Windows boot failure

Dorsetmike · November 29, 2016, 02:00:23 PM

Swithched on this morning, got as far as "Starting Windows" with the coloured window above, then no further progress,tried usual attempts, safe mode, repair etc, --- nowt. Tried putting in the Win 7 pro64 CD, that got as far as asking what language/keyboard but mouse and K/B inoperative, strange they worked when selecting boot options (safe/repair etc) and when going into set up to change boot order!

Any ideas/suggestions?

Dorsetmike · November 29, 2016, 02:23:24 PM

Yup, wireless USB mouse and K/B. Guess who binnned 3 wired K/Bs when he downsized on moving, think I may still have one wired K/B but think the only mouse with a wire is a USB one. Fingers crossed!

Railwaygun · November 29, 2016, 05:35:23 PM

Quote from: Dorsetmike on November 29, 2016, 02:23:24 PM
Yup, wireless USB mouse and K/B. Guess who binnned 3 wired K/Bs when he downsized on moving, think I may still have one wired K/B but think the only mouse with a wire is a USB one. Fingers crossed!

USB mouse should be fine, ISTR that the drivers are loaded automatically. A mini DIN keyboard should also,be ok.

You do have backups......?

GroupC · November 29, 2016, 05:57:06 PM

Exactly the same thing happened to my laptop a couple of weeks ago. Needed a new hard drive I'm afraid... I did get all my data off the old one though.

I checked all the things it looks like you've tried and have been suggested by others, and the new h/d was the worst case cause. Unfortunately that proved to be the thing!

Good luck. Sorry!

If it helps, my new drive requirement was less of a drama than I was fearing cos (a) the bloke got my stuff back and reinstalled the OS (b) I keep backups just in case (which I didn't need, but I still do them anyway).

Mr Sprue · November 29, 2016, 06:16:35 PM

Quote from: GroupC on November 29, 2016, 05:57:06 PM
Exactly the same thing happened to my laptop a couple of weeks ago. Needed a new hard drive I'm afraid... I did get all my data off the old one though.

I checked all the things it looks like you've tried and have been suggested by others, and the new h/d was the worst case cause. Unfortunately that proved to be the thing!

Good luck. Sorry!

If it helps, my new drive requirement was less of a drama than I was fearing cos (a) the bloke got my stuff back and reinstalled the OS (b) I keep backups just in case (which I didn't need, but I still do them anyway).

Just out of interest how did you retrieve your data off the old h/d if it wasn't working?

Dorsetmike · November 29, 2016, 06:24:40 PM

The thing I find wierd is that thew wireless K/B and mouse work when selecting start up options, but when I go into any of the repair options or boot from CD they stop working.

I've run memory checks, tried restore, none cure anything.

Jon898 · November 29, 2016, 08:43:59 PM

Quote from: Mr Sprue on November 29, 2016, 06:16:35 PM
Just out of interest how did you retrieve your data off the old h/d if it wasn't working?

When I had a hard drive go bad and refuse to let the computer boot, I retrieved the data on it by buying a SATA to USB hard drive adapter. Once I had the bad hard drive extracted and replaced with a new one and the OS and software reloaded, it was easy to use the adapter to let the computer (in my case a PC laptop) "see" the old bad drive as just another drive and let me pull any non-corrupted data off it. Not sure if that's what GroupC did, but it worked for me. The adapters go for under USD20 here, so the whole thing came to under USD100 (not counting the contributions to the swear jar

).

Jon

Izzy · November 29, 2016, 10:04:40 PM

So the hard drive hadn't actually failed, just that the O/s section was corrupted in some way, probably the boot sector, and wouldn't load. Had you not needed/wanted the ordinary file data off it a clean O/s re-install via a reformat would have been possible on it.

Izzy

Railwaygun · November 30, 2016, 01:12:42 AM

Quote from: Izzy on November 29, 2016, 10:04:40 PM
So the hard drive hadn't actually failed, just that the O/s section was corrupted in some way, probably the boot sector, and wouldn't load. Had you not needed/wanted the ordinary file data off it a clean O/s re-install via a reformat would have been possible on it.

Izzy

Pop the old drive in a £10 usb3 drive case, partition And reformat it And you have a spare backup drive.

Usb3 interface is more reliable than usb2 in my experience, even if your PC/. Portable has no usb3 ports.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TRIXES-USB-3-0-Sata-2-5-Hard-Disk-Drive-HDD-External-Aluminium-Case-Caddy-Box-/390671619396?hash=item5af5d7d544:g:txMAAOSwPYZU9I6-

Dorsetmike · November 30, 2016, 09:36:29 PM

Strange continues, I unplugged from mains last night, thought I'd give it another go about lunch time, lo and behold, after running repair/restore it worked, only message was concerning installing AMD quick stream, when I did so it said summat about not licensed. Still it's working OK now, except download speed is only 73M instead of the usual 90+, probably the busy time of the evening, upload about usual at 6+. Virgin were saying we should be getting "up to" 150M "soon".

Ian_S · December 01, 2016, 06:54:24 AM

Up to 150.....

keithfre · December 01, 2016, 04:14:08 PM

I don't know if this will help, but here goes. For several months I had problems with my old XP system booting. Sometimes it would take several hard reboots (power-downs) before it would even get as far as a startup screen. Once it got past that and the system appeared to be working, it would then sometimes freeze within a few minutes, occasionally with a blue screen of death but usually just a frozen system.

I finally opened up the case and gave the innards a good hoover and twiddled the connections, and since then I haven't had the problem. So looks like it was a faulty connection or connections somewhere. Might be worth a try.

Railwaygun · December 01, 2016, 06:15:07 PM

If it's a PC, check that there is no dust obscuring the PSU fans or the CPU fan

If it's a portable, blow hard down the cooling vents and see if any dust comes out the other end!

Overheating could be the underlying problem.

Try installing a CPU/fan monitoring utility. To check all is well.

Check memory chips are seated properly in their sockets (PC)

Nicholas Robinson

njee20 · December 01, 2016, 06:58:35 PM

Pfft. I saw 4Mbps last week.

Dorsetmike · December 21, 2016, 02:17:20 PM

Happened again this morning. So took case off, attacked it with an aerosol duster can, not much dust; reseated all connectors and RAM, put it all back together, not cured; ordered new machine with no OS (got discs) from Ebuyer next day delivery.(did check local repairers, but price and turn round time did not appeal)

I'll load Win7 and do a quick test, if that works OK then I'll try the old hard drive, if that boots OK then I'll keep that, should save me a day or two installing software and copying data. I can then take me time to see if I can sort the old machine using the new drive, if that fails then add the RAM and hard drive from the old machine to the new one (which will make 32Gb and 4Tb!)