asked on

Windows 7 Professional Won't Boot

My Windows 7 Professional laptop (Dell Latitude E7450) hangs at Starting Windows and I’ve tried all of these options:

•      F8 at startup and then Repair your computer – hangs with a black screen
•      F8 at startup and Safe Mode/Safe Mode with Networking/Safe Mode with Command Prompt – hangs at:
Loaded: \Windows\System32\drivers\CLASSPNP.sys
•      F8 at startup and Debugging mode – just hangs
•      F8 at startup and Last Known Good Configuration – hangs at Starting Windows
•      Repair from installation DVD – hangs after selecting repair
•      System restore from 2 different recovery points – restore works but reboot just hangs at Starting Windows
•      System Recovery CD – first time it said changes were made but reboot hung as usual. 2nd time I got System file integrity check and repair error code – 0x490 (don’t know what to do with this)

If I could get into the system, perhaps I could run msconfig and disable everything to see if I can work back from a system that would boot. But unable to do that, what else can be done other than rebuilding the machine. Have I overlooked anything? Any further suggestions?

Thank you!!!!

SOLUTION

Scott Silva

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ejefferson213

ASKER

Not sure if your terminology for rescue disk is the same as a recovery disk. I had a Microsoft created recovery disk that, when booted, offers up the recovery options. It's there that I chose Repair and it ran the first time and made some changes but the reboot just hang. Ran it again and got the 490 error code.

Scott Silva

Boot from your recovery disk, and when you get to the "System Recovery options" page choose command prompt.

In order to run checkdisk to repair the hard drive, you should type the following:

chkdsk C: /r

and press Enter. If Windows is installed to a different drive, substitute that letter for "C".
That should give you a simple check of the hard drive...

Kmitra

if you have another 2.5" drive , I would suggest installing windows on that. doing so will eliminate your HDD issues.

when you login as safe mode all the files are loaded in ram drive, not your hard drive. So its telling me some thing is not right system wise.

Atleast we can sort out the HDD if you have another Hard drive. That's the first step.

If you don't have another HDD and you don't want to erase the existing drive because of some application or files then we will have hard time finding the real issue.

Another approach will be to take the existing hard drive and mount it on another PC and take a image of that.
Let us know if any of these are possible.

Thanks

SOLUTION

R. Andrew Koffron

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ejefferson213

ASKER

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm presently running a chkdsk as recommended. It's taking a long time so I'll probably report back to you tomorrow. Regarding RAM, I don't have much RAM to substitute and the only extra RAM I had didn't work in the laptop so I can't do anything else with the memory. Thanks again and stay tuned...

R. Andrew Koffron

if there's 2 RAM sticks, you can most likely remove one to test. sometimes its an option.

ejefferson213

ASKER

Good suggestion but unfortunately, only 1..... :(

Scott Silva

Also removing and reseating ram a few times to help clean any oxidation from contacts... After it is done with chkdsk...

ejefferson213

ASKER

I did move the RAM to a different slot, thinking along your lines but alas..... :(

And I just realized I'll be out of the office tomorrow so I'll have to pick this up on Friday. Thanks again.

SOLUTION

noxcho

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

R. Andrew Koffron

If it were RAM you would not be able to boot from Microsoft dvd.

that's not necessarily true, I'd go with unlikely, but far from a 100% thing.

noxcho

Boot.wim is normally unpacked into RAM and if RAM is failig you get problems when booting into Windows DVD in most cases.

R. Andrew Koffron

in most cases.

was exactly my point.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

nobus

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ejefferson213

ASKER

Thank you for your awesome suggestions and support; greatly, greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, I'm once again not in the office and hope to pick this up on Monday. Haven't forgotten and will get back to you on Monday!!!!

nobus

no problem here

ejefferson213

ASKER

When I got back into the office, the laptop screen was staring at me with Starting Windows. Not knowing what had happened in my absence, I restarted the recovery cd and did a chkdsk /r and it finished with no errors found. Then, taking Nobus's lead, I downloaded and executed the diagnostic CD however I'm not sure what type of disk I have in my system. I'll check and then try to run a diagnostic on that along with a RAM test. Thanks for all your help.

noxcho

You can check the disk model and type via BIOS. Usually this information is written there.

nobus

you find it also in device manager in storage devices

ejefferson213

ASKER

Thank you all for your outstanding help. Nobus nailed it. I downloaded and executed the UBCD utility and ran the disk diagnostics. It found 28 errors and after doing a repair (it said it fixed the problem), a reboot of Windows worked perfectly. At this point, I don't see anything missing but time will tell. Thanks once again for all your wonderful support!!!

nobus

after the diag - don't forget to run a chkdsk to repair any problems this may have caused
personally - i also run HDDRegenerator; but it's not free (see link to bad disk problems)