Hangs on reboot

[lazzyz]

My issue is that upon either manual or automatic reboot my system will hang with the monitor powered down, hard drive powered down, but fans powered. This issue does not occur with linux distributions, live cds or the Windows boot cd. I'm currently dual booting with Linux Mint using Grub 2 as my bootloader. A soft reset will load everything fine and windows reports a correct shutdown. I've tried searching for my issue through Google but I return too many results and have no idea what terms I should use for narrowing it down. Any help would be appreciated, its hardly a serious issue but I'd like to fix it.

Windows 7 Home x64 with all current updates installed
Recently updated all drivers with Raxco software (the issue predates all of this by a long time)

 

[nao1120]

I usually stick to the simple stuff to rule it out:

1- Update motherboard drivers - Go to manufacturers website - Download the newest motherboard drivers for windows 7 - Once updated - Test the issue
2- Reset Bios to defaults (usually tapping delete on start up) go back into it, reset the proper boot order - Test the issue
3- You can flash the bios to a newer version (look up steps on the manufacturers website and follow exactly!!! Usually the software will determine what you have as a version, and compare to the newest) - Once updated, Then test the issue

My bet its a bios issue / Power saving issue.

I once set my computer to sleep, and it powered down the video/HDD but left the fans running... And it wouldn't turn back on. Had to reset the CMOS on the board itself, and reset back to defaults, and reconfigure the BIOS. Needless to say, No more sleep. Its not enough of an issue to want to fix for me. Your reboot/Power down issue, Definitely look into.

 

[bucknutty]

This happens sometimes with clean installs of windows 7. It seems to happen allot with older p4s and 845 or 945 chipsets. I think it has to do with sata or ide controller driver getting installed and marking the wrong partition as the active boot partition.

Go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - computer management - storage.
Mark the 100mb system reserved partition as active.

Then boot from your original windows DVD. Windows 7 repair console should find the issue and correct automatically.

 

[lazzyz]

Unfortunately, its odd to say that about being up to date, my bios appears to be the newest and even resetting to fail-safe defaults doesn't seem to have any effect. Though I hadn't thought to check for an updated bios, though with the last update being in 2010 I can see why.

I usually stick to the simple stuff to rule it out:

1- Update motherboard drivers - Go to manufacturers website - Download the newest motherboard drivers for windows 7 - Once updated - Test the issue
2- Reset Bios to defaults (usually tapping delete on start up) go back into it, reset the proper boot order - Test the issue
3- You can flash the bios to a newer version (look up steps on the manufacturers website and follow exactly!!! Usually the software will determine what you have as a version, and compare to the newest) - Once updated, Then test the issue

My bet its a bios issue / Power saving issue.

 

[lazzyz]

Mm, I don't see one, though that would make sense since I didn't realize there was one to copy over from the hard drive before this one. Is this something that Windows 7 would expect to find and if it wasn't there would cause issues?

This happens sometimes with clean installs of windows 7. It seems to happen allot with older p4s and 845 or 945 chipsets. I think it has to do with sata or ide controller driver getting installed and marking the wrong partition as the active boot partition.

Go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - computer management - storage.
Mark the 100mb system reserved partition as active.

Then boot from your original windows DVD. Windows 7 repair console should find the issue and correct automatically.

 

[bucknutty]

In windows 7 the boot loader is on the small 100-150mb system patition. It is created during the install of windows 7. It wont have a drive letter and you can only see it from computer managment - storage.

What I dont understand is why the computer boots at all with the wrong partition set as active, but it does. This glitch seems to happen alot with older hardware with sata or ide drivers that were writen for XP. My guess is that the driver marks the main partition active because back in the day there was no system partition.

It should look like this.

 

[lazzyz]

In windows 7 the boot loader is on the small 100-150mb system partition. It is created during the install of windows 7. It wont have a drive letter and you can only see it from computer management - storage.

What I dont understand is why the computer boots at all with the wrong partition set as active, but it does.

Hmm this plays into a theory I've had for my reboot issues. I currently don't have system partition like that, but the bootloader, in my case Grub 2, is still stored in that first teeny bit of the drive marked out as the MBR. I can see in the default clean install then normally the boot files would be stored that, but in my case they are simply stored in my main windows partition. Similar to how, ignoring best practice, I don't have a distinct boot partition loaded with Ubuntu.

--Had no effect--
I suspect that what is happening is that when I tell windows to reboot its trying go the expected windows bootloader and finding its simply not there and I think I have a test for this, reinstall the original bootloader and see if it solves my issue.

 

[bucknutty]

Try it. I am pretty sure thats all the windows automated recovery console does, if you were to run it off the DVD.

 

[lazzyz]

Unfortunately had no effect!