Starting Windows endless loop

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I have a HP Pavilion M6 laptop running Win 7 Home on a Samsung 840 SSD. My startup time had been somewhat inconsistent running between around 45 seconds to sometimes 2-3 minutes or more. I had noticed a spinning wheel over the Network Connections icon and it wouldn’t open till that went away. I had been trying to get it to run more consistently by removing unnecessary add-ins and dubious programs. I was going to run a full backup of my system and data which is on a separate partition on Acronis True Image after I got it working properly, but it crashed before I could do that.

However, three days ago it wouldn’t boot at all. Only the Starting Windows screen would appear briefly for a few seconds followed by a black screen and then the same thing all over again. I was able to get into the Advanced Boot Options Safe Mode only one time but unfortunately didn’t run a System Restore at that time and haven’t been able to access any of the options since then. I can’t even get into Command Prompt to make any changes there.

I ran my HP Recovery Disk and a USB stick but neither worked. The HP System Diagnostics indicated that both the Hard Disk and Memory passed the tests. I reset the RAM modules anyway and that didn’t make any difference. The CMOS clock is working because it even switched over from DST to CST during this time. The Born On Date for my computer is 11/05/2012.

I’m rapidly running out of options here and am coming to the Windows Secrets forum as my last resort before taking it into the shop. Does anyone have any suggestions that I haven’t tried already?

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Is the HP Recovery Disk a factory reset disk ?

If you have access to another Win 7 machine you can create a Repair Disk but you need to change the Boot order for the machine to boot up with it and that will get you into the Advanced Boot options.

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The recovery disk I’m using is one that I created myself since I don’t have the original Win 7 installation disk.

I did change the boot order as you suggested, but it didn’t make any difference. I could hear the disk spinning and there was a slight delay but the result was the same ol’ endless loop.

FWIW I did notice that the Boot Manager says that it’s supposed to boot from the EFI file, not the Notebook Hard Drive. I tried to change it but it keeps reverting back to this setting.

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===> shop

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===> shop

???

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???

…. coming to the Windows Secrets forum as my last resort before taking it into the shop. Does anyone have any suggestions that I haven’t tried already?

===> shop

Would have saved lots of aggravation IMHO, assuming the shop is competent. Hopefully the SSD is still recoverable if you had anything on it not backed up. I presume a 840 is still under warranty if it is defective. If my suspicions are correct, hopefully it is still in a read only mode and not shifted into ‘permanent read off mode.’ Never mind, I see you disconnected the SSD from the laptop power… if it was in read only mode that would end the recovery window.

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===> shop

Would have saved lots of aggravation IMHO, assuming the shop is competent. I presume a 840 is still under warranty if it is defective.

As it turns out the only tech I would have trusted wasn’t coming back on duty for a couple of more days so I just continued tinkering with it. Since I as able to resolve the issue, it was worth the aggravation and I learned a new trick. Also, the 840 SSD was out of warranty too.

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Don’t know what you are using to post with but if you have access to another machine, create a Paragon Rescue Disk to see if it will boot up with that and then perhaps you will be able to repair the Boot sector.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/rk-free/

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create a Paragon Rescue Disk

I was able to burn this disk with my old XP machine, but it didn’t work either. Nice suggestion tho.

BTW I don’t know if this is relevant or not but I just want to point something out. When I set up this computer initially I wanted to create a separate data partition. However, it turns out that I already had four partitions and by adding another one it became a dynamic disk. In order to keep it as a basic disk I had to delete one partion so I chose the Recovery one. I thought that this wouldn’t make any difference since I assumed that I could always use external media to restore it if necessary, but perhaps I was sadly wrong about this. Does that make any sense?

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I assume you tried hitting F8 prior to the start of Windows boot to get the Advanced Startup Menu. If you kill the boot by holding down the power key and repeat this three times, you should get the advanced Startup screen again. You can then boot to Safe Mode where you can do a System Restore.

Jerry

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I assume you tried hitting F8 prior to the start of Windows boot to get the Advanced Startup Menu. If you kill the boot by holding down the power key and repeat this three times, you should get the advanced Startup screen again. Jerry

Oh yeah. Me and the F8 key are old friends by now. I tried to do what you said, but I don’t know you mean about killing the boot by holding down on the power key. If I do that it won’t start. Perhaps I’m missing something.

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Oh yeah. Me and the F8 key are old friends by now. I tried to do what you said, but I don’t know you mean about killing the boot by holding down on the power key. If I do that it won’t start. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Holding down the Power key should power off the PC thus “killing the boot” After two unsuccessful boots in a row, you should get the Advanced Startup Menu on the third boot.

