Win 7 suddenly won't restart

Yes. I think I'm up to that point. Is the repair install straightforward in the instructions?

This is a bit scary. I found instructions on an MS Win7 site. Put in the DVD, saw the 'press any key to boot from CD or DVD' and saw the loading files display. Then it went to the Starting Windows screen, made it to the splash image, and has stopped. It's not bringing up the install screen where I can select a repair install.

I think I just read that if I have an OEM system builder pack DVD, this might not work. That's what I have--provided by Tiger Direct when I built the system from scratch 18 months ago. Is this why I'm not getting into the right screens?

Following your instructions, and using my WinXP machine, I was able to follow the instructions to create the repair disk with bit torrent, etc. IMGBurn reported the disk was successfully burned and verified. However, using it doesn't get me to the repair screen. I get the ASUS Express Gate screen, then the option to boot from the CD, then Windows is loading files comes up and finishes--seems to be going well. Screen shows a bit of the next step --windows loading, but it doesn't finish and goes black.

If I try to boot in safe mode, I now see the list of files loading, then a cursor, but nothing comes up on screen.

Now I'm concerned that I can't even use the OEM system builder disk to do a complete reinstall. I'm asking around for another Win7 disk.

DocBrown, love your graphic. Your message was blocked by a pop-up blocker and I lost it. Here's an update. I used the F5>F8 and let the machine run a few times using the repair option. I noticed after walking away and leaving the blank screen for a few hours, the repair dialog box came up. I ran the repair and it came back with no errors. Still could not boot properly. then used the Win7 recovery disk and let it go into blank screens for a while until it too, gave me some recovery options. Right now, I have a system recovery options box--it's not the same recovery screen the tutorial shows at all. But it defaults to: Use recovery tools that can help fix problems......, Then it says If your operating system isn't listed, click Load Drivers and then installl drivers for your hard disks. This shows after several minutes of searching for a windows operating system. The system it finds is the Win y recovery disk in the D drive, not my C drive. If I click on load drivers, I'm asked to insert the installation media for the device and click OK to select the driver. However, the drive is a seagate barracuda 7200.10 750 G, and I don't recall having any driver disk--I think it was plug and play. Or was it? My bios sees the drive properly, as I recall when checking bios setting on startup.

If I click on OK with no media (I have nowhere to put the media if I'm running off the recovery disk in D--no floppy and onlyh one DVD) I see a system32 folder with lots of sub folders. The menu shows other drives: System Reserved (c:), Local Disk D, CD Drive E (and the repair Win 7 disk you helped me create), my removable disk F, where files are backed up, and a Boot (X) drive, including drivers and a Driver Store folder.

I am leaving this in place right now since I'm not sure what to try next.

Does this suggest my HD is corrupt and driver files for my C Drive are corrupted? If I look at the C drive listed here as reserved, it's 99.9 MB with 70 free, and nothing shows. D has everything that is actually on what's normally called C, so I'm thinking the C here is some system hidden designation.

Hope this is helpful. At least something is evolving in a better direction tonight. I'll check back tomorrow evening once again. Thanks for all your help and patience.