Hardware Win 7 not getting past boot up logo on cold start

[DiscostewSM]

So, for the past couple of weeks, my computer has had a relatively common chance that when booting up from a cold start (not from hibernating, sleep mode, etc,), the screen that shows the boot up animation displays (prior to the animation), but there will be no hard drive activity, the windows 7 boot up logo animation will never show, and my computer stays like that. When I push the reset button on my computer to restart it, it gets to the screen where it says "yaddayaddayadda, want to start the recovery process, or start normally", and I start it normally. From there, it boots up just fine, not showing the symptoms as described before.

I believe it might be a problem with my hard drive after having done a cold start, but I'd rather get a 2nd opinion (or 3rd, 4th, etc) before I do anything that shouldn't or doesn't need to be done. Has anyone else had this problem before and fixed it, or knows of a way to fix it (besides re-installing Win7 or using the good old out the window technique)?

 

[ILuvGames]

Make sure that the cable between the hard drive and the motherboard is connected properly and more importantly is still working properly. If you have a pen drive attached to your computer, make sure that you change the boot priority in the bios so that the hard drive boots up first. Does the Bios recognize the hard drive properly ? Every time you boot ? According to a friend who repairs computers, faulty/failing ram can cause lots of problems (including ones like yours). Try taking out the ram and re-seating it. If you still have no joy, you can use a program like Memtest86+ to test the ram without having to boot into windows. Even 1 error is unacceptable when testing ram.

 

[ILuvGames]

If you press F8 before windows starts to boot, can you try 'Last known good' or try the 'Diagnostic startup' ? Does windows boot normally and consistently afterwards ? Has windows ever shut down improperly due to a power cut or frozen with a BSOD ? Have you tried Microsofts system file scanner ? If not, does it make any difference when you do ? If you access the system logs in computer management, do you see any logs relating to your hard disk like paging faults ?

 

[Attila13]

Yes, I had this problem for a couple of times now, but I managed to resolve it.....I don't know if this is the thing for you too but, I'll share it anyway.
So, do you made some changes in the BIOS?
If yes then save your settings as a profile if your MB supports it and load the default bios settings from your BIOS.
If no, then update your bios to the latest settings.
And finally make sure that every wire is plugged inside your case and everything is alright.
If these doesn't help, then I don't know the problem.

As I told you, I had the same problem not so long ago, but I did a reset on the BIOS, to it's default settings, after that I updated it with the latest FW, and, voila, everything is working fine now, I even made the changes in the BIOS that were causing me problems (start-up problems) before the update, and I haven't encountered any problems since then.

I hope that I could help you with this info...

I wish you luck.

 

[ILuvGames]

If you know the manufacturer of the hard drive, have you tried using their diagnostics utility or at least something that will show you the SMART status of the drive ?

 

[AceWarhead]

Check your Harddrive connection to your motherboard, mine had a loose connection, ending up with your symptoms.

 

[ILuvGames]

What happens when you do a full checkdisk ? Do you get any bad blocks ? Or lots of corrupt files ? You can do this by typing 'chkdsk (your hard drive e.g. c /f /r /v /x' from the command prompt and rebooting when requested. You may have to run CHKDSK with administrator priveledges. Depending on the kind of problems CHKDSK may find, there is a small chance that the hard drive will fail or give you an un-bootable system if you do this.

 

[Attila13]

So, did you have any luck?

 

[Luigi2012SM64DS]

i think your hard drive is killing it self automaticly.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Hmm, I went into the BIOS, and after looking in it, there didn't seem to be anything wrong that stood out at me. When I exited that, instead of just exiting, I saved the settings. Now it seems my computer boots up just fine each time (for now).

 

[YayMii]

I'm having this problem too, but I'm dualbooting Win 7 on my Mac. I have no idea what it could be.

 

[ILuvGames]

Hmm, I went into the BIOS, and after looking in it, there didn't seem to be anything wrong that stood out at me. When I exited that, instead of just exiting, I saved the settings. Now it seems my computer boots up just fine each time (for now).

DiscostewSM, it could be that your motherboards battery is on it's way out. Or your CMOS settings have got corrupted somehow. Or both.