Laptop Boot Problem

[cabinetman]

This is the second day that my laptop failed to boot as usual. Got the "Welcome" screen, and then it went dark. Did a manual "off" and then powered on, same screen. Did a "restart", and the same thing. Powered up and when given the choice for "safe mode", tried that. It worked in safe mode, but I didn't know what to do then, so I tried a "restart" and same thing happened. After fiddling back and forth a few times, it did boot.

Any suggestions?

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[TCOTTLE]

Save early save often

Make sure you save what is important, first of all, if you don't have backups.
It could be a myriad of things, what comes to mind is
1. potential hard drive failure.
2. windows OS corruption.
3. driver update/system update incompatibility.

The hardest part of this exercise for you if it continues to go downhill is finding a quality PC tech who is willing to do the work, truly save your stuff, and then correct the issue.
In my years of doing this, I bet 70% of my new customers have been somewhere else, and then referred to me by a friend. I think I am getting a reputation as the Mr. Wolf of PC repair in my area, because I will go on brain detail to fix the problem, and recover the data, rather than just dump a new drive in and claim the old one is "dead".

[All Thumbs]

If it is Windows Vista or 7, try a "system restore."

http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/w...System-Restore

I'm not sure you can do this in safe mode, I suspect you can, but I'd boot in safe mode and follow the instructions. Pick a restore point that is at least few days old.

[cork58]

+1 on doing a backup, I'd also do a system image to an external hard drive. Does sound like a hard drive about to fail but just a guess. Mine failed last year and I was able to get a 500 gig for around $75.00 and had a pro do the install and load everything from the external hard drive. Glad I had both back ups for him.

[DannyT]

you said it start in safe mode. so when its started in safe mode, click start, then run. type in msconfig and hit enter. on the screen that pops up click on the startup tab. uncheck all the boxes that are checked and click ok. click restart now when it prompts you and see if that works. this will shut off all the programs that were starting when windows starts and tell you if it is a windows problem or if it was one of the programs you unchecked.

[cabinetman]

If it is Windows Vista or 7, try a "system restore."

http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/w...System-Restore

I'm not sure you can do this in safe mode, I suspect you can, but I'd boot in safe mode and follow the instructions. Pick a restore point that is at least few days old.

If I do a "system restore" (a previous date) will the system react to the upcoming date when the problem occurred, or does it not work sequentially that way?

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[radhak]

If I do a "system restore" (a previous date) will the system react to the upcoming date when the problem occurred, or does it not work sequentially that way?

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It's unlikely that the date caused any problem; the purpose of system restore is to rollback any newly installed software or driver that's giving you a problem and put your machine at a point in the past where it used to function well.

But before you try a system restore, you should try out the steps by DannyT. Since you are able to boot in safe-mode, it's evident that the OS and the hard-drive are working fine; it must be some program that gets started automatically when the system boots that's giving you the problem. If you uncheck all such programs as Danny has said, you should be able to boot normally.

What happens after that? You'd be at liberty to selectively allow those programs to run at startup - maybe one at a time, so you isolate the offending program and remove/re-install it.

[cabinetman]

Thanks to all that offered suggestions. I have been leaving it on while deciding on how to back up what I want. In the mean time I noticed a flag on the task bar about fixes needed. Sounded like things that could affect the start up. So, I did those, and ran a system virus check and a malware check which took several hours.

After all that, did some copying of files (I started a new thread), just in case before I tried a restart. The restart worked...no safe mode.

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[dusty]

I'm always a little confused by these discussions. If someone can tell me when, with Windows 7, does the Boot process end and the OS begin to take over.

Is it true that Boot starts with "power on" and has already ended when the Windows welcome screen first appears? The hard drive is not involved during the boot process, right?

[radhak]

I'm always a little confused by these discussions. If someone can tell me when, with Windows 7, does the Boot process end and the OS begin to take over.

Is it true that Boot starts with "power on" and has already ended when the Windows welcome screen first appears? The hard drive is not involved during the boot process, right?

You are generally right - when the welcome screen appears the booting is done with; but the hard-drive is still involved in the boot process.

This page gives a very good idea of how the XP booting worked : I'm providing that just a good reference. The Win 7 booting is given here, and as it says, the bootmgr sitting in the System Volume on the hard-drive is part of the booting process.

When cabinetman's safe-mode booting worked, it told us that the boot sector and the MBR itself were fine, and some driver loaded after the boot was corrupted. Looks like the updates he ran fixed that for him.

[dusty]

You are generally right - when the welcome screen appears the booting is done with; but the hard-drive is still involved in the boot process.

This page gives a very good idea of how the XP booting worked : I'm providing that just a good reference. The Win 7 booting is given here, and as it says, the bootmgr sitting in the System Volume on the hard-drive is part of the booting process.

When cabinetman's safe-mode booting worked, it told us that the boot sector and the MBR itself were fine, and some driver loaded after the boot was corrupted. Looks like the updates he ran fixed that for him.

Thank you for this feedback. This changes (corrects) my understanding of how the boot process works these days. Of course, it may never have worked the way I thought.

[dbhost]

I'm always a little confused by these discussions. If someone can tell me when, with Windows 7, does the Boot process end and the OS begin to take over.

Is it true that Boot starts with "power on" and has already ended when the Windows welcome screen first appears? The hard drive is not involved during the boot process, right?

No. The boot process begins when you push the power button, and ends when the user is presented with a login prompt. The "operating system" never quite takes over per se, as it IS the operating system that boots up...

From your question though, you are talking about POST, and hardware initialization. The POST and hardware initialization end when the POST is completed, and the firmware, BIOS, UFE, or whatever, reads the bootloader off of the hard disk, CDROM, Flash drive, or whatever, and hands control over to the bootloader. In Windows I believe you get the "Windows is starting up" message. On systems with UNIX / GRUB systems, you get the Grub Stage 1 loading message on the screen. On either you will then see stuff you should recognize as your OS boot screens. A grub boot prompt asking you to pick what environment to boot to, or the Windows boot screen with the waving flag etc... (varies by version).

Mac OS and Solaris differ somewhat, but the theory is the same.