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Vista OS will not boot up

I have a customer's HP Touchsmart that is running Vista and when I power it on it starts to boot up. Says windows is starting and the green bars are going across the screen then they disappear, the screen goes black and stays that way. I have manually turned it off and ran a diagnostic on the hardware and they all pass. I don't get any beeps when I turn it on. I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my windows 7 screen and ran a error checking and looked for bad sectors but they where no errors. After putting the hard drive back in I booted into safe mode or safe mode with networking but once it goes pass all the file loading it stops and never loads into safe mode. It also just turns black and never does anything else. I cant get past that.
Are there any suggestions?
I don't know where to go from here.
Thanks
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mprssjpr
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You have what is commonly referred to, as a KSOD - a black screen of death.

Google KSOD, and there are many answers.

Try this page, and others: http://blog.roberthallam.org/2010/06/black-screen-on-start-up-vista-woes/

First thing to try would be tapping F8 constantly during startup, and trying Last Known Good Configuration.

In the past, I have known antivirus apps to cause this - namely, Avast (as otherwise good as it is).

Let me know how you get on.
One other thing to try would be removing the drive, and connecting it to another machine, then running CHKDSK on it - could be corrupted.
Last suggestion - sometimes, if you leave it long enough - and I DO mean long enough, like overnight, it will boot. Try that, too. From there, you can run MSCONFIG, and try a clean boot (as opposed to Safe Mode), or run Hijack This, and delete anything suspect.
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I believe that Vista has the same ability as Windows 7 to do a System Restore from an installation disk.  If the problem came in recently, you can restore it to a week or two ago and that may do the trick.

The other one is to use that disk to get to a command prompt and run:
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows
(change the drive and folder if yours is different)
to test the Windows files for corruption.  Keep in mind that this may take an hour or two.
Out of curiosity what did you use for a hardware diagnostic tool? (wouldn't mind having something like that)

But other than that, are you sure there's not a internal integrated video card conflicting with a PCI one for example?
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bbbb2

ASKER

I understand everything you are saying but I have done the chkdsk on anther PC as for the others I can't see anything on the screen to be able to do the other things except the pressing f8 and I select last know good configuration and after all the stuff that pops up on the screen and then stops. It never goes anywhere after that. BTW I left it on all night last night and it was still black screen.
Thanks
bbbb2
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ASKER

I am going to take the hard drive back out, connect it to min and run sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows and see if this does anything.

Thanks,
bbbb2
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ASKER

The HP Touchscreen has the built in hardware diagnostic. PC Doctor is the program that is ran when I do the diagnostic.

As for as the the video problem. The PC is the way is was the day it was bought.

bbbb2
Keep in mind that if you have a Vista installation or repair disk (a handy item in any case) you don't need to move the drive or tie up another computer.
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ASKER

I might have a Vista cd but not the one that came with it. It is on a partition on the hard drive. Does any Vista cd work?

bbbb2
Use a Vista disk to boot PC. Go to repair and select command prompt then run these commands in order listed.

Chkdsk /r
Bootrec /fixmbr
Bootrec /fixboot
You probably have to stay with the correct version in terms of 32-bit and 64-bit.
As CompProbSolv says, you do have to stick with the exact same version - even down to home/pro etc, for a repair from the OS install disk to happen. It can attempt startup repair, but of course, System Restore all hangs on if there are even any restore points.

As a last resort, does the machine have an F4 system restore feature? You could just cut your losses, back up the files, and factory reset?

Last thing - and this is a veeery long shot - but have you done a proper power cycle? It's rare, but sometimes, a bad commit to RAM can reside, even after shutdown.

Remove the AC adaptor, and the battery, then hold down the power button for five seconds or so, draining any residual charge. Then reconnect, and try again. Not likely, but you never know...
Just needs to be either 32 bit or 64 bit. That's all that matters when running a repair.
Re willcomps comment above - I'm not so sure: I tried repairing a Vista Pro machine with a Vista Home disk - wouldn't have it. Maybe it didn't like me - dunno.
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I have tried every suggestion requested and I still can not get the screen to boot up past the initial boot options ..(.press F10 for setup, F11 for system recovery, F9  for diagnostics, esc for boot menu.)  After doing any and all of these the window still tries to load. After the bar goes across the screen saying loading windows, then the starting Windows bars that are green go across a rectangle box three times, at about 80% across the third time of the green bar going across it disappears and the window turns tinted black. Meaning power is on the screen but the screen is black and it just stays that way until I manually turn it off. I can touch the screen with my fingers and hear a light beep so the touch screen is working also. I just can't boot it all the way up. I have backed the hard drive up by connecting it to another PC and can see the data. That tells me the hard drive is ok. Maybe the OS is corrupted but I am not sure. There is a recovery partition on the hard drive but I can't get to it from the original PC.
Question: Can I format the hard drive and install Windows 7 Home Premium?

Let me know please,
bbbb2
Have you tried System Restore from the Repair Options?

Yes, you can install Win 7, any PC that runs Vista adequately will run Win 7 and performance will be improved.
Are you trying this from a Windows Vista installation CD or from the internal hard drive?  If this is with the internal drive, the CD may be a better approach.
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I don't have the Vista CD. If I did I would have used is DAYS ago.
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@willcomp... I have both the upgrade home edition which was cheaper and the OEM full install. Will the upgrade version be ok. I did it a few time before but I had to download alot of win 7 drivers but that was a few years ago. Will windows update find and install them?

Thanks
bbbb2
I did it a few time before but I had to download alot of win 7 drivers but that was a few years ago. Will windows update find and install them? YES
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re: I don't have the Vista CD:
I must have misunderstood "I have tried every suggestion requested..."

The CD can be downloaded for a moderate fee or complete recovery disks can usually be purchased from HP for $25-30.
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When boot up with the Windows 7 disk the PC froze during the Windows 7 logo boot up, I am not so sure it is no9t a hardware problem.

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It is very likely that the memory (RAM) module is defective.
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Even if it passed the memory test?
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Also wouldn't the PC beep twice if the memory was bad?

bbbb2
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Sometimes it is best to stop wasting a persons time on one PC and move on to the next one.
Thanks again for all the suggestions.

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