig startup bar, and - in safe mode - the crcdisk.sys freeze.
I suspected that the AHCI setting in the bios had something to to with it, but when I tried changing it to ATA i got an error message saying 'drive not found' or something of the like. I then tried changing the setting from AHCI to ATA and then reinstalling, and apparently this solved everything, because I reinstalled Vista Home Basic without any error messages and it seems to be working fine.
I've been getting a few computers having this problem.
After searching and trying for hours I descided to reinstall windows.
This actually works fine and while having the "windows.old" folder there's no need to spend hours trying to backup files as you can just copy-paste it from there.
this IS a vista problem. I have never had such a problem using Windows 7.
