Accidentally Disabled all Services in MSConfig, Windows Won't Boot

[Crxcked]

A friend (running Windows 10) was trying to resolve an unrelated issue and a site recommended a clean boot by disabling all non-Microsoft services via MSConfig (system configuration). It suggests a restart after ok'ing those changes except the PC will not finish booting anymore.

 

It is suspected by me that he forgot to hit "hide all Microsoft services" before hitting "disable all, thus disabling all Microsoft services with it." Because the third party services not running should have no effect on whether Windows boots or not, and the issue started right after the following restart which would apply the changes.

 

Windows is stuck on the loading beads over the black background, the windows icon doesn't show only the hallmark windows loading circle. The system was left overnight on the boot loading screen to no avail, it is stuck on boot. We are able to access Windows Recovery by tripping it by force-restarting it three times. Within that, the automatic "Startup Repair" wizard isn't able to find a solution. There is no restore point available. And we are not able to boot into any of the 3 variations of Safe Mode either, they all lead to a blank black screen. Only command prompt is accessible in its limited form and a drastic option to reset the PC, thus losing all programs and associated settings/data but not "personal files."

 

It seems that just being able to re-enable these Windows services would allow the PC to function normally again, but MSConfig doesn't seem accessible by the WinRe limited command prompt and Safe Mode isn't accessible. Currently I've been exploring regedit on a good PC to possibly find the keys and values that toggle the enabling and disabling of services, if that can be pinpointed the registry should be modifiable by booting to a program like PCRegedit and modifying the boot drive's registry.

 

I hope we can find a solution for this peculiar situation. Appreciate the help!

[MrMase]

When starting the computer hit F8 so you can get to recovery tools.
You mentioned that Safe Mode is not available but if you go to Advanced Options -> Startup Settings and set Enable Safe mode?

 

Alternatively you could try:
System Restore - Could try to go back to prior to you making the change

Startup Repair - Might detect what has been done and fix it

Command Prompt - Try running "Start msconfig"

[goatedpenguin]

here is a site from Microsoft that should help: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/accidentally-disabled-all-microsoft-services-in/39e1a2a6-6d49-4923-8cdb-eb33c375aa10#:~:text=Click Troubleshooting> Advanced Options> Startup,access Safe Mode with Networking.&text=Restore the System by deleting,Restore your PC> Remove Everything.

[Crxcked]

1 hour ago, MrMase said:

When starting the computer hit F8 so you can get to recovery tools.
You mentioned that Safe Mode is not available but if you go to Advanced Options -> Startup Settings and set Enable Safe mode?

That's the menu we used to reach Safe Mode, but it doesn't boot in.

1 hour ago, MrMase said:

 

Alternatively you could try:
System Restore - Could try to go back to prior to you making the change

Startup Repair - Might detect what has been done and fix it

Command Prompt - Try running "Start msconfig"

There's no restore points. The automatic Startup Repair wizard wasn't able to fix it. And the command prompt runs out of X: and isn't able to start or find MSConfig.

 

1 hour ago, swabro said:

here is a site from Microsoft that should help: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/accidentally-disabled-all-microsoft-services-in/39e1a2a6-6d49-4923-8cdb-eb33c375aa10#:~:text=Click Troubleshooting> Advanced Options> Startup,access Safe Mode with Networking.&text=Restore the System by deleting,Restore your PC> Remove Everything.

This solution suggests to either access through safe mode (which we can't). Or to redo the startup files via cmd (it doesn't fix it). Or to straight up restore/reset your PC. The only hope I see is through the registry as we're not able to even boot via safe mode.

[MrMase]

1 minute ago, Crxcked said:

That's the menu we used to reach Safe Mode, but it doesn't boot in.

There's no restore points. The automatic Startup Repair wizard wasn't able to fix it. And the command prompt runs out of X: and isn't able to start or find MSConfig.

 

This solution suggests to either access through safe mode (which we can't). Or to redo the startup files via cmd (it doesn't fix it). Or to straight up restore/reset your PC. The only hope I see is through the registry as we're not able to even boot via safe mode.

