Hi all,

In the past 10 years I've been helping and supporting people in software and hardware, this is the first time I have had to admit defeat! (I try to avoid re-installations) I can easily put this to inexperience with Vista for sure, but am left un able to fix a Vista Home Premium installation.

A friend ran the Vista SP1 update and now when booting the PC all I get is a Black screen with:

!! 0xc0000034 !! 253/72318 (_000000000000000.CDF-MS)

Safe mode, last know good, etc all same. every think disconnected too, usb, pci etc.

Note: SafeMode locks on crcdisk.sys (I've searched the net and tried everything suggested as a solution to fix this, with no success)

When I try a repair via the Vista Install CD, first repair asks to reboot, same black screen error. Second repair took about 30 mins, then the "Recovery cannot repair this system". Third and subsequent retries just display the "Recovery cannot repair this system" dialog.

In Windows XP you were able to repair the OS by re-installing the system files, and 9/10 times this helped. Is this option not available in Vista with it being image based install?

Surely there must be some way get this system booting again, I cannot find anything to do with cdf-ms on the hard disk, only cdfs.sys in win\sys32.

Thanks in advance for any info or direction!

PaulG.