x64 will not boot after installing latest MS AntiSpyware

I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.

I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to ask
whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption, or is
it pure coincidence?

Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the CD
and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
damaged also.

Many thanks

Mark Hartt-Palmer

John
Wed Jun 29 06:32:41 CDT 2005

You can fix your boot.ini from the recovery console on your Windows CD.
Select option R and use bootcfg /help at the command prompt a
bootcfg /list will show you what is there and you can select the option
that you want


"Mark Hartt-Palmer" <Mark Hartt-Palmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:89E78341-71AE-4CBA-AF25-24D570035F7F@microsoft.com...
>I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
> message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.
>
> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to ask
> whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption, or
> is
> it pure coincidence?
>
> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the
> CD
> and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
> damaged also.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Mark Hartt-Palmer

Gary
Wed Jun 29 07:54:14 CDT 2005

I had the same problem and I used the recovery console. The fix was to run
FIXMBR

"John Barnes" <jbfoofy@email.net> wrote in message
news:eNtkE5JfFHA.3436@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> You can fix your boot.ini from the recovery console on your Windows CD.
> Select option R and use bootcfg /help at the command prompt a
> bootcfg /list will show you what is there and you can select the option
> that you want
>
>
> "Mark Hartt-Palmer" <Mark Hartt-Palmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:89E78341-71AE-4CBA-AF25-24D570035F7F@microsoft.com...
>>I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
>> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
>> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
>> message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.
>>
>> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to
>> ask
>> whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption,
>> or is
>> it pure coincidence?
>>
>> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
>> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the
>> CD
>> and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
>> damaged also.
>>
>> Many thanks
>>
>> Mark Hartt-Palmer
>
>

MarkHarttPalmer
Wed Jun 29 08:50:01 CDT 2005

Many thanks John / Gary. I'll certainly try these methods when I get home
later! I've also printed off the knowledge base article 307545 (How to
recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting),
but I hope I won't need to refer to this if the other methods work.

Andre
Wed Jun 29 10:03:24 CDT 2005

Mark, could you also report this to the
microsoft.private.security.spyware.appcompat and
microsoft.private.security.spyware.general newsgroups, I'm sure the MSAS
Team would love to hear about this. I recommend people do not do the
automatic update or upgrade of MSAS, download it from the site, shutdown
Microsoft AntiSpyware from the notification, uninstall, restart and install
the new build, which is 614.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"Mark Hartt-Palmer" <Mark Hartt-Palmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:89E78341-71AE-4CBA-AF25-24D570035F7F@microsoft.com...
>I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
> message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.
>
> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to ask
> whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption, or
> is
> it pure coincidence?
>
> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the
> CD
> and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
> damaged also.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Mark Hartt-Palmer

M
Wed Jun 29 13:03:12 CDT 2005

Interesting. I downloaded and installed the latest version of MS
Anti-Spyware right after install of x64 Edition, and it was just fine.
Maybe the upgrade behaves differently?

"Mark Hartt-Palmer" <Mark Hartt-Palmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:89E78341-71AE-4CBA-AF25-24D570035F7F@microsoft.com...
>I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
> message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.
>
> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to ask
> whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption, or
> is
> it pure coincidence?
>
> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the
> CD
> and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
> damaged also.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Mark Hartt-Palmer

Andre
Wed Jun 29 13:51:27 CDT 2005

There is also some issue upgrading from definitions 5725 to 5729, here is a
fix for it:
If you know what you are doing :')
Follow this, all credits to user "Taxman":

- Download Winzip or 7-Zip
http://www.7-zip.org/

Download these 3 files, right click-save to disk.
Compressed files !

http://download.spynet.com/ASDefinitions/gcDeterminationData.gcz
http://download.spynet.com/ASDefinitions/gcThreatAuditScanData.gcz
http://download.spynet.com/ASDefinitions/gcThreatAuditThreatData.gcz

- Open the first downloaded file and extract it with your Zip tool .
Do the same for the other.