You could run a reset this PC but keep your apps & programs, that would almost certainly fix it.

[Crxcked]

1 hour ago, MrMase said:

You could run a reset this PC but keep your apps & programs, that would almost certainly fix it.

You lose your apps and programs when resetting via even the least invasive option, and that's what we're trying to avoid.

[MrMase]

11 minutes ago, Crxcked said:

You lose your apps and programs when resetting via even the least invasive option, and that's what we're trying to avoid.

Sorry for technical accuracy I meant Refresh your PC as per MS Documentation this retains some of the installed apps but yes its not ideal.

 

Have you looked for the following which would roll back some registry issues created by MSConfig:

Last Known Good Configuration (advanced). Starts Windows with the last registry and driver configuration that worked successfully.

[Crxcked]

4 minutes ago, MrMase said:

Sorry for technical accuracy I meant Refresh your PC as per MS Documentation this retains some of the installed apps but yes its not ideal.

 

Have you looked for the following which would roll back some registry issues created by MSConfig:

Last Known Good Configuration (advanced). Starts Windows with the last registry and driver configuration that worked successfully.

Yes, they changed the terminology from Windows 8 to 10. Prior to 10, reinstalling the OS without losing files was called refreshing and now its just an option within the resetting function and just considered a type of reset.

 

The Last Known Good Configuration was unfortunately only on Windows 7 within the recovery environment. It would've probably fixed this. These are the current options on 10 which aren't as useful.

[MrMase]

Ah ok yes they have removed that, well I think we are looking at third party utilities here.
Grab yourself a copy of Hiren's Boot CD and you want to loan into the Pre-Instalation Environment of Windows 10.

Once thats loaded use the Sysinternals copy of Autoruns and Scan your offline system, should be Drive D:\Windows for System Root and D:\Users\Default for user profiles (may be different depending on how your system detects the drives)

With the offline system scanned you can then turn back on the various services and disabled options.

[Crxcked]

4 hours ago, MrMase said:

Ah ok yes they have removed that, well I think we are looking at third party utilities here.
Grab yourself a copy of Hiren's Boot CD and you want to loan into the Pre-Instalation Environment of Windows 10.

Once thats loaded use the Sysinternals copy of Autoruns and Scan your offline system, should be Drive D:\Windows for System Root and D:\Users\Default for user profiles (may be different depending on how your system detects the drives)

With the offline system scanned you can then turn back on the various services and disabled options.

This was very helpful but I'm getting stuck on the last mile here. Getting into the scanned services, all were showing up as selected within autoruns so I'm not sure if the list is complete or if disabling in MSConfig is reflecting in autoruns.

 

I was looking to start MSConfig instead, but trying to open that throws up an insufficient privileges error and says we need to be in the administrator group to access it. How can we elevate our privileges from Hiren's to be able to open it?

 

Beyond that, if services truly weren't disabled in MSConfig upon having opened it, what are some other few broad measures we can take to repair for a failing boot within hiren's?

 

Thank you I truly appreciate the guidance.

[MrMase]

Had a look on my system and I believe Autoruns lists everything except the MS services which is a shame so for our next trick its a bit more time consuming.

You will want to use Registry Editor PE on the Hirens disk to check and edit the individual services for your system.

https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/live-cd/hiren-boot-cd-edit-the-local-registry-of-windows.html
The article above shows how to start setting up the connection to the registry but for an older version so substitute C:\ for D:\ and the documents location to the newer C:\Users\ locations as needed.

 

You will want to Go through all of the services folders individually in the Remote Key version of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ and where appropriate set Start to 2 for Automatic and 4 as Disabled.

This is quite an invasive process so would recommend backing up the registry first using one of the other tools and to try to advise on what services to set I have attached an export from my system (Win10) for guidance.

services.txt

[Crxcked]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:54 AM, MrMase said:

Had a look on my system and I believe Autoruns lists everything except the MS services which is a shame so for our next trick its a bit more time consuming.

