After an unexpected shutdown, Windows 7 (pro x64) ran CHKDSK on boot. For some odd reason, CHKDSK got caught up in some sort of a loop. Lines of text kept flashing on my screen and all I could tell is that CHKDSK was wreaking havoc with my system files. Now, Windows 7 still boots, surprisingly, but it cannot run any application or tool that's 64 bit. 32bit functionality seems unaffected. Most importantly, since the recovery tools are 64bit, none of them work. System restore - useless. System backup - fail. Trying to run the windows installer from DVD - fail. Trying to run recovery tools by booting from DVD - fail ("unexpected error"). The only option seems to be a clean install. This is a major inconvenience since, guess, the file and settings transfer won't run either. (and, interestingly, the windows activation files were deleted also, which is why now windows thinks it is not genuine and there is nothing that can be done about it) The reason why I feel this is a serious bug, no matter how rare, is that a simple CHKDSK operation should not cripple a system beyond recovery. Maybe there was some corruption due to the unclean shutdown. But if vital system files are affected, CHKDSK should just stop and leave it to the user. The self-initiated CHKDSK procedure is a loose gun. The screen flashes so fast, it is impossible to note what it is doing. Once it starts, there is no way to abort. And CHDKSK did not leave a trace of what it was doing. The event log file is blank. Note that this was the first time ever CHDKSK ran on this computer. I ran tests to verify the hardware is OK. I never had any crashes before. I am not running any 3rd party antivirus software. As a matter of fact, the computer is still running great if you use only 32bit programs.

You've already got a thread going on about this here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/eeb98643-6316-42be-a826-c3f23f35d4e2MCSE, MCSA, MCDST