Vista won't start

[noddy]

Hi all,

I've just started having boot problems with Vista. I've had no problems in the past, but earlier this evening it would restart itself while loading Vista (the green bar loading stage). I used the Startup Repair option from the Vista install disc, and the log shows it successfully repaired a corrupted system volume (exact wording may have been different). Now it boots as far as loading a black screen and the mouse cursor, but doesn't get to the Aurora (blue-Vista-Windows-logo-loading thing).

I have tried subsequent Startup Repairs, CHKDSKs, Memory Diagnostic checks, all with no errors to report. Unfortunately, I disabled System Restore a while back... Something I now regret doing! At least I know what I'll be doing as soon as I get it running again!

My system is an ASUS M2N-E motherboard, AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+, Corsair 2x1GB XMS2 RAM, Sapphire ATi Radeon 3850... And so on and so forth. I'm running Vista Ultimate 32bit as well.

Thanks in advance!
- Noddy

Realised I posted this in another section of the forum by mistake, but wasn't sure how to move it, if possible. Not sure how to delete it either...

 

[sidney1st]

Hi Noddy,

Can you boot in safe mode ?

 

[ripbox]

since you did a repair some drivers may have been deleted and reverted back to default.... i would recommend pulling out all your USB devises (if there are any) and then try rebooting

If that is unsuccessful then in BIOS there will be an option to disable restart on boot failure, turn that option off and the next time you boot and it fails it should Give you a BSOD that should help you pinpoint what the problem is....

If you are unable to work from the info given, then not the failure code and post it here for us to have a look at

good luck:D

 

[noddy]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies!

No I can't boot it into safe mode unfortunately. As for the USB devices, I will give that a go right now. (See below)

The PC doesn't automatically restart now, it just locks up on a black screen/white mouse cursor and I have to do a hard reset/shut down.

Thanks again,
- Noddy

Update: No luck with unplugging devices. Unplugged all USB devices, as well as a monitor and a parallel port gamepad.

 

[Luposian]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies!

No I can't boot it into safe mode unfortunately. As for the USB devices, I will give that a go right now. (See below)

The PC doesn't automatically restart now, it just locks up on a black screen/white mouse cursor and I have to do a hard reset/shut down.

Thanks again,
- Noddy

Update: No luck with unplugging devices. Unplugged all USB devices, as well as a monitor and a parallel port gamepad.

As an A+ Certified tech, the things I'd check/try are:

1) CMOS battery (how old is it? If it corrupts your BIOS settings, your system can act up)
2) Capacitors (I've worked on systems that "spontaneously reboot", due to bulging/leaking capacitors; I replaced the caps and the systems worked fine after that, BTW).
3) Dust blocking the fins of the CPU (my Athlon XP system (just last night) was coming up with all sorts of startup issues (video refresh rate, no HD seen, etc.) because the CPU was all clogged up with dust). I blew it out and the system boots fine now. The thinner and more closely packed the fins on a heatsink are, the easier it is for them to get clogged with dust buildup.
4) Power supply. Make sure your voltages are within spec for it. Blow any dust out of it as well.

Hope this helps.

Luposian

 

[noddy]

As an A+ Certified tech, the things I'd check/try are:

1) CMOS battery (how old is it? If it corrupts your BIOS settings, your system can act up)
2) Capacitors (I've worked on systems that "spontaneously reboot", due to bulging/leaking capacitors; I replaced the caps and the systems worked fine after that, BTW).
3) Dust blocking the fins of the CPU (my Athlon XP system (just last night) was coming up with all sorts of startup issues (video refresh rate, no HD seen, etc.) because the CPU was all clogged up with dust). I blew it out and the system boots fine now. The thinner and more closely packed the fins on a heatsink are, the easier it is for them to get clogged with dust buildup.
4) Power supply. Make sure your voltages are within spec for it. Blow any dust out of it as well.

Hope this helps.

Luposian

Thanks for the ideas Luposian,

1 & 2) I bought the motherboard about 3 months ago, so I don't think either the CMOS battery or the capacitors need replacing.
4) The system has been runing fine with no problems at all for the last few months, I can't imagine why the voltage would all of a sudden be insufficient.

As for 3), the behaviour of the system is not erratic; it displays the same symptoms upon every startup: it gets past the Microsoft copyright screen fine now that I have run the startup recovery, but as it loads the mouse cursor, it hangs. The mouse is still responsive, but there is no activity from the PC, other than the HDD activity LED flashing a couple of times, at equal intervals, every few seconds.

Thanks,
- Noddy.

 

[Luposian]

Thanks for the ideas Luposian,

1 & 2) I bought the motherboard about 3 months ago, so I don't think either the CMOS battery or the capacitors need replacing.
4) The system has been runing fine with no problems at all for the last few months, I can't imagine why the voltage would all of a sudden be insufficient.

As for 3), the behaviour of the system is not erratic; it displays the same symptoms upon every startup: it gets past the Microsoft copyright screen fine now that I have run the startup recovery, but as it loads the mouse cursor, it hangs. The mouse is still responsive, but there is no activity from the PC, other than the HDD activity LED flashing a couple of times, at equal intervals, every few seconds.

The one question I ask everyone I help with computer problems, is: "What was the last thing you did/were doing when the system was working fine?"

Did you download/install Limewire, or fall for a bogus "Your system is infected!" popup? As a Mac user, I can indiscriminately go to pages that would normally affect PC users and do anything I want and not worry about viruses/spyware, because they CAN'T affect MacOS X. But PC users must be more vigilant... MUCH more vigilant.

