Me too can't boot Vista. Stops on aswRvrt.sys trying to start in safe mode.

[jwoods301]

@ Andrey,pro and jwoods301:   Happy new year to you guys !!

And my best wishes for a great 2014 to everybody

Happy New Year lltrazom.

[Andrey,pro]

@ Andrey,pro and jwoods301:   Happy new year to you guys !!

And my best wishes for a great 2014 to everybody

Thank you and Happy New year!

Sorry for big delay, I was on holidays
I'm sorry but I have no any ideas why it is not working. The best way will be to back up all files and reinstall windows, it's a good idea to start a new year with a clean copy of windows  .

[lltrazom]

Hi Andrey,pro,

finally after having manually replaced quite a number of files from original Vista Home Premium recovery DVD as well as from SP1 and SP2 I finally regained access to my PC through a normal boot. (Files replaced where those indicated by CBS.log output from sfc /scannow command)

Eureka !

Now, I find myself without avast (I'm led to believe that the first fixlist.txt removed it) and I would like to reinstall it before microsoft pushes me to install "Essentials".

May I proceed to reinstall avast normally or I have before to make some thorough cleaning of previous installation remnants ?

Also, at the end of the process I've still no idea of what may have been the reason for the impossibility to boot.

Do you have any possible reason for what has happened, so that I can prevent further occurrances of such a situation ?

Thanks in any case for your support and indications

[Andrey,pro]

Glad to hear!

First of all we need to delete remnants. Download Rejzor's Uninstall Utility to your Desktop.

Download the correct version of Avast 
Avast Free
Avast Pro
Avast Internet Security
Avast Premier
Disconnect from the net
Uninstall Avast via control panel (if it there)

• Unzip Rejzor's tool to the desktop
• Run the tool and accept the usage
• Once complete reboot your system
• Reinstall Avast

The reason why you couldn't boot you OS is missing system files, but I have no any ideas why did it happen.
aswRvrt.sys is a last successfully loaded driver. There is no reason to use outdated version of avast.
____________________
I think I found mistake in my instruction. On the last step command should be looking like this:
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=H:\3\windows /offwindir=C:\windows

[lltrazom]

Hi Andrey,pro and jwoods301

sorry for the late come back.

It took time to recover every single file scannow told me it was not good. As I was not able to identify the origin of some of them from their version I had to find another updated Vista SP2 italian PC to take such files from.

I finally succeded and now the PC, after having reinstalled Avast, mounted Malwarebytes, run CCleaner and succesfully carried out all scansions, (appears to) run even better than before.

As a last thing I'll now select a drive image software to simplify possible future occurrences of such problems.

I therefore wish to finally and once more thank you for your help and support through this.

This post is for me closed, as I consider my problems SOLVED !!  (I'd modify topic title to "Solved" as well but I don't know how to do it.)

It looked like it was going to be the first time a Windows OS forced me to reinstall, but I gladly avoided it with your aid.

I owe you one, guys

[Asyn]

This post is for me closed, as I consider my problems SOLVED !!  (I'd modify topic title to "Solved" as well but I don't know how to do it.)

Edit the topic title of your initial post.

[Andrey,pro]

Hello lltrazom,

I'm very happy that you PC is working fine now. We just found a problem and you solved it by yourself. I'm sorry that sometimes my instructions were not clear, I'll work on it.

Best wishes
Andrey

[thekochs]

As a last thing I'll now select a drive image software to simplify possible future occurrences of such problems.

A lot of choice out there but Macrium Reflect is very good: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
It is simple, reliable, FREE version does only full restores......which I personally prefer anyway over incrementals, and has scheduler in FREE.
Every night (while asleep) I do a scheduled full image...W7 64bit ~120GB I5 PC of data on 500GB HDD to USB HDD.....takes about 45 minutes.
They have recovery boot CDs in Linux or BartPE so you can re-image current HDD or if new HDD can map to smaller or higher density one.

[bob3160]

Vista has the capability to do image backups. It's part of the system.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-vista-complete-pc-backup/