Jerry

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Holding down the Power key should power off the PC thus “killing the boot” After two unsuccessful boots in a row, you should get the Advanced Startup Menu on the third boot.Jerry

Well, I think I figured out what you were talking about since I was actually able to access the Advanced Startup Menu one time. I ran a System Restore, but when I tried to restart the only thing I got was a black screen with an active cursor. Tried to boot it again and got past the Windows Starting screen to the Welcome screen before it blacked out again like before.

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You might try the tips in this How-To Geek article…

Oh gosh, I’m not that much of a geek and I don’t know anyone familiar with Linux either.

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Pressing F10 or F12 on start up should allow you to select which device to boot from. If that fails, try disconnecting the hard disk and booting from a rescue disk to prove that boot is OK. If that works you can remove the hard disk from the boot options in BIOS and retry.

cheers, Paul

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Pressing F10 or F12 on start up should allow you to select which device to boot from. If that fails, try disconnecting the hard disk and booting from a rescue disk to prove that boot is OK. If that works you can remove the hard disk from the boot options in BIOS and retry. cheers, Paul

I was able to change the boot order to my CD/DVD drive alright. Then I unhooked the SSD and ran the rescue disk. This time it offered me the whole range of system repair options. However, none of them worked since the SSD wasn’t connected. As soon as I plugged it back in my computer reverted to its old endles loop behavior.

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Being able to boot up with the Paragon disk shows that your DVD player works anyway.

During a hung restore using a restore point, I got fed up and power shutdown with the power button – bad mistake as I couldn’t get it to start up with a repair or install disk.

However, I did have a Kaspersky Rescue disk and got it to boot up with that.

It took over 9 hours to scan my disk – went to bed and left it running overnight.

In the morning when it had had finished I hit shutdown or restart – can’t remember which, went to make another cup of coffee to find it running a chdksk when I came back and that fixed it.

Not saying this will work for you as it’s not known what caused your problem, but you could create that disk and give it a try.

http://support.kaspersky.co.uk/viruses/rescuedisk

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Regarding the Paragon disk, I assumed the repairs didn’t work – but you’re right, that does need clarifying.

However, in the opening post, the HP Diagnostics have already been run.

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You might try following the hardware diagnostic steps recommended by HP…http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01443317

Been there, done that. Unfortunately I can only get the basic hardware diagnostics tests, which is how I found out that both my hard drive and memory are OK.

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With the hard disk disconnected you should be able to change the UEFI settings to turn off safe boot, if it’s on, and set it to boot from CD – make sure you know what settings to reinstate.

cheers, Paul

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Have you tried the Kaspersky Rescue Disk yet as in my Post #13 ?

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Very big thanks, Jerry! I left the black screen running for a few hours while I went away to take care of some other matters. When I came back everything was running normally and I hadn’t lost any data or programs. This is the 5th day I’ve been struggling with this computer and you found the magic bullet! Believe me, I’ve scoured the Internet and have never seen this solution posted anywhere else. Don’t know how you did it but it’s a real lifesaver.

Now that I’m back in action again, which of the Advanced Startup Menu items do you think I should run? Obviously I’m going to perform a full backup post-haste. Anything else you would recommend?

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Glad to hear you’re back in business. If you can boot normally now, you shouldn’t need to run any of the other Advanced Startup Menu items. I would run the following item from an elevated command prompt:
SFC /scannow

And just to be on the safe side, download and run MalwareBytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org

Jerry

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Glad to hear you’re back in business. If you can boot normally now, you shouldn’t need to run any of the other Advanced Startup Menu items. I would run the following item from an elevated command prompt:
SFC /scannow

And just to be on the safe side, download and run MalwareBytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org

Jerry

Ooops. Perhaps I spoke too soon. When I booted up this morning, the spinning wheel on the Internet Connections icon went away in 45 seconds, which was a promising sign. However Outlook and Firefox didn’t start up right away. Skype just hung there also Not Responding. Nevertheless, after a few minutes everything finally did open up and worked properly.

Not satisfied with this lackluster performance I decided to see if I could run the Startup Repair option. When I got into the Advanced Startup Menu I foolishly tried Last Known Good instead to see if the system could find a better way to operate and that’s when my troubles started all over again just like before. Unfortunately, this time when I killed Windows twice on startup and tapped on F8 I couldn’t get it to run in Safe Mode so that I could run System Recovery again.

