Some Windows troubleshooting advice for those who need it

If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and you get a Blue Screen of Death on boot with the error "STOP 0x0000C1F5" this guy's blog post will help you out:

http://stop0x0000c1f5vistahelp.blogspot.com/

Credit goes to Vijay Gupta for that post.

He recommends SystemRescueCD, but really any Linux live CD distro will work (I used Ubuntu 10.04). The fix does not require any fancy commands as far as I can tell.

tl;dr version:

There is a directory somewhere on you C: drive called $TxfLog
This is corrupted and must be rebuilt using a Vista/7 recovery DVD.

1. Burn live CD
2. run live CD, mount C: drive (you can use the GUI for this, unless your HDD is completely screwed)
3. cd /path/to/mounted-c-drive/
4. cd \$Extend
5. cd \$RmMetadata
6. rm -rf \$Txflog
7. Boot with Vista/7 DVD
8. Follow the procedure to fix the startup for your Windows installation
9. Problem solved
   

better tl;dr version

1. Burn Ubuntu live CD
2. Install Ubuntu
3. Problem solved

I read somewhere that the developers of NTFS would work on it in the morning, then drink beer in the afternoon. Sometimes I think they drank in the morning and coded right after that.


Merry Christmas!

P.S: this is an old issue and Microsoft has released a downloadable patch to fix the issue. Yes, a patch that you have to download for a bug that BSODs your computer on boot.....