- Right click on MSAS icon and choose shutdown.

- Copy/paste your extracted files to Program files / Microsoft
Antispyware
and choose to overwrite existing definition files.

- Start MSAS again and make a "check for updates" if you have latest
defs.

- If you have time, perform a full system scan directly with all
options checked.

--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"M. Murcek" <mamurcekjr@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:OFcaeRNfFHA.1472@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> Interesting. I downloaded and installed the latest version of MS
> Anti-Spyware right after install of x64 Edition, and it was just fine.
> Maybe the upgrade behaves differently?
>
> "Mark Hartt-Palmer" <Mark Hartt-Palmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:89E78341-71AE-4CBA-AF25-24D570035F7F@microsoft.com...
>>I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
>> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
>> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the following
>> message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was missing or corrupt.
>>
>> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really to
>> ask
>> whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this corruption,
>> or is
>> it pure coincidence?
>>
>> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
>> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from the
>> CD
>> and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file might be
>> damaged also.
>>
>> Many thanks
>>
>> Mark Hartt-Palmer
>
>

Charlie
Thu Jun 30 01:29:37 CDT 2005

hmmm. Not seeing an issue here...

--
Charlie.
http://www.msmvps.com/xperts64/


Mark Hartt-Palmer wrote:
> I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
> AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
> installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the
> following message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was
> missing or corrupt.
>
> I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really
> to ask whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this
> corruption, or is it pure coincidence?
>
> Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
> reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from
> the CD and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file
> might be damaged also.
>
> Many thanks
>
> Mark Hartt-Palmer

MarkHarttPalmer
Thu Jun 30 03:56:05 CDT 2005

Andre, I will report these to the relevant MS Newsgroups. I think that the
startup problems could have been pure coincidence though. Thankfully, I
managed to fex the problem fairly quickly, by:

1. Booting from the x64 CD and going into the Recovery Console
2. Changing the attributes of the ntldr and boot.ini files so that I could
delete them
3. Copying ntldr and ntdetect from the CD to my hard drive
4. Doing a BootCfg / Rebuild.

Many thanks for the help that was offered.

"Charlie Russel - MVP" wrote:

> hmmm. Not seeing an issue here...
>
> --
> Charlie.
> http://www.msmvps.com/xperts64/
>
>
> Mark Hartt-Palmer wrote:
> > I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
> > AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
> > installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the
> > following message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was
> > missing or corrupt.
> >
> > I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really
> > to ask whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this
> > corruption, or is it pure coincidence?
> >
> > Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
> > reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from
> > the CD and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file
> > might be damaged also.
> >
> > Many thanks
> >
> > Mark Hartt-Palmer
>
>
>

Andre
Thu Jun 30 09:53:19 CDT 2005

Yes, but we don't want people doing this in Microsoft AntiSpywares final
iteration. Its best reporting it to the group to prevent this from happening
in the future to XP Pro x64 users.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"Mark Hartt-Palmer" <MarkHarttPalmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:702C5908-5042-4F03-8A75-A8F57C2B01B3@microsoft.com...
> Andre, I will report these to the relevant MS Newsgroups. I think that
> the
> startup problems could have been pure coincidence though. Thankfully, I
> managed to fex the problem fairly quickly, by:
>
> 1. Booting from the x64 CD and going into the Recovery Console
> 2. Changing the attributes of the ntldr and boot.ini files so that I
> could
> delete them
> 3. Copying ntldr and ntdetect from the CD to my hard drive
> 4. Doing a BootCfg / Rebuild.
>
> Many thanks for the help that was offered.
>
> "Charlie Russel - MVP" wrote:
>
>> hmmm. Not seeing an issue here...
>>
>> --
>> Charlie.
>> http://www.msmvps.com/xperts64/
>>
>>
>> Mark Hartt-Palmer wrote:
>> > I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
>> > AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
>> > installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the
>> > following message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was
>> > missing or corrupt.
>> >
>> > I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really
>> > to ask whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this
>> > corruption, or is it pure coincidence?
>> >
>> > Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
>> > reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from
>> > the CD and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file
>> > might be damaged also.
>> >
>> > Many thanks
>> >
>> > Mark Hartt-Palmer
>>
>>
>>

Andre
Thu Jun 30 18:43:24 CDT 2005

I think this is coincidence. I would recommend running a chkdsk to make sure
your drive is ok.

