My friend gave his laptop that he bought 1 year ago. The problem is it does not boot normally and even in SAFE mode.

The problem started when he use the laptop after sitting it for idling for a month (summer vacation). The computer started normally and AVG7.5 kicked in and started to download updates automatically. After that, the computer restarted and bloom, nothing happened, no Windows Welcome screen, no blue screen, no error messages. He then called me and I guided him to boot in safe mode. The computer just stops after display couple multidisk(0)partition(0) lines. The last 2 lines are \system32\config\system and \system32\config\system.log.

Though he has the recovery disc, he doesn't want to re-format the drive as there are couple important program installed and data stored. I used an external USB/SATA device to connect his disk to my computer. I can see the folders and files there, I can do the virus scan on his system drive - no threat.

Please advice how we "repair" Windows without wipe away everything. Thanks a lot.