Windows 7 boot problem

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Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Up until a week or so ago I had no problems with booting my system, but I rarely have occasion to reboot. Usually only after some driver updates but I’ve done none of those in awhile. Last week after I downloaded and installed the monthly Windows updates, the boot process would get to the initial GUI screen with the throbbing Windows logo and stall. The hard drive activity light is solid. I can leave it in that condition for up to a half hour and it never finishes booting. I’ve booted to the recovery screen and run all the repair options, and although it shows one problem, the actual problem varies from try to try and doesn’t seem to be relevant. I’ve opened a command prompt from the repair options screen and run sfc /scannow and it doesn’t find any problems. I can usually get to safe mode with command prompt via the F8 boot menu and again run sfc and chkdsk /r and still no problems found. Some times a restore to a previous restore point will allow Windows to boot, but the next reboot will hang.

Today I updated the nVidia driver to the latest as I always suspect the video driver when Windows has booting problems, took a restore point, and rebooted. Still hangs at the same place. I tried doing a system restore to the newly created restore point but it still hangs. Then I booted to safe mode with command prompt, ran sfc to check and again no problems found. I then did a normal start boot and Windows loaded and showed the completion screen for the restore.

There were a lot of different attempts to resolve this over the past week but none that worked consistently. Sometimes doing a system restore works and the system will start normally. Other times booting to safe mode with command prompt, the restarting works, but rarely the same procedure works twice in a row. Is it possible my 1TB hard drive is failing? The S.M.A.R.T. data doesn’t show any problems but the drive has over 23,000 hours of run time. And a chkdsk /f finds no bad sectors or data.

I know if I do a restart it will hang again, so I’m not going to do that until I can get to the bottom of this. Anyone have any ideas?

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Hello nreiter, welcome to the lounge.

I suspect the “link” to the Windows Update is a co-incidence, meaning that I think it is caused by a boot issue and you had to re-boot after the updates and hence encountered the issue. This is reinforced by the indications that it still happens after a system Restore. After the System Restore – assuming it completes correctly – those updates are no longer present.

So what might it be? Well, since you only boot irregularly, it may have been present for some time. SMART is a good start for the drive, but perhaps you could also download and run the manufacturers drive diagnostics tool too? 23k hours is around two and a half years, so the drive should be ok, but if you rarely shutdown, the drive may be suffering even if SMART is clean.

There have in the past been anecdotal stories of drives that have run for a long time failing to re-start after a power cycle due to the grease on the bearing “drying up” – I’ve not seen it myself, but have heard of it – an urban myth perhaps or the real deal, who knows. It might be relevant in this case.

Other than the drive, could the PSU be going soft? Boot up requires a lot more current drain on the 12v,5v and 3v rails. If the PSU is tired it may not be able to source sufficient current and drop the rails a little as a result. Should be quick and easy to swap a new PSU.

If you don’t have a spare psu, do you have a different (lower spec) video card? The video card could be dropping the PSU rails too, so a lower performance card should load the rails less.

I assume you ran the memory checker from the system repair too and that it reports everything clean?

Does it exhibit the fault if you unplug all USB devices: I’ve seen systems that hang on boot if there is a bad USB device connected.

Finally, I’ll throw in a curve ball: while the machine is running, download and burn a Linux Live CD. Re-boot, but this time , run it of the CD. Do you still see boot issues from the Live CD?

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You’re correct about the updates not being involved, they still haven’t been applied.

The previous successful boot was on 12/3 so something happened between then and 12/13.

I doubt it’s a drive starting problem as the system does start the boot process. I’ll look for the Hitachi diagnostics and run them on the drive.

I have another PSU but it has a problem matching the mounting holes. It may fit upside down but that’s a major project to install. I will keep it in mind as a last resort.

Display adapter is a GeForce 9400GT, not a powerhouse by today’s standards. I don’t have another card to try, unfortunately.

I didn’t run the memory diagnostic as the system has not shown any other problems typical of memory faults, but I’ll run it next time I get the boot failure to be sure.

I’ve unplugged all external USB and eSATA devices with no change.

