Diagnostic Policy on Vista not starting

[NYJimbo]

I have a laptop running Vista Home 64. It came in last year infected. Customer did too much to try to fix so we did a total wipe and reload and put back his files. Well here we are again but this time the drive showing errors. Cloned it, not many errors on the cloning. Now running off the new drive. Booted ok, did some cleanups and virus scans. Everything seems to run fine except cannot get Diagnostic Policy to start. I noticed that wired internet is working but WIFI is not. But I think the DP has to be running to get to diaging anything.

Now I have done about 100 things trying to get it to work. Every imaginable type of tcp/ip reset/flush/netsh whatever command. Tried dozens of fixes in the registry. Added groups and users and changed and checked permission (and effective permissions). I tried all the functions of D7 that made sense including all wbem/dll/etc. Ran chksdsks, sfc scannows, windows repair, created a new administrator profile to see if it works there, removed all related drivers and reinstalled, no UAC, remove all A/V completely, you name it.

Everytime DP tries to start it comes up with a Error 5:Access Denied, which is well known. The DP tries to start again later and comes up with "The requested control is not valid for this service" Would be nice if it told me what that control was.

This customer cannot afford a reload as he now has software installed that he claims he cannot get again so he is paying me more to try to hunt this down. I can keep applying every "fix" under the sun but so far nothing is allowing me to start it.

Does anyone know of any NEW ideas or tools that relate to this problem. I keep finding all the usual "do a system restore" or a "netsh....." or "add services to" type of stuff but nothing changes.

Is there a deeper probe I can do to find exactly what is not permitting me to start DP ?

I really don't want to have to do a repair install or fresh install and the customer is stuck due to the software on this machine cannot be replaced.

 

[SilverLeaf]

Probably not much help, but just in case......I suspect that adding the localservice and networkservice accounts to the local Administrators group could potentially solve the problem. I have come across references to this working for this situation. However, this will have security implications as these potentially exploitable service accounts will now have elevated privileges.

 

[NYJimbo]

Probably not much help, but just in case......I suspect that adding the localservice and networkservice accounts to the local Administrators group could potentially solve the problem. I have come across references to this working for this situation. However, this will have security implications as these potentially exploitable service accounts will now have elevated privileges.

That was one of this first things I tried. You go to a forum and see these things and they look very promising so you do them...... and nothing.

It's very irritating how many "fixes" are supposed to fix the one specific problem but none of them actually fixes it for you.

I'm gonna keep digging.

 

[KompuKare]

Longshot but maybe worth trying: how about partitioning the HDD (or better yet using a spare), installing Vista64H on that, seeing if everything's fine there (otherwise it's hardware but I'm sure you've tried a live Linux already) and grabbing the registry hives responsible for TCPIP? Might be a lot of registry entries but it should work.

Had to do that once for something similar (although AFAIR I was able to use the old backup reg in \System32\config) and it worked (ancient Win2K machine were they didn't want N&P).

 

[NYJimbo]

Longshot but maybe worth trying: how about partitioning the HDD (or better yet using a spare), installing Vista64H on that, seeing if everything's fine there (otherwise it's hardware but I'm sure you've tried a live Linux already) and grabbing the registry hives responsible for TCPIP? Might be a lot of registry entries but it should work.

Had to do that once for something similar (although AFAIR I was able to use the old backup reg in \System32\config) and it worked (ancient Win2K machine were they didn't want N&P).

Thanks but I already scanned it with boot disks that config'd the wifi perfectly. UBCD4Win shows all clean HD wise. In the installed O/S no other hardware issues come up, no bangs in DM, nothing fails any other test. I don't think having a parallel O/S install is really going to guide me as to whats wrong with this install. Unless I go registry entry by registry entry and all DLL's, etc and that's still not showing me the complex dependencies and other requirements that might be preventing this from starting DP.

Shame this guy has no system restores either.

 

[PCX]

If you are looking for a pretty decent tool that fixes a lot of different issues, then check out tweaking.com

Also, Is doing an in-place upgrade an option?

Good luck man, I hope you figure it out.

 

[JustInspired]

Last year I had a similar issue where there was some custom database software with various dependencies on a machine that really needed a nuke and pave.
I used PC Mover to move just the necessary software to a fresh install on a spare drive. It worked brilliantly much to my surprise.
When it was all set up I just cloned it to his own drive.
Just an idea...

 

[nlinecomputers]

Diagnostic services is NOT a required service as I understand it. Your Wifi is not working. Fix that and I suspect DPS will properly start.

 

[brandonkick]

This is one thing that just drives me crazy.

How do so many people wind up with irreplaceable software?

Best of luck with this mess

 

[nlinecomputers]

Because they pirated it.

 

[coffee]

Have you tried going in and deleting the "networks" and then go into device manager and removing the wireless card. Then reboot it and have it reinstall wireless card and networks?

I feel your pain brother.

coffee

 

[nlinecomputers]

On thing to try is running process monitor as you start the service and monitor what registry keys are trying to be accessed. You can then go look at those keys and see if permissions are correct. May have to have a working Win 7 as a baseline to compare. Odds are you have a permissions issue in the registry.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Edit: Working Vista as a base line...

 

[Appletax]

That was one of this first things I tried. You go to a forum and see these things and they look very promising so you do them...... and nothing.

It's very irritating how many "fixes" are supposed to fix the one specific problem but none of them actually fixes it for you.

I'm gonna keep digging.

I'm having the same issue with Win 7 right now and thinking the exact same thing.