Fixing Your Vista Machine

On Wednesday, March 18th, 2009, my laptop-loving decided it simply didn’t want to live in this world anymore. A world where it had to co-exist with ubuntu, macs, open-source, and all sorts of competition. So what did it do? It decided just stop working. Here’s what happened.

I booted up my PC and vista loaded fine. So I start running a few applications, browse around a bit, checked my email. Well, tried to check it. You see, that’s when my computer decided to freeze.

So I shrug it off, restart my computer, same sequence. It freezes again. And again. And again. I try all different kinds of combinations, but nothing works, it just freezes for no apparent reason! I have tons of experience fixing pcs, I even used work in the RMA department (fixing defective pcs and shipping it back to the customer), but I’ve never worked with vista machines before, so this was a good learning experience.

If your computer freezes for no apparent reason, you want to try and find out if its an infection issue, a hardware issue, or a software issue. To do this, its usually a good bet to get into safe mode. In safe mode, only the minimal of processes are running, so if there was a bad program running around, its a good bet you’ll find it here.

To get into safe mode, repeatedly  tap F8 while your computer is booting, preferably before vista starts to load, and you will get the following menu:

• Safe Mode
  
• Safe Mode with Networking
  
• Safe Mode with Command Prompt
• Enable Boot Logging
  
• Enable low-resolution video (640×480)
  
• Last Known Good Configuration (advanced)
  
• Directory Services Restore Mode
  
• Debugging Mode
  
• Disable automatic restart on system failure
  
• Disable Driver Signature Enforcement
• Repair Your Computer
  
• Start Windows Normally
  

Safe mode works fine. No freezes at all. Safe mode with networking freezes. So this is where I start attacking. I disable services, stop processes from starting up, update drivers, roll back drivers, etc… but nothing works, it still freezes. So I decide to try the “repair your computer” option.

I have a dell xps 1350, so its just the stuff on the recovery drive. Unfortunately, their utilies are somewhat “hard-coded”, meaning they make too many assumptions, which is not good for my system; dual-boot ubuntu + vista. However, I dug around a bit, and found the Factory image (Factory.wim)! So how to apply it? You can use imagex. Imagex is a command-line tool that lets you make images or apply images.

Imagex is included in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), which is a heft 1 GB download. I decide to give it a go, but the windows site wouldn’t let me download! The validator wouldn’t validate my valid version of vindows (sorry!) vista!

Turns out, imagex only needs the following files to run:

• imagex.exe
• intlcfg.exe
• wimfltr.inf
• wimfltr.sys
• wimgapi.dll

Which I was able to find. I won’t say where I found it. So you have to look for it on your own. Once you legally obtain the files, you install it by right-clicking “wimfltr.inf”, then click on “install”. Its not a true install (won’t be in your PATH or anything), so you probably have to navigate to imagex’s location to run it. Here’s how you use it:

IMAGEX.exe /apply [Directory:\Location_of_Factory.wim\ 1 [WindowsInstallationDirectory]

And it will apply the image. This worked great, and my laptop was restored back to factory settings. A clean slate. So I’m really happy now, reinstalling old applications, setting things up again, then it freezes. This is bad. So I restart my computer, and now it doesn’t even boot. It gets stuck loading crcdisk.sys.

So it didn’t work out, but I learnt a lot about fixing Vista Machines. So at least I got something out of this whole ordeal.