I have been able to boot from the Windows Recovery CD, so that would seem to rule out a number of the above potential problems.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming, and I’ll keep looking for something in the event logs for more clues.+

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I have another PSU but it has a problem matching the mounting holes. It may fit upside down but that’s a major project to install. I will keep it in mind as a last resort.+

If all else fails and you still think it is the PSU, your spare can still be used but don’t mount it. At our computer club we often lay the case on its side, disconnect wires from suspected PSU and place the spare on top of it. You should be able to temporarily reconnect wires to motherboard, drives, etc. to complete the testing.

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Try the clean boot procedure.

Jerry

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Try the clean boot procedure.

Good suggestion, I’ll give that a try.

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Although I seriously doubt it’s the PSU, I could do as you describe. It would have to be very temporary as we live in our motorhome and there is limited space. My mid-tower lives under the desk and if I layed it down, there wouldn’t be room for my feet

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Anyone have any ideas?

nreiter,

Hello.. Sometimes it is best to try the simplest things first… How is your “BIOS” battery? you can use CPUID free to see…:cheers: Regards Fred

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My CPUID doesn’t show VBAT. And I’m now wondering if the slightly low values for the 3.3, 5, and 12V voltages indicate a failing PSU. Also, if the BIOS battery were dead, then the BIOS settings wouldn’t be maintained during a power off and that’s not happening.

29636-CPUID

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My CPUID doesn’t show VBAT. Also, if the BIOS battery were dead, then the BIOS settings wouldn’t be maintained during a power off and that’s not happening.

“n”

Hello… You need version 1.16 CPUID 1.16… Also i didn’t say that it was dead…. (battery) if its weak it can cause “Booting” problems…:cheers: Regards Fred

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I may just get a new battery and replace it, I think it’s a CR2032? At least it’s easier to change than the PSU. Yes, I have a meter and can check the voltage, but I have to wait until I can afford to be down for an hour or more. And the tower is under my desk and at my age I don’t bend so well anymore

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Well, that was CPUID 1.16. I got it from the link you originally posted.

29638-CPUID1.16

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“N”,
Hello… Sorry for my confusion… On some of the later editions things are not all the same … Don’t know why you don’t see the VBAT… you have the same version as i have???..Do you have any way of testing the battery (just to eliminate it from the mix) Possibly a multimeter of some kind? Regards Fred

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This is only a long shot but can you insert your windows disk and boot with it to select repair options. Then run a startup repair to see if it finds anything wrong and fixes it.
Its possible the boot manager may be slightly corrupt and a repair run should fix it.

Of course this may do nothing but worth a try.

Also if your case is positioned on the floor there may be a build up of fluff and dirt in the fans and CPU cooler causing overheating.
May be worth giving a cleanup if your going to be opening the case anyway.

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That was the first thing I tried. Also I cleaned out the case and all fans with a vacuum cleaner and canned air. I do that every 6 months or so as it really collects dust in the motorhome. I’ve pretty well tried all the obvious things (except for the memory diagnostic) and am now down to grasping at straws

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If you don’t have another 3v coin cell to hand, don’t worry, just flip the old one out. Nothing bad will happen: yes you may loose some settings in the BIOS, but they can be set again at another time. As Fred suggested a low bat (rather than a dead battery) could cause problems. If you have a digital voltmenter, it most likely will not show much difference from 3volts unless the cell is very bad. The coin cell needs to be loaded slightly to replicate conditions in the motherboard – a very small load, but a current drain all the same, otherwise you’ll just be measuring the off load terminal voltage, which will be 3volts.

You mentioned the low PSU volts: yes they do look a little on the low side. Not horrendously so, but perhaps enough to make a difference. Other than the PSU being soft, could the mains supply to the PC be a factor? The PSU is a switchmode, so I doubt it will be low input voltage to the PSU that would cause the low supply rails, but I assume the motorhome run from an mains inverter…..Could there be noise on the line from it? Not all PSU’s are made the same, but some I’ve seen don’t like noise on the line. If you have an opportunity, could you run the PC from a standard mains supply to see if it makes a difference?

I believe there are some contributors here who have lots of experience running in a motor home and may well shoot me down in flames, but I thought it might be worthwhile raising the possibility….

