[RESOLVED] Windows 7 stops at splash screen

Having major problems in Windows 7 (Home Premium). Shutdown last night as usual. Didn't give any errors or warnings and I don't think it did any kind of update prior to shutdown. Today it refuses to go past the splash screen (just before the password page).

So I used the F8 option to get into boot modes. Tried Safe Mode but it wouldn't go past the part where all the text shows up as it is loading. This is whether I use with or without Networking.

Tried using Repair computer option - it gets to the colorful background screen but won't go past

So use the System Repair Disc. It gets to the window where I have the option to use recover tools or restore using earlier system image. I figured worst case I can just go to the most recent image backup.

But it just sits there with the circle hourglass - won't let me go past!!

What should I try next? Everything I searched for just suggested the same things as above. The computer does Post successfully, and I tried using a Linux live CD I have - it boots up just fine, so I don't think it is hardware or memory. But why doesn't even the Repair Disc work?

Machine is the Acer in my sig

The first thing I would do is run a hard drive diagnostic. Find out what brand of drive you have, either from the BIOS or by opening up the case. Then download and run that manufacturer's hd diag. You could also download UBCD5.
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/download.html

For UBCD, you need to know how to properly burn an iso file to CD. Read the FAQ.
http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/faq.html

Thanks - I will try that from a spare computer. What is odd is that if something was wrong with the hard drive, how come even the System Restore CD would not get to the restore screen? After posting I even tried the factory restore DVDs I had created when I first got the system. Even that wouldn't go to completion - it just sat there loading saying "Please Wait..." Yet the Linux CD was okay. And the computer did a POST okay too.

As a last ditch effort, I was going out for a little while and left the computer on the splash screen the whole time. When I got back a couple hours later, it had actually gone up to the password prompt! I put my password in and now it's at the Welcome screen but it's very slow. Been spinning the hourglass on Welcome for the last several minutes. Hopefully it will get it enough for me to do a restore point rolllback and I can also try the hard drive diagnostic

I see hard drives die all the time. Probably one of the most common repairs.

I haven't worked on that model, but I'm guessing the recovery CD accesses a recovery partition on the hard drive. The factory restore would rebuild that partition. So if the drive is bad, those boot discs would fail. The Live Linux CD has no dependencies on the hd.

The point of doing a hd diag first is so that you don't waste time trying to repair Windows on a bad drive. Don't build a house if the foundation is bad.

True - good point Doing that now...

The hard drive is showing P0-WDC WD/0 EADS - I think that's Western Digital. I used Ultimate Bood CD 4.1 that I had lying around but it wasn't able to really diagnose anything. Had 2 WD diagnostic tools which claimed it couldn't see the disk (which might indicate a bad drive but the Linux CD has been able to access files) Also tried Data Lifeguard tools on there but that only let me see the drive as well as do some basic partitioning, etc. Am I doing this correctly? If the disk is bad, I wouldn't mind just buying another hard drive and imaging that one.

UBCD5.1 is the latest. You can also go to the WD site and download the diags.

The older versions of Datalifeguard tools may not recognize the drive or the motherboard ports properly.

You could also try Seatools from Seagate, but ignore any temp errors since it's not a Seagate drive.

Thanks - will look into that. I'm still a bit confused as to why even the System Repair CD was not able to load. This is the CD I created the first time I did a System Image backup. Theoretically, I could use this CD on a brand new drive and bring my computer back to last-backed-up state right? So I would think that the CD wouldn't care if there was something wrong with the HDD (until I try to proceed forward of course). But even that would get hung up as I said in my initial post. I was thinking of just going & buying a new hard drive but I'm afraid when I plug it in - will the System Repair get hung up again and I won't be able to restore the image I have on my backup hard drive.

Hard to say at this point; I can only theorize. I wouldn't just skip to buying a new drive, but that's your call. Troubleshooting is a process of elimination. Although, a new drive would eliminate the old hard drive as a culprit.

Well, a bit of a breakthrough here. I opened up the case and disconnect the hard drive. Booted up again with the System Repair CD. And this time it smoothly got right to the Repair or Image Recovery page! I even connected my external drive I was using to save the image and it let me get to the process of restoring the latest saved image. Of course, I couldn't do anything since the hard drive was not connected. But it gave a big validation to your original thought that the hard drive was dying and somehow that was preventing even the Repair CD from progressing (though Linux is booting okay). It also gives me more confidence to buy a new hard drive and try restoring the image.

So get ready to pat yourself on the back :) I'm going to run out & get a hard drive and will post back what happens ..

