Vista stuck in "startup repair"

[x213a]

A mate's laptop is stuck booting into this mode. Cannot start in safe mode as it still goes to this.

Its says windows cannot repair automatically and unable to determine cause of fault etc.

It says administartor account is disabled.

I can enter safe mode cmd prompt.

Is there a way of bypassing the startup repair and just booting into safe?

Cheers.

[green granite]

You might be able to do a roll back using the recovery console

[x213a]

I will have to geek about on the web and learn how to do that!

The laptop did not come with any install disks either (Toshiba satellite L40) so I presume it's recovery is on a partition. So far the only recovery option I can see to use is a factory restore.

I tried running chkdsk from cmd in safe mode but it still does not get past the startup repair in order to run it on reboot. I also tried (cant remember)/scannow but it cannot do that as it says it still has a checkdisk scan scheduled which it can not get round to doing!

I think i'm in over my head here

[green granite]

This may help a bit:

Error message when you start Windows Vista: "The Windows Boot Configuration Data file is missing required information"

[Widewoodenwingswork]

Ahh! I'm having a similar problem with my Satellite. If I simply put it into hibernate it works beautifully, albeit a little slow, but if I shut down, it comes back with 'Windows was not shut down properly' and offers me Safe Mode, Open Normally or Repair Options (Or something like that) Am I doing damage to my system if I simply open windows normally or for that matter, only ever use hibernation mode? Cheers in advance!

[parabellum]

My neighbour had major problems with Vista, the service pack one didn't install properly and effectively 'jammed' the computer. The cure was to save data and format and then install the OS followed immediately by service pack one before anything else. This was a widely known problem, I discovered, when I put the fault ID into Google. Not sure if this is relevant here?

[Keef]

Ahhhh! Vista!

If it were XP and if you had an install CD/DVD, you would be able to do the "start an install" trick. You pretend you are doing a fresh installation (but don't go that far). After you pass the "do you want to repair or install?" option, saying "install", it will chunter for a bit and then tell you it's found a previous installation, and ask if you want to repair that. You do. Thus far, that's always worked for me (many times) with XP installations.

I suspect if you had a Vista CD/DVD the same would apply - but since I don't allow Vista near my machines, I can't be sure.