Critical Windows Update on 4/30, now PC boot to black in Safe Mode even

[alkemyst]

I am on Windows 8.1 64 bit.

I installed the update from 4/30 last night prior to bed. My PC now will show the windows logo and then just a flashing mouse cursor that jumps over the screen with the 'hourglass/circling ball'.

All my restore points fail with 0x80070005 saying disable anti-virus.

I can get to command prompt and move my data to another drive, however; it doesn't look like I can do anything to save this install. My last system image gives an error that my current OS is incompatible or some BS.

Not the way I wanted to spend my afternoon today.

I am going to let it run for a while and see if maybe it's still working on the update.

I have an AMD CPU (955) and a 6870 radeon card with the latest April non-beta driver installed last week I believe.

I tried other video cards and another monitor/DVI port on the card and no dice.

If I do a 'refresh' does I just have to reinstall apps right? it doesn't remove data or directories on my C: drive that don't pertain to Windows...

 

[Mushkins]

Sounds like the MBR is hosed to me, probably had nothing to do with the Windows update but the forced restart brought the issue to light.

Boot into the repair menu and restore the MBR as a first step. IIRC windows 7 and windows 8 both have the repair menu built into the preboot environment and you shouldn't need to boot from dvd/usb win8 media.

I'd also run a chkdsk and an /sfc scannow while you're in there for good measure, could be the disk itself failing or there could be other corrupted parts of windows.

If any of that fixes it enough to get you back into Windows, i'd do a full backup of any important data and do a clean install for good measure.

 

[Elixer]

If the MBR was hosed, he wouldn't get to see any windows logo.

A refresh might work...at this point, you don't really have any other options, unless you are very good with windows internals.

 

[alkemyst]

It's is booting, I did do an mbr fix anyway...reinstall time