I should have run the backup when I had a chance, but now I’m stuck again. I hate to bother you, but do you know of any other way out of this mess?

FWIW I was able to run the SFC and no problems were reported. Also, I have the paid version of Malwarebytes and ran a full scan but nothing was detected.

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See if you can repeat Jerry’s fix after a cold boot.

With the machine shutdown, switch off the power at the wall socket or pull the plug then hold the power button in for about 30 secs or so and then try again.

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See if you can repeat Jerry’s fix after a cold boot.

With the machine shutdown, switch off the power at the wall socket or pull the plug then hold the power button in for about 30 secs or so and then try again.

It sounded like a good idea, but no luck.

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Try the Kaspersky Rescue Disk then to see if that boots up.

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Try the Kaspersky Rescue Disk then to see if that boots up.

I didn’t have a Kaspersky Rescue Disk but I did have ones that I had made from HP as well as Acronis. Also tried this Rescue Kit 14 that someone had suggested but struck out on all of them. Wouldn’t open in command prompt either.

The good news is that I now know that all my programs and data are still there. The bad news is that I can’t access them anymore.

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If SUDO’s suggestion works and you can get back into Windows, make a backup image before doing anything else. Then I would try Tweaking.com’s Windows Repair.

Jerry

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I have been able to get into Safe Mode in similar situations by doing the following…

1. Power off the computer.

2. Hold down the F8 key.

3. Power the computer on while still holding down the F8 key.

You may get a series of beeps (the system may think there is a key stuck).

It was worth a try, but nada, zilch.

I’m really sorry I didn’t make a backup on the one chance that I’ve had. Sigh.

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I would take it to your tech person, have them save your personal files and data off to a removable device (they should be able to make and use a Linux Live CD), and then re-install Windows from scratch.

Seeing as how nothing seems to work and we’re running out of options, that seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Thanks for all your kind assistance and suggestions. If I ever find out what pooched this dog I’ll let you know.

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Here is the link again for you to create a Kaspersky Rescue Disk.

http://support.kaspersky.co.uk/viruses/rescuedisk

It wasn’t an infection for me but it is designed to boot up a machine that doesn’t otherwise and after its scan, went on to run at least a chkdsk /f which fixed it for me.

Give it a try and it may save you from having to splash the cash on a repair tech.

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Here is the link again for you to create a Kaspersky Rescue Disk.

Give it a try and it may save you from having to splash the cash on a repair tech.

I finally managed to download and run KRD 10. The mistake I was making all along is that I was only changed the boot order in the BIOS and not the Boot Manager at F9. Once I discovered that it was mostly downhill.

Couldn’t get the graphic mode to work so ran it in text mode instead. I was able to scan the startup objects and disk boot sectors, but didn’t find anything wrong. Was able to read the hardware info as well, but no other commands.

Since I was on a roll, I decided to run my Win 7 Repair Disk. Then my luck ran out. When I ran System Restore I got an error message saying “Windows cannot find a system image on this computer.” Startup Repair confirmed this with “NoOsInstalled” altho it did list the OS Version as 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1. Was also able to run CHKDSK but not problems were found.

Thanks again for the link to KRD. Actually I don’t mind spending the money on a tech if he could somehow rescue it as much as I would prefer to avoid the aggravation of reinstalling my system from scratch.

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No problem.

It could turn out be hardware…I was hoping you would have been able to run the System Board test, and Video test, in the HP Component Tests list.

You’ll know more after doing a clean install.

I’m not quite sure what you mean about the “HP Component Tests.” Where would I find that?

I’m doing my best to avoid a clean install as you may have gathered by now since my system as currently configured requires a lot of tweaks.

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That seems a strange version number for Win 7 SP1.

My Win 7 x64 Home Premium is 6.1.7601

While you get other bits at the end, the 1 at the end of 7601 denotes SP1 installed which yours lacks.

I think the only solution I’ve come across for no OS found was a clean install, but hopefully the tech will be able to recover your personal stuff.

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That seems a strange version number for Win 7 SP1.

I think the only solution I’ve come across for no OS found was a clean install, but hopefully the tech will be able to recover your personal stuff.

I thought that I had installed SP1 so I don’t know why it’s not showing up.

A wing and a prayer is about all I’ve got left now.

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See the link in post #15…expand the section titled UEFI Component Tests.

These are the options…

Unfortunately I can only get the basic hardware diagnostics tests, not the UEFI Component Tests since I apparently don’t have the latest version of this software and obviously can’t install it now.

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