Can only boot Windows using 'Disable Driver Signature Enforcement'

Question

So my laptop is acting up lately and I can't seem to figure out what exactly the problem is.

For the last few months my laptop will work completely fine and all of a sudden a (Seemingly) random component of my laptop will stop working. The first time it was my integrated webcam, the second time it was my network card and the last time it was my external usb mouse.

Like all people do in these cases... I would restart the laptop only to find an infinite BSOD loop saying: Critical Service Failed. This happened in all the above cases when the component stopped working. The first 2 times I did a complete reset (Keeping my user files) which initially worked, but the problem would come back in a few weeks but this time with a different component.

The SRTTrail is not being completely helpful, only notifying me to this: Root cause found:

Unknown Bugcheck: Bugcheck 5a. Parameters = 0x1, 0xffff9501ca9ed130, 0xffff85069ed29560, 0xffffffffc0000428.

Repair action: System Restore Result: Cancelled

The only way I can boot is using startup option F7: 'Disable Driver Signature Enforcement'. Although this works, some things are off... The first time I booted my network adapter was not recognized and I got an error 'problem while starting nvcpl.dll' which I traced back to the NVIDIA graphic drivers.

I tried going into device manager to check, but it would not allow me in saying the Administrator blocked access while I am the only account of this laptop and am the administrator. Eventually I got it to open using command prompt in administrator mode. The network card was indeed not recognized so I uninstalled it and rebooted.

I was getting the same BSOD error again but when booting with the Driver Signature Enforcement disabled, I did have network connection again. I tried the same with the NVIDIA graphic drivers with no success.

After that I followed up a lead with potentially being infected by malware or rootkits so I tried to scan with TDSSKiller, it found a lot of drivers missing signatures and put these in quarantine also with no success so far. It did not seem to find any rootkits or serious issues. I included the log here:

TDSSKiller Log

Does anyone have an idea where to go from here? I don't mind the Windows reset so much, but not too happy with it coming back every 2 weeks or so. Any help is much appreciated.

My PC specs:

Lenovo ideapad 510
Windows 10 64-bit (With the latest anniversary update)
Intel core i5 6200
Geforce GTX 940m

--EDIT--

Today I have been able to find the following operational message on the moment the BSOD came up:

Code Integrity was unable to load the Package_for_KB4022730~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.1.0.cat catalog because the signing certificate for this catalog has been revoked. This can result in images failing to load because a valid signature cannot be found. Check with the publisher to see if a new signed version of the catalog and images are available.

After that logs appear of each of the drivers in this package failing to load because they are unsigned (Probably the unsigned drivers I found in the TDSSKill scan yesterday)

Now trying to find a way to get this catalog back.

Solution

I was able to solve my problem using 2 steps:

Open up a command prompt as administrator and execute the following command: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

After that I ran a windows restore tool which can be downloaded here:

Restore Tool

After this has run, reboot and for me my laptop could boot again as normal. Good luck guys!

Comments

[Ramhound]

So which device is using an unsigned driver?

[Moab]

See this article....blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2012/04/15/…

[I say Reinstate Monica]

What does the restore tool do? I ask, because if/when the link goes down, it would be nice to know if these are steps that can be done manually.

[Arjan Strijland]

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure what the tool does specifically. According to the website it checks and restores common Windows errors. I suspect it has to do with fixing registry entries, restoring errors in Windows updates or registering device drivers in my case.