Startup Repair -- how long is too long?

I found this thread when my Son's Windows 7 Pro 64 Sony Vaio laptop was locked in start up repair. He called me when he became concerned that the system was locked up. I read the posts and advised him to wait. He left the system powered on and when he returned three days later it is still running start up repair and can't be aborted.

I stopped by to pick the laptop up and take it home with me and pressed and held the power button until the laptop shutdown. When I got the machine home, I connected the power supply and pressed the power button. The first screen offered start up repair or boot windows normally. I chose boot normally and the machine booted to the desktop (!?!?).

I opened a cmd window (run as administrator) and ran sfc /scannow and when sfc finished it reported: "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

I updated Malware Bytes definitions and ran a full scan. Malware Bytes reported 35 objects detected. The full report listed Trojan.Necurs, Trojan.Ransom.Gend, Trojan.Dorkbot.ED, Spyware.Zbot.ED, Trojan.zbot.FKE, Trojan.FakeMS.ED,  Hijack.SearchBar along with a host of PUP registry keys. I allowed MB to remove the selected items and it prompted for an immediate reboot to complete the removal.

I ran MB four more times, each time it found additional items ( 35 originally, 17,  3,  and 2) before the full scan returned with no results found.

I un-installed Java 6 and installed the latest Java 7.

I ran hardware diagnostics on the hard disk and the disk came up clean with no problems found. I returned the computer to my Son.

Did Windows 7 startup repair work? Who knows? Could we have powered the system off sooner then the three days we allowed it to run?  There never was a progress bar during the startup repair "scan"  The only reason we let it run was because  startup repair responded to key strokes and informed us that it can't be canceled. Malware bytes found problems and fixed them.

Startup Repair says "Repairing disk errors. This might take over an hour to complete," but it's been running for about 9 hours now, and trying to Cancel it yields the message "The current repair operation cannot be cancelled" -- is it still actually doing anything? Would it be worth it to let Startup Repair run any longer?

I have left this running for something like 16 hours now and just seemingly stuck at the same point.  Will let it run, amazed to read it can take over three days.   Would be nice to have some idea of progress...

I have the original OEM install disc so I guess I should be able to get it all back (eventually).

Happened to me today on a Toshiba laptop.

I have little patience with such thinks so looked up here for some instant guidance. Ignored all the usual reports of 'don't touch it', 'reload everything' and not having 3 hours to spare let alone 3 days I took my usual option of turning off (re-booting not being possible).

Back in business in 3 minutes. Although none the wiser what the message was all about, which puts me on par with the rest of the world.

Strangely enough this was the second complete hang up this week - the other being Avast locking my desktop (ditched Avast which replaced my ditched Norton for the same reason and all is well again). There may be a conspiracy about.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A305-S6905 running Windows Vista Home Premium (32 bit, SP1). It went off warranty on March 6.  In attempting to boot up under Safe Mode, it seems to get stuck on crcdisk.sys, which I see is a fairly common complaint on the forums. I attempted to run the Toshiba Restore tool to run it back to its out-of-the-box state, but that appears to have made things worse! It still gets stuck on crcdisk.sys, but doesn't offer the same recovery options.

I'm going to take it in to my work IT department (at a college--they deal with student machines all the time) and see if they can do a repair.

Thanks for your answer though, Lorien!