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That was the first thing I tried. Also I cleaned out the case and all fans with a vacuum cleaner and canned air. I do that every 6 months or so as it really collects dust in the motorhome. I’ve pretty well tried all the obvious things (except for the memory diagnostic) and am now down to grasping at straws

I have read in a number of places that using a vacuum cleaner inside the case is dangerous. The primary concern is static build up. If you get an electric jolt in the motherboard components or the CPU the result may be bye-bye or buy-buy new board.

Compressed air is good.

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Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have the time to spend on diagnosing this further. I’m going to try the clean boot first to either eliminate or incriminate software. If that doesn’t solve it, then I’ll resort to the hardware tests. I’ll start with the BIOS battery as that’s the easiest to do, the PSU swap being the most difficult. I have a couple of button cells but not any CR2032. If the ones I have are 3V I’ll try one of them.

We’re on good mains power so that’s not a factor, and I’ve run this computer on our 2000W inverter for many hours with no problems. But it was a legitimate question.

Tomorrow I’ll either report I found the problem or I need more suggestions. Thanks all for the help thus far.

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Dell Studio 17 Win 7 Prof.64 bit
I have recently had the same symptoms as described in nreiter’s original post. I performed a disc clean up followed by a registry scan using CC Cleaner free edition. The scan produced a long list of errors associated with AVG. I do not remember the exact description, however following the fix errors procedure my boot is now back to normal.
Hope this may be of help

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Well, with the holiday it took me a few days to get back to my boot problem. Today I used msconfig to do a clean boot, no services or startup items, and booting was normal. I turned on startup items and still a good boot. Turned on half of the services and still good. I think I have it isolated to the VMWare services but I still had trouble booting even with those set to manual. I have them disabled for now but I’m going to delay any further testing until another day so I can get some use out of my computer while it’s up and running Also going to check the VMWare forums for any similar reports. I did install the latest version, 8.0.1, a few weeks before the problems started.

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I may have finally fixed the problem. Since the hang was reproducible and always at the same point in the boot process, I decided it was not a hardware or PS issue, but a software problem. I could always get the system to boot, eventually, after trying various repair procedures, but usually getting it to boot into safe mode with command prompt would let me run chkdsk and a shutdown -r from there would usually work.

I had an accumulation of windows updates to apply so I went ahead and installed them today. A reboot hung, of course, so after several attempts I was able to get into safe mode and use MSCONFIG to do a diagnostics boot (only essential services). This worked and the updates had been applied. I then reset MSCONFIG to a normal startup and rebooted. The system came up with no hang ups. I’m hoping that one of the updates replaced the problematic driver or system file and I won’t have any trouble in the future. However, since I’m up and running for now, I’m not going to tempt the fates and reboot today

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Well, I finally solved the problem yesterday. I had been suspecting the system hard drive but the S.M.A.R.T. data didn’t show any problems. After another attempt to install the January Windows Updates, the problem worsened. Not only wouldn’t the system boot, it now blue screened. A system restore to Friday didn’t make any difference.

So, having a pile of 500GB drives in the closet, I installed a Maxtor 7H500F0 on an unused SATA port and restored my C: backup from Tuesday night. The system rebooted, installed device drivers for the Maxtor and my LG DVD drive. Another restart and all was working. Another benefit is I have not seen any of the occasional short lockups that I had been experiencing for the last year or so.

Thank you for all the suggestions. Now on to the next problem :rolleyes:

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To complete this story, after it appeared that the boot hangup problem was solved, I started getting blue screens at random times. This morning I couldn’t stay up for more than a few minutes before a BSOD. Of course, the event logs were no help. I ran both the Windows memory test and memtest86 but no errors were found in the RAM. At that point, I decided it was time for a throrough cleaning and reseating of boards and connectors. I disconnected the myriad of cables (what happened to the wireless computer?) and opened the case. Although I had vacuumed it recently, there was some new dust inside. I then removed the NVidia video card and blew on it and almost choked on the dust! I used some canned compressed air and blew out a lot of dust bunnies from the GPU heat sink and fan. Probably enough that the fan may not have been turning. I also did a better cleaning with the case open on the table than I was able to do on the floor. I didn’t bother reseating the RAM as the memory tests didn’t show any problems.

