Windows crashes after bootscreen, can't load any other mode

[Tdenblanken]

Good day everyone,

I have this laptop which belongs to my girlfriend, but it has a slight problem since a few days. It won't boot properly. If I just 'let it go' it gives me the screen about that i've added new hardware or something, and that i should start startup-recovery. From there, if I choose to boot normally, it crashes after the 'Starting windows' screen with the flag. It looks like it gives a black screen with some letters, and then BSOD's REALLY fast. Now the same thing happens if I boot into any safe mode.

So I started thinking, this might be some bootfile problem. And so I went for the startup-recovery mode. Too bad this only shows a black screen with a cursor in the middle, which i can move. Okay, so I tried booting from the cd. Same thing. Even with a recovery cd made with another computer running Windows 7 x64.
I've really ran out of windows-troubleshooting-knowledge here, so if anyone can help me, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,
Tristan

 

[WR2]

Even with a recovery cd made with another computer running Windows 7 x64.

This is pretty much pointing a finger at a hardware problem.
How old is that laptop? If it's quite old, has the CMOS/RTC battery been replaced.

Also, try booting an OS that is NOT windows. If you can boot up with that you can confirm the hardware is good.

Ubuntu Desktop - a LiveCD with the whole OS on a CD or USB thumb drive.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

 

[smorizio]

pull the battery and ac power from the unit for safety. let the laptop power drain for 5 min then turn the laptop over and open the ram slots if there on the bottom of the hard drive. check to see if all the ram is in all the way. if it does try reseting the ram.if it still blue screens try taking 1/2 the ram out. if it was a bad file on a hard drive issues the laptop should have booted fine to a dvd or usb stick.

 

[Tdenblanken]

The laptop is about 2,5 years old, and I'm pretty sure the cmos battery hasnt been replaced. I tried kubuntu live but I accidentally pressed the power button before it booted completely. It gave a lot of error messages though, but it seemed to boot anyway. I tested the hdd with gparted as well and it gave no errors. I'll check again with the kubuntu cd.
I should note that I noticed earlier that one of the RAM slots is faulty. So I think I will swap the banks and see if that does anything.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[WR2]

2 1/2 years - CMOS/RTC battery should be fine.

 

[0shadow]

memory error for sure

 

[musicman978]

Do a Memtest

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

 

[Tdenblanken]

So, I've swapped the two memory banks, without result. Think I'm going for a memtest now.

 

[Tdenblanken]

3,5 Hours of memtesting later, passed test, no errors. What now?

EDIT:

Okay I tried loading Kubuntu, but it doesn't load the GUI. It just gives me a DOS like screen with the ability to type in commands.

 

[musicman978]

If you can get UBUNTU to boot properly, that would tell a lot.

Prior to the BSODs, did you happen to install anything such as drivers/software? Are you able to boot into safe mode? If so, try a system restore to a time before the BSOD started to occur.

If you cant boot into safemode, try using ERD Commander or Hiren's Boot CD (search google for alternate routes to system restore).

Another option is to boot the laptop's hdd in another system if you have one at hand to see if it boots.

You can always try to ghost the hdd to another and reformat/new install...

 

[Tdenblanken]

No, I cannot boot into safe mode. If I use the system restore it only shows a black screen with a mouse pointer that I can use. If I switch the SATA option in the BIOS from AHCI, to IDE, it does work, but then it cannot find my windows installation.

Also, I tested again with Gparted, and now it shows an exclamation mark next to my windows partition. If I let Gparted check and repair the partition it comes up with an error, but it is not clear what the error is.

So I'm guessing that there's something wrong with my primary partition, but I don't know what, and if it is only the single partition, or the entire harddisk. It is a WD HDD, but the WD site has no repair utilities for this particular kind.

 

[musicman978]

Interesting results from gparted. It just seems like your harddrive has bad sectors...

Perhaps try Seatools for DOS to test your HDD (my favorite hdd tool) and do a long test.

http://www.seagate.com/support/internal-hard-drives/consumer-electronics/ld25-series/seatools-dos-master/

 

[Tdenblanken]

Well I finally got it fixed. Seatools could not finish the long test. Very weird, it was done but then it said test failed. Anyway I found this program HDD regenerator which fixed bad sectors and after that I could get the Win7 CD booting, and ran the repair utilities which fixed my boot files. After that I ran chkdsk and it found no errors.

 

[musicman978]

Very glad to see you got it workin.

It might be a good idea to get a new HDD..