Case in point: just a couple days ago I went to a site (on my Mac) and suddenly up came this warning that my system might be infected. I grinned and decided to see what would happen. As it supposedly "scanned" my system, I noticed all the .DLL's and EXE's, it was "scanning". I smirked, knowing full well, it wasn't scanning my system at all (which doesn't use those types of files at all), but ASSUMING I was using Windows, which would have those types of files and that I probably wouldn't pay any attention to what the names of such files were. But it came up with a boatload of supposedly infected and suspect files. I was then instructed to download an app and tell it to RUN. Well, guess what. My system downloaded an .EXE program, which I *couldn't* run. But, by now, I knew EXACTLY what was up and I laughed and deleted the .EXE.

But would I have KNOWN what was going on, had I been running Windows? More than likely, as I suspect EVERYTHING nowadays (as one must, in today's Internet), but how many are more easily (or totally) fooled? I've had clients who's systems were so filled with viral/spyware junk, as to be almost unusable. Even to the point of making IE 7 unusable for sites it used to go to!

As you can't even get to the desktop (or at least any usable point of the system now), I suspect something has corrupted either your hard drive (bad sectors, dying hard drive, hard bump/kick, etc.) or infected your system so as to make the system so slow and sluggish and/or munged up, as to be unusable. Spyware, trojan horses, viruses, etc. can all do this.

Use your Windows Vista Retail/OEM disk and see how far you get. If you can't get very far, then it's probably something in your system (bad RAM, possibly?).

Hope this helps.

Luposian

 

[noddy]

Hi,

The last thing I was doing before having this problem, technically, was a Startup Recovery from the Vista install disc to fix the first problem (auto restarts on the copyright-green-loading-screen). But before that, I was just using the computer as normal.

When I fixed the original problem, the log showed a repair of a corrupted system volume on the hard drive. I have had minor problems in the past with my hard drive, so it doesn't surprise me that that had happened. However, this new problem, having originated from this repair, leads me to believe that the problem is almost certainly software-based.


As for the hard drive being corrupted; like I said, that was the original problem, but that was apparently fixed. Further CHKDSK scans show no errors. It may be useful to note that I am able to access the drive with no problem using the command prompt from the Vista disc. As for the RAM, the memory tool on the Vista disc shows no problems with the RAM... As it should, seeing as it is more or less brand new!

Looking at all the symptoms, I'm convinced there are no major problems with my system. I believe Windows is just having trouble with one or more corrupted drivers or the like, but I just don't know how to pinpoint the problem, and then fix/avoid it from there. I've tried all the options on the Vista disc, to no avail.

Worst case scenario for me is to have to reinstall Windows. Most, if not all, of my important files are stored on separate drives, and I can back up anything else using the Vista's disc command prompt (although that could be a bit of a painstaking task!). Is there a way, just to make my job slightly easier, to do a repair install a la XP? I don't really want to have to go and reinstall all my programs again, but if I have to, I have to!


Thanks for the help,
- Noddy

 

[Luposian]

Hi,

The last thing I was doing before having this problem, technically, was a Startup Recovery from the Vista install disc to fix the first problem (auto restarts on the copyright-green-loading-screen). But before that, I was just using the computer as normal.

When I fixed the original problem, the log showed a repair of a corrupted system volume on the hard drive. I have had minor problems in the past with my hard drive, so it doesn't surprise me that that had happened. However, this new problem, having originated from this repair, leads me to believe that the problem is almost certainly software-based.


As for the hard drive being corrupted; like I said, that was the original problem, but that was apparently fixed. Further CHKDSK scans show no errors. It may be useful to note that I am able to access the drive with no problem using the command prompt from the Vista disc. As for the RAM, the memory tool on the Vista disc shows no problems with the RAM... As it should, seeing as it is more or less brand new!

Looking at all the symptoms, I'm convinced there are no major problems with my system. I believe Windows is just having trouble with one or more corrupted drivers or the like, but I just don't know how to pinpoint the problem, and then fix/avoid it from there. I've tried all the options on the Vista disc, to no avail.

Worst case scenario for me is to have to reinstall Windows. Most, if not all, of my important files are stored on separate drives, and I can back up anything else using the Vista's disc command prompt (although that could be a bit of a painstaking task!). Is there a way, just to make my job slightly easier, to do a repair install a la XP? I don't really want to have to go and reinstall all my programs again, but if I have to, I have to!

At this point, I would most probably tell my client... "scrub it and reinstall". I'm fairly ok at handling software issues, but much better when it comes to hardware issues. And, since this is Vista... well... I'm totally unfamiliar with it, quirk, glitch, or problem-wise. I'm just trying to solve yer problem, based on general Windows usage.

You never answered my other question, tho. Do you do (or have you done) any of those things like I mentioned, which could lead to Windows corruption? You know, used Limewire, fallen for a certain popup, clicked on a suspicious Email, gone to "questional content" (porn, warez sites, illegal audio/video download sites, etc.) or anything similar, in the days or weeks prior to your system "bonking" on you?

Luposian

 

[noddy]

I, like yourself, am incredibly wary of everything on the internet, and I know how incredibly uninformed some people can be when it comes to those fake virus scanners. The only "questionable" (Limewire, popups, etc.) activity that I am involved in prompts me to take extra caution; therefore, I can say with virtual certainty, that my computer is completely free of viruses and spyware.

Note that there was no erratic behaviour whatsoever before the problems began. I am completely adamant, also, that this probablem must have arisen from the CHKDSK repair carried out right before I started having this problem.

I am planning, at this stage, to do a reinstall later on this night... Not looking forward to it, but have just about given up hope now. Still open for suggestions till then though!

Thanks for the advice,
- Noddy.

 

[noddy]

I gave up and reinstalled Windows... Problem solved, sort of!

- Noddy