Windows – Missing autochk program during boot

bootwindows 7

I just resized a windows partition which involved shifting about 160GB to the left. After that it couldn't find the boot like normal so I ran the system repair tool like normal(I resize this partition a lot and each time I have to use the repair disk).

But, this time, when I rebooted into the recovered 7 partition, it displayed the windows logo like normal but then flashed up

autochk program not found — skipping autocheck

After that being on the screen for about 8 seconds, there was a flash of a bluescreen with white text and it rebooted. I have tried running the repair disk multiple times, but it returns and fixes the same problem each time, and the same thing happens on boot each time. Is there anything I can do to fix this short of reinstalling Windows?

I have also ran two chkdsks from my vista partition with no errors reported and when viewing all the files on the drive everything seems to be in place.

Best Answer

I had this problem, and none of the fixboot/fixmbr/bootrec commands helped. Here's what did fix it:

It appears that the C: is mismapped for whatever reason. In my case, I guess it's because my migration software didn't find it.

Boot into the recovery console and launch regedit. 

 For those not used to this language, that means: 
 - Boot from the Win7 disk 
 - At the "Install Windows" screen press SHIFT F10 to get a command window 
 - Type "regedit" (without the "") 
 - and press Enter

Select the HKLM hive and then use "load hive" to mount your c:\windows\system32\config\system hive (I name it 'offline'). You have to select HKLM so that Load Hive will be enabled, we're not actually going to load the offline hive into it.

 For those not used to this language, that means: 
 - Click to Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
 - Click File, Load Hive
 - Click the drop down arrow in "Look in"
 - Browse to C:\Windows\System32\config
 - Select SYSTEM and click Open
 - In Key Name type "offline"
 - OK

Now you're going to compare HKLM\System\MountedDevices (which is the recovery environment's device list) to HKLM\System\Offline\MountedDevices (which is the one for your failing windows install). In my case, I found that the recovery environment was correctly seeing C:, but the offline hive had the wrong disk signature for c:. (possibly because I deleted a recovery partition as part of the migration. So we need to put the right signature.

Look at the binary entry for DosDevices\C: in the recovery registry. Now go to the offline registry and fix your DosDevices\C: so it matches. In my case, I found it easiest to rename the bad DosDevices\C: to Z:, and then go through the \volume{guid} entries until I found the one that matches the working C:, and then rename that one to DosDevices\C:.

Unload the hive in the file menu, and then reboot. After I did that, I was able to boot.

 For those not used to this language, that means: 
 - Select "offline" in the left hand pane
 - Click File, Unload Hive
 - Yes
 - Close Registry Editor and the Command Window
 - Close the "Install Windows" screen
 - Yes
 - Remove the Win7 disk and boot into Win7.

Other internet searches implied that simply deleting all the offline DosDevices entries would force them to get correctly recreated, but that didn't work for me.

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