Reformatting problems on Vista Business

Dill Bertweed

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2008
22
0
0
Hi all,
I ran into a problem last night booting up PC, I get a black screen stating

"A recent hardware or software change might have installed a file that is signed incorrectly or damaged, or that might be malicious software from an unknown source.

If you have a Windows installation disc, insert the disc and restart your computer. Click 'Repair your computer,' and then choose a recovery tool.

Otherwise, to start Windows so you can investigate further, press the ENTER key to display the boot menu, press F8 for Advanced Boot Options, and select Last Known Good. If you understand why the digital signature cannot be verified and want to start Windows without this file, temporarily disable driver signature enforcement.

File: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc00428
Info: Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file."


So with that, if I press ENTER, it sends me to a next black screen asking me to select an operating system to start, and when that is selected, the previous page shows again, the one with the digital signature error, thereby disallowing me the F8 Advanced Boot Option. There's a second option to run Windows Memory Diagnostic, but the result of that is only shown after a successful reboot, so that is a catch-22. Lastly, when I reboot the system and reload a Windows Vista disc to reformat, it will not engage. I've cleared CMOS several times with the power off, letting it sit all day today, to no avail.

So my question is, what should I do? :)