Okay, so got a new drive and installed it. I was able to get to the point where the Repair CD wanted to restore image from hard drive. I plugged in my external portable drive, it found the image, but when I got to the part where it is ready to restore the image, it said "image restore failed" :( I do a dual backup so I used the 2nd external hard drive for an earlier system image but that failed too!! :( Any suggestions what is going on? Didn't really give any details, and it did find the image so I can't figure this out.

EDIT:

Did a little searching - could the problem be the size of the hard drive? The original one is 1 TB. I never used even close to that so I opted for a 500 GB unit instead. Should I have gotten a 1TB to make the image restore work? Of the 2 external drives I used for image backup, the older one was done with full 1TB partition. Prior to the latest backup, I had repartitioned my computer into 300 GB and 700 GB so that I could move some big files that I didn't need backed up over to the large partition. So the latest image backup was from the 300 GB partition. Could all this be the issue?

If your system partition was 300 GB and your new drive is 500 GB, I would think the imaging program should be able to restore the image. Are you using the Windows 7 imaging software or something like Acronis True Image? I assume that you make a full image backup each time instead of an incremental image.

Is there any error code or anything? Did you try the factory restore discs?

jdc2000: That's what I would have thought too but people were saying it's a little temperamental that way. But not sure if that is even the problem or something else. I'm using the built-in Windows 7 System Image software - people have said Acronis True Image, etc., are better in this regard. And yes, with the Windows 7 system, you can only do full backups each time.

Midknyte: it didn't give any error code. Just an error that image cannot be restored. I tried using the 3 DVDs I had created when I first got the computer. Those seemed to work okay - went through the whole restore process but at the very end when it restated (and should have come up like it did the day I first got it), I get a boot up to a flashing cursor in the top left! :( Weird because it didn't complain at all while doing the factory restore. Not sure if this too is because the restore DVDs were created from the 1 TB hard disk and I'm trying to put it onto a 500 GB drive. Again, shouldn't matter but I don't know if it is just not happy. Tomorrow I may go swap for a 1 TB drive and see if that works.

Attachment 10943

Here is a pic of the error message I'm getting.

It did give an error code. 0x80042412

It does mention USB disks, so it's possible that is causing the issue. Follow Step 2 in the error message and try again.

The size of disk should not matter.

I figured you weren't using Acronis TI. That's what I use, so I have more experience with that than the Win7 restore.

Good catch - I didn't realize that was the error code. Thing is, I didn't have any USB disks attached to the computer when trying to do the reimage, so I wasn't sure what it was complaining about. I also made sure to unplug all USB devices except the keyboard & mouse. The only USB devices showing at boot-up were 2 from the front card readers (which were empty). Just to double check, I unplugged the front card reader cables - this time it only showed the DVD and new hard disk at boot-up. Yet I still get the same error. :(

Only reason I mention size of the drive is that when I searched some people said the Win7 restore was temperamental that way. And even the full factory restore from the 3 DVDs wouldn't work - they installed successfully but upon boot-up I just got a black screen with flashing cursor in upper left. I have no idea if this has anything to do with it. I will exchange the 500 GB drive today for a 1TB which matches the original one and see if that works. I did install Linux Mint to an external hard drive via USB and that's working smoothly so far. I'm using that to type here. :) But this indicates to me that overall the computer seems to be in okay condition.

Worse comes to worse, I suppose I could buy a straight copy of WIn7 and just install that - it shouldn't have any of these issues.

All fixed now! :) Returned the 500 GB drive and got a 1 TB drive to match what was in there. And Windows System Restore didn't bat an eye! Took a while, but in the end my computer was up & running!

Makes me wonder if getting something like Acronis TI instead of relying on Windows System Image is worth it.

Thanks again for the help! :)

Interesting. Acronis doesn't have that limitation. Like I said, I don't use Win7 system restore. The latest Acronis is a bit bloated for me, but it is a much more mature product.

I don't have much experience in this except to be doing regular Win7 system image backups. But yes, in this case it sure seemed like not having a matching drive capacity was giving errors. It just so happened that the 1 TB drive I purchased was nearly identical to what was in there - I'm not sure if changing brands but still having 1 TB size would also have had problems.

I was also disappointed that the factory recovery DVDs wouldn't work on the 500 GB drive. As I said above, it installed without any errors at all but simply would not boot. Seems like it too is highly dependent on the new drive being identical. I never tried to use this on the 1 TB drive since the system image restore worked. But my guess is that the factory recovery would have worked fine on the 1 TB drive.

I'll look into Acronis and maybe some competing products too but something that is more robust than Win7 default.