All of a sudden, win 7 hangs on start and can't shutdn

My upgrade to windows 7 went so good . . .ran fine for months then I cannot get windows past the "windows starting" screen. I restored and loaded a backup, one of which started but then would not shut down. Also tried several restore points. Safe boot works every time but when booting from msconfig process with all services and startup programs disabled it still will not start. I have tried to reinstall but it hangs on the necessary reboots so then I need to go back to an image dump that now does not start. what else can I disable in msconfig?

This is a hp slimline which was upgraded from vista. So quite basic with no additional cards!

Welcome to the Forum,

When you say safe boot, I do not know if you mean clean boot, or safe mode. I will assume you mean safe mode, because clean boot, if used properly would solve the problem.

Carefully read and follow these instructions. Dont take short cuts. The time invested now will save many hours in the future.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

Good Luck

Do you have an A/V product installed?



You can also check in the registry: (type regedit in the start > search field)



HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce





On the off chance it's an x64 version:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce


You could also try disabling any non-MS services at start via msconfig to see if it's a 3rd party issue:

View attachment 53983

If it's still freezing/hanging it could either be a MS update, faulty driver, incompatible app etc.

"with all services and startup programs disabled'

Probably need to boot to the Win7 cd and do a fresh install...

I have tried several variations of the "cold Start" msconfig procedures. Nothing has resulted in being able to start win 7 normally. I have also tried to reinstall from my win 7 install cd but always get hung up on the necessafy reboots. Having spent 20 or so hours on this I decided to go back to vista via my restore partition so thoughtfully provided by HP. To my astonishment the system is again working. In another 4 hours or so I will have my applications installed. I think I will wait til next year to again try Windows 7 on this particular computer. My wife's similar system is working so far with the win 7 upgrade. Vista never looked so good!!

Thanks for your suggestions . . . .