You will want to use Registry Editor PE on the Hirens disk to check and edit the individual services for your system.

https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/live-cd/hiren-boot-cd-edit-the-local-registry-of-windows.html
The article above shows how to start setting up the connection to the registry but for an older version so substitute C:\ for D:\ and the documents location to the newer C:\Users\ locations as needed.

 

You will want to Go through all of the services folders individually in the Remote Key version of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ and where appropriate set Start to 2 for Automatic and 4 as Disabled.

This is quite an invasive process so would recommend backing up the registry first using one of the other tools and to try to advise on what services to set I have attached an export from my system (Win10) for guidance.

services.txt 65.24 kB · 1 download

Thank you very very much for your pointers, we got the system to boot after spending hours editing the registry.

 

We found an automatic backup of the registry already on the system in a folder named RegBackup. The backup was from last year but 95% of the services were the same, so we loaded it in as well and cross checked each of the hundreds of services with the backup and corrected each start value to their normal value. This was useful as 4 (disabled) wasn't to be replaced with 2 (automatic) every time and the correct value could've varied as we found out (0, 1, 3, etc), and some services were set to disabled anyways. Anything we couldn't find we cross checked with another good PC. Figuring out how to load the registry hives into regedit was a bit of a process, but we learned how each part of the registry was a different system file somewhere, and how we could temporarily load them into the stock windows regedit and then unload after we were done editing. We exported a backup of the registry in case, but the computer booted and everything was all good after our first (albeit hours long) attempt at editing the registry.

 

It still amazes me how easily you can brick a Windows PC within a few clicks, and that there's no easy way to repair it. I hope documenting our experience will help someone else.

[JustMerf]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:54 AM, MrMase said:

Had a look on my system and I believe Autoruns lists everything except the MS services which is a shame so for our next trick its a bit more time consuming.

You will want to use Registry Editor PE on the Hirens disk to check and edit the individual services for your system.

https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/live-cd/hiren-boot-cd-edit-the-local-registry-of-windows.html
The article above shows how to start setting up the connection to the registry but for an older version so substitute C:\ for D:\ and the documents location to the newer C:\Users\ locations as needed.

 

You will want to Go through all of the services folders individually in the Remote Key version of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ and where appropriate set Start to 2 for Automatic and 4 as Disabled.

This is quite an invasive process so would recommend backing up the registry first using one of the other tools and to try to advise on what services to set I have attached an export from my system (Win10) for guidance.

services.txt 65.24 kB · 1 download

Hello MrMase, I am having the same exact problem with my pc and was wondering where I can get s copy of herins boot cd cause I really dont wanna reset the pc and it sounds like repairing it took a long time.

[Pratik Patil]

On 7/2/2022 at 6:24 PM, MrMase said:

Had a look on my system and I believe Autoruns lists everything except the MS services which is a shame so for our next trick its a bit more time consuming.

You will want to use Registry Editor PE on the Hirens disk to check and edit the individual services for your system.

https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/live-cd/hiren-boot-cd-edit-the-local-registry-of-windows.html
The article above shows how to start setting up the connection to the registry but for an older version so substitute C:\ for D:\ and the documents location to the newer C:\Users\ locations as needed.

 

You will want to Go through all of the services folders individually in the Remote Key version of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\ and where appropriate set Start to 2 for Automatic and 4 as Disabled.

This is quite an invasive process so would recommend backing up the registry first using one of the other tools and to try to advise on what services to set I have attached an export from my system (Win10) for guidance.

services.txt 65.24 kB · 2 downloads

I accidentally gone into this issue of disabling system services from msconfig and have tried all the ways to login to system like changed windowsNT>>passwordless registry key from 2 to 0 by this it just showed me password box to enter password but again when i enter the password it is saying wrong password. And i have also tried other way of replacing on screen keyboard option to cmd but nothing happened. 

 

I have a another account on the system but it does not have admin privileges, so even i enter into the system i cant do anything.

 

I was hoping to try this by the way you told but the sevices.txt file is missing please share it again and please let me know if there is easier way to do this. I am using windows 11 machine.

 

I have access to local guest account so how can it be helpful