startup failure windows 7

can you boot into safemode? try holding f8 on startup and selecting safe mode.

It's probably displaying a blue screen, but rebooting so fast that you don't see it.
Press F8 on startup and select the option to disable automatic reboot so you can see it.

It happened to me once and it was due to RAM.

Hi Joshua G - yes, tried that and still doesn't work.
Hi footech - the screen just hangs on the scintillating Microsoft logo. Doesn't reboot.
Hi RoyoR - don't think that's the issue, but I guess we'll see.

Thanks for the responses.

Have you tried last known good configuration?

Yes, tried last know good config. Also tried command prompt and followed the directions to copy over the backup config manually. No help. Thanks.

Copy over the backup config?  With XP you could copy over registry hives from the System Volume Information, but last I checked you couldn't do that for Vista+, so was just wondering what you were referring to.  Also did you mean command prompt w/ Safe Mode, or from recovery environment/boot from DVD?

You might run a check of the hard drive (chkdsk /r).  Beyond that, I'm out of ideas for now.

Check and make sure the rams are seated properly and it is a laptop make sure the harddisk is seated properly and if its a desktop make sure all cables are seated properly.

one more thing take out all the memory, put them in one by one then turn on the computer to see if its booted up. ( one stick of memory in then turn on pc, etc)

Boot from the windows 7 installation media and see the options on there, i had this and found nothing and a factory reset worked for me and haven't had problems since, if you can factory reset it i would do it as it would avoid any other issues down the line

sdedola - how is it going?

Hard drive was failing. I replaced it and solved the problem. The above solution would probably have uncovered the issue, but it was solved before I tried. Thanks.