Laptop Won't Boot, can't get past Initial Windows Screen

Okay, so the DVD recovery options took a bit of an unexpected turn. When I first got to the screen for recovery options where you can choose to use recovery tools, it told me that windows was searching for installations. It took about 5 minutes to do this, then stopped to tell me:

"Windows found problems with your computer's startup options.

Do you want to apply repairs and restart your computer?"

It then gives me the option to restart, or hit "No". By hitting no I'm guessing I could continue on to recovery tools. However, when I look at the details of the problem:

"Repair details:

The following startup options will be added:
Name: Windows 7 Home Premium (recovered)
Path: Windows
Windows Device: Partition=C: (224873 MB)

Name: Windows Recovery Environment (recovered)
Path: Recovery\4dc61ff7-e11df-82d0-aabf0b65d853\winre.wim
Windows Device: Partition=C: (224873 MB)"

Looks like a fix to the partition problem!

BUT I just wanted to run it through you before proceeding. I'm going to make a habit of that so I make no mistakes.

Also, I will buy some CDs tomorrow if possible. $2 sounds like a very good deal.

Looks like the DVD may be able to repair Win7, although you might have to boot back in to the REcovery tools list to run Startup Repair again if the offered repair fails. Try it now.

It can take up to 3 separate repairs with reboots, and this is providing the Win7 partition (or it's System Reserved partition) is marked Active. But it looks good from here.

Sometimes the onboard Startup Repair cannot repair Win7 because it relies on System files which may be corrupted or offline. This is why my first suggestion today was to run the repairs from disk.

gregrocker said:

Looks like the DVD may be able to repair Win7, although you might have to boot back in to the REcovery tools list to run Startup Repair again if the offered repair fails. Try it now.

It can take up to 3 separate repairs with reboots, and this is providing the Win7 partition (or it's System Reserved partition) is marked Active. But it looks good from here.

Sometimes the onboard Startup Repair cannot repair Win7 because it relies on System files which may be corrupted or offline. This is why my first suggestion today was to run the repairs from disk.

It pretty much fixed the problem of not being able to reach recovery. I now have access to it.

However, after hitting next when selecting the language (US), the screen stays the same background, but no tools come up, startup repair included.

I'm also almost positive the same thing will happen as usual (Keeps going for hours without doing anything). Didn't you say there was something I should do first to fix that?

Edit: Alright, the tools eventually came up, guess they just took a long time to load. Knowing that startup repair is going to just keep repeating, do you still want me to try it anyway?

What happened to the repair which you said was offered when you booted into the DVD Repair console and it discovered the "Recovered" Win7 installation? This seemed promising.

Are you already using the Win7 DVD you were downloading?

If not you'll need to use it, making sure WIn7 or it's 100mb System Reserved partition are marked Active then running Startup Repair 3 times.

gregrocker said:

What happened to the repair which you said was offered when you booted into the DVD Repair console and it discovered the "Recovered" Win7 installation? This seemed promising.

Are you already using the Win7 DVD you were downloading?

If not you'll need to use it, making sure WIn7 or it's 100mb System Reserved partition are marked Active then running Startup Repair 3 times.

The repair ran and restarted the computer. Unfortunately this didn't fix everything, but it did fix the initial problem where I couldn't access recovery options.

So I can now go to advanced options, do repairs to get into the recovery environment, and either do things from the command prompt, or run startup repair.

I'm going to check if the right partition is marked active and update you on that in a moment.

The newest windows install iso is still downloading and at a very slow pace. It likely won't be done for several hours unless my internet decides to speed up.

Also, I have fully downloaded system sweeper on my flashdrive, and it's ready to use. Let me know if and when you want me to use it.

UPDATE:

So upon going through the process of making a partition active, I found the one you were referring to. For me, it's partition 2 that's listed as a 100 MB size as you described, so I marked it as active.

There two other partitions. Partition 1 says that it's a recovery type, while partition 3 says it's another primary, but this one has a much larger size of 219 GB.

Out of these other two, could you tell me which should be active/inactive? Thanks, I'll wait at that prompt for your suggestion.

Mark the 100mb System Reserved partiition Active and make sure none others are, including on any other HD's. Unplug any externals. Then run 3 Startup REpairs with reboots.

If this fails, move the Active flag to the Win7 partition (likely the 219gb - you should know this) to run the 3 Repairs again in case the 100mb boot partition is corrupted.

If these fail, try this over again with the DVD Repair console so that repairs don't depend upon System files.

Then you can try Partition Wizard alternative method I gave earlier.

As a last resort, you can try marking the REcovery partition Active to see if it will reboot into it. Then try rebooting again tapping the Alt and F10 key together as described here: Acer Support: Restoring a system to factory load

gregrocker said:

Mark the 100mb System Reserved partiition Active and make sure none others are, including on any other HD's. Unplug any externals. Then run 3 Startup REpairs with reboots.

If this fails, move the Active flag to the Win7 partition (likely the 219gb - you should know this) to run the 3 Repairs again in case the 100mb boot partition is corrupted.

If these fail, try this over again with the DVD Repair console so that repairs don't depend upon System files.

Then you can try Partition Wizard alternative method I gave earlier.

As a last resort, you can try marking the REcovery partition Active to see if it will boot, either using the hotkey at boot or not - try both ways. What the hotkey does is mark the Partition Active so it will reboot into it. Acer Support: Restoring a system to factory load

Okay, I made sure the others were inactive, and that the 100 MB partition was active.

I will now attempt startup repairs. But before I do that, how long would you say I should wait before it's just the same old problem as before? I'd rather not wait hours for no reason like the other times if you get what I mean. Is there a certain speed it usually runs at?

After I've tried your system repair suggestions, I will get to doing system sweeper to see if anything turns up.

This is why you should run the Repairs from DVD as stated repeatedly. The System files needed for the repair can be corrupt or offline, requiring the fresh copy on the DVD.

Are you being warned that "Startup Repair needs to check the disk which can take up to an hour" as you reported in your first posts? If this happens and then the Repair hangs it can mean the Disk needs checking with diagnostics/repair CD scan as I've also repeated many times.

But Startup Repair could also be failing because it needs the DVD or Repair CD to run successfully, so get your DVD ready to burn the ISO when ready, using ImgBurn at 4x speed.

I will check in the morning.