Windows giving First time boot issue

[TheModDoctor]

Hi guys,

One of my friends is having some issues with his laptop, so he asked if I would be able to help. But I have no idea what could have caused it and since I can't have a look at it myself I have no idea how to fix it either. Googling it also didn't raise any solutions, so here goes;

Whenever he boots up his laptop, he gets the message "Setting up your computer for first time use". You know the one you get after you just installed windows, I think he gets that one. Now I suspect it's probably some kind of registry entry that has gone psychopathic, which keeps telling windows it is a fresh install or something, but I don't really know.

He said he tried to boot from the Windows disk and then try to fix it from there, but to no avail.
He has Windows 7 Ultimate installed, together with Linux (Debian), and everything worked 100% earlier this week.

Did any of you guys ever get this kind of problem before? And do you have any ideas how to fix it - Without having to format...

Thanks.

[Stuart]

So it started doing this out of the blue? He didn't do a fresh install or anything? Windows 7 has been working fine all along?

And when he gets the message, does it actually boot into Windows, or does it just keep rebooting at the same point?

[TheModDoctor]

Yes Windows 7 was working fine. It started happening suddenly, he didn't reinstall windows or anything.

He gets the message every time he boots, and afterwards it boots into Windows and he can use his laptop as usual, but when he restarts he gets that message again.

[TheModDoctor]

Well, he didn't reinstall Windows, but he did try a repair which did not work. I will try to do a reinstall without formatting and see if it works. Thanks.

[KALSTER]

Do changes he makes stay there? In other words, is it like he keeps restoring the same back-up point over and over?

[Stuart]

I'd try another repair installation first.

[DeeVeeDee]

Hold on you normally get this when setting up a new profile.
Some file could have gone bonkers in the profile setting.

Log in as admin
Backup the profile (Rename it or something) C:\Users\Profilename or cut paste it somewhere else.

Then create a new profile with a different name.
and copy the documents back from the previous one to the new one.