--
-steve

Steve Dodson [MSFT]
MCSE, CISSP
PSS Security
http://blogs.technet.com/stevedod

--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"Mark Hartt-Palmer" <MarkHarttPalmer@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:702C5908-5042-4F03-8A75-A8F57C2B01B3@microsoft.com...
> Andre, I will report these to the relevant MS Newsgroups. I think that
> the
> startup problems could have been pure coincidence though. Thankfully, I
> managed to fex the problem fairly quickly, by:
>
> 1. Booting from the x64 CD and going into the Recovery Console
> 2. Changing the attributes of the ntldr and boot.ini files so that I
> could
> delete them
> 3. Copying ntldr and ntdetect from the CD to my hard drive
> 4. Doing a BootCfg / Rebuild.
>
> Many thanks for the help that was offered.
>
> "Charlie Russel - MVP" wrote:
>
>> hmmm. Not seeing an issue here...
>>
>> --
>> Charlie.
>> http://www.msmvps.com/xperts64/
>>
>>
>> Mark Hartt-Palmer wrote:
>> > I received an update notification to inform me that a new build of MS
>> > AntiSpyware was available. I duly downloaded and installed it. The
>> > installation asked for a restart. After the restart, I got the
>> > following message informing me that the \CONFIG\SYSTEM file was
>> > missing or corrupt.
>> >
>> > I assume that this registry hive is damaged. My question is really
>> > to ask whether the AntiSpyware installation could have caused this
>> > corruption, or is it pure coincidence?
>> >
>> > Any help on recovering the registry without having to do a complete
>> > reinstall would be much appreciated. BTW, I have tried to boot from
>> > the CD and do a repair install, but I suspect that the boot.ini file
>> > might be damaged also.
>> >
>> > Many thanks
>> >
>> > Mark Hartt-Palmer
>>
>>
>>

Rick
Thu Jun 30 18:59:13 CDT 2005

I just installed the latest MS AntiSpyware, Beta version 1.0, and have
not encountered any problems. I have also ran the AntiSpy scan with no
problems.

If you're having a problem, there must be something specific to your
system. I don't think this is a general problem.

Andre
Thu Jun 30 19:22:54 CDT 2005

Yep, it could be.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"Rick" <rick@home.net> wrote in message
news:OV4J4%23cfFHA.3944@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>I just installed the latest MS AntiSpyware, Beta version 1.0, and have not
>encountered any problems. I have also ran the AntiSpy scan with no
>problems.
>
> If you're having a problem, there must be something specific to your
> system. I don't think this is a general problem.

Rick
Fri Jul 01 06:21:15 CDT 2005

It could be what? There were two possibilities.

a. specific to his system

or

b. a general problem

Andre Da Costa [Extended64] wrote:
> Yep, it could be.

Andre
Fri Jul 01 10:32:42 CDT 2005

I gave the answer, right from the horses mouth, no need to prolong this:
I think this is coincidence. I would recommend running a chkdsk to make sure
your drive is ok.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
FAQ for MS AntiSpy http://www.geocities.com/marfer_mvp/FAQ_MSantispy.htm

"Rick" <rick@home.net> wrote in message
news:%23%23f9%237ifFHA.2840@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> It could be what? There were two possibilities.
>
> a. specific to his system
>
> or
>
> b. a general problem
>
> Andre Da Costa [Extended64] wrote:
>> Yep, it could be.