I reassembled the case, plugged in all the cables, powered up, and it booted with no hangups. It’s been running for about 5 hours now with no blue screens, no hesitations, and even Firefox seems faster Speedfan is showing some potential problems with the Maxtor drive so I may replace that with a different drive if it gets worse. I hope to replace this system with a NAS and a high end notebook in the near future, so I just need to keep this system running the interim.

The moral of the story is, keep the computer clean and be sure to check every heat sink and fan. There’s lots of fans and several heat sinks in a tower system.

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I have the same problem. Exactly as Tinto Tech. Note that the computer runs just fine when booting to a different OS or even a live CD. Nothing was changed or added from the time W7 was booting and then stopped booting.

It all begins here with my XPP system and installing W7 for a dual boot setup.
I Installed New 1 TB hard drive.
3 Partitions
1) XPP , 2) W7, 3) data

System can boot to W7 Menu. I can choose W7 default or “other”
Other takes me to the original XP menu.
XP starts as runs just fine.
I can also boot live CDs to other OSs,
W7 was working great for about a week.
The computer was left on and it shut it self down.
From this point it is not possible to get past the splash screen. W7 hangs and the windows logo seems to “pulse”
I have tried all of the restore, safe mode, repair “tricks” I can find. None work.
Looking for a solution
HarvM

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Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Up until a week or so ago I had no problems with booting my system, but I rarely have occasion to reboot. Usually only after some driver updates but I’ve done none of those in awhile. Last week after I downloaded and installed the monthly Windows updates, the boot process would get to the initial GUI screen with the throbbing Windows logo and stall. The hard drive activity light is solid. I can leave it in that condition for up to a half hour and it never finishes booting. I’ve booted to the recovery screen and run all the repair options, and although it shows one problem, the actual problem varies from try to try and doesn’t seem to be relevant. I’ve opened a command prompt from the repair options screen and run sfc /scannow and it doesn’t find any problems. I can usually get to safe mode with command prompt via the F8 boot menu and again run sfc and chkdsk /r and still no problems found. Some times a restore to a previous restore point will allow Windows to boot, but the next reboot will hang.

Today I updated the nVidia driver to the latest as I always suspect the video driver when Windows has booting problems, took a restore point, and rebooted. Still hangs at the same place. I tried doing a system restore to the newly created restore point but it still hangs. Then I booted to safe mode with command prompt, ran sfc to check and again no problems found. I then did a normal start boot and Windows loaded and showed the completion screen for the restore.

There were a lot of different attempts to resolve this over the past week but none that worked consistently. Sometimes doing a system restore works and the system will start normally. Other times booting to safe mode with command prompt, the restarting works, but rarely the same procedure works twice in a row. Is it possible my 1TB hard drive is failing? The S.M.A.R.T. data doesn’t show any problems but the drive has over 23,000 hours of run time. And a chkdsk /f finds no bad sectors or data.

I know if I do a restart it will hang again, so I’m not going to do that until I can get to the bottom of this. Anyone have any ideas?

I have the same problem. Except I have on board video. Note that the computer runs just fine when booting to a different OS or even a live CD. Nothing was changed or added from the time W7 was booting and then stopped booting.

It all begins here with my XPP system and installing W7 for a dual boot setup.
I Installed New 1 TB hard drive.
3 Partitions
1) XPP , 2) W7, 3) data

System can boot to W7 Menu. I can choose W7 default or “other”
Other takes me to the original XP menu.
XP starts as runs just fine.
I can also boot live CDs to other OSs,
W7 was working great for about a week.
The computer was left on and it shut it self down.
From this point it is not possible to get past the splash screen. W7 hangs and the windows logo seems to “pulse”
I have tried all of the restore, safe mode, repair “tricks” I can find. None work.
Looking for a solution
HarvM

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Try going into BIOS and setting the SATA boot disk to run in IDE mode.

Jerry

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I will try that.

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Today I updated the nVidia driver to the latest as I always suspect the video driver when Windows has booting problems, took a restore point, and rebooted

Roll back the driver.

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