Help
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Hey everyone
So I need some help. Every time I turn my Sony Vaio laptop on, after the white spinning with the windows logo I get a black screen which flashes white at I assume random intervals. I can't go any farther then this so I can't boot in to safe mode and do anything
so what do I do?
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Hey, PhanttomStrike!
Are you saying that it does this even if you start Windows into Safe Mode? If you're saying that you need to get into Windows so that you can then restart to Safe Mode, then I think you can just press F8 right before Windows begins starting up.
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Hey TwoCables,
Thanks for the quick response. So I try to boot into safe mode by pressing f8 but what I get is a black screen with a mouse. Now I have no idea what to do because if I can't boot into safe mode I can't uninstall or change any programs or run anything on cmd either.
I got to the login screen (which was black and I assumed it was my login screen) and I tried to press ctrl and enter my password and got error 0xc0000142
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@PhanttomStrike said:
Hey TwoCables,
Thanks for the quick response. So I try to boot into safe mode by pressing f8 but what I get is a black screen with a mouse. Now I have no idea what to do because if I can't boot into safe mode I can't uninstall or change any programs or run anything on cmd either.
I got to the login screen (which was black and I assumed it was my login screen) and I tried to press ctrl and enter my password and got error 0xc0000142
The only thing that I can think of is something that I don't know much about myself. So, bear with me if you can:
The only thing that I can think of is deleting the folder called "FluxSoftware" which is located in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local. The big questions though are, "How?" and "Is it safe?"
So of course, let's find out if it's even safe by asking the @f-lux-team (@herf or @lorna).
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"Is it safe" LOL I don't care at this point I mean can't login so it's better then nothing. But yeah the real question is "How"
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@PhanttomStrike @TwoCables I think deleting f.lux' app data is just fine--that's what it does when you uninstall.
I feel like this is video driver related.
At OP, if you're familiar with Linux live CDs or live usb which is much faster, you can run one to get into the windows partition and really do whatever you would like. Let's just start with F.lux's appdata folder.
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Some ways to do this might include somehow using the Windows installation DVD to somehow get access to your hard drive's contents. Or, perhaps putting something called "Linux Live CD" on a USB flash drive and boot into that and access your hard drive from within that Linux OS. Or if your laptop came with some kind of a recovery CD/DVD, then check that out to see what you can do with it.
The exact folder location would be C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local
You'd delete the f.lux folder called "FluxSoftware". Then you would try to start Windows up.
Edit: lol we both recommended the same thing. Funny.
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@Tungsten_smooth @TwoCables well I'm not really familiar with them tried making them once the problem was a I don't have a partition available because I upgraded from Windows 7 so it made a partition for Windows 10 which means I now have 4 partitions which is the maximum
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@PhanttomStrike You don't need to modify any hard drive partitions.
Use Unetbootin and you can select the .iso file that you download and if you plug in the usb flash drive before you start the small program, the flash drive will be already selected (E: F: G:) NOT C:\ and you will want to boot from the usb drive.
This is extremely useful and I recommend you keep a usb drive handy for this type of troubleshooting!
If we need to elaborate on some steps please ask.
Edit: You do NOT need to install the Linux system, just run it from the usb drive and use the system like that, that's what it's designed to be able to do: test it before you set hard drive space to it.
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All we are recommending is finding some way to get at your hard drive. That's all. We are not asking you to make any changes other than deleting that f.lux folder that I showed you.
So, if you can get a friend to help you using their computer or if you have another computer, then you can do what we are asking.
Again, first, look to see what kind of CDs or DVDs came with your laptop. Did you get any kind of recovery CDs or ways to access your files in case Windows isn't able to start?
If not, then do you have a Windows installation DVD?
What we're really asking you to do is actually very simple (the opposite of complex - I'm not saying it's easy even though it should be easy).
Edit: Did this all begin happening after you installed f.lux? We've been assuming so.
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Well got the Linux drive took a long time that's for sure, and I was using Flux at first it worked no problems, the. It stopped working so I downloaded it again and the this happened. I got the Linux Distro Solus and got a bootable use. And I don't know what to do. Got to safe mode as well it had a black screen and in the corners said safe mode that's it
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So fixed the laptop, and found the answer on Reddit. What you had to do to fix the problem was-
Steps:
- Navigate to c:\windows\system32\config - check dates on SYSTEM, SOFTWARE, DEFAULT, SAM, etc files. Make a copy of these just in case.
- Navigate into backup folder - check to see if you have recent backups of the above mentioned files.
- copy from backup folder into config folder (up one level) and overwrite any files it can find. In my case, it didn't have a backup of SOFTWARE and one other file.
Now run the DISM /image:C\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions command - before this would not complete for me, and now it did. Reboot and viola!
(Copy and pasted from Reddit)
Now I didn't have to do the command but you may have to do it.
I deleted the F.lux files but that didn't do it so I don't know what could've happened
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@PhanttomStrike wow it looks like you forced a "last known good config" since that option usually doesn't do anything for me, so you definitely got that to work.
I'll look into this as it may be very useful, thanks!
