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#1
Win7 fails to start, then starts after reset
I have had two incidents in the past three days of a startup problem with a relatively new Win7 Pro SP1 build that uses UEFI. Last Friday I did my weekly clone of C: (SSD) to another SATA drive using True Image (WD Edition), and as usual checked the box that said to shut the computer down after completion. When I restarted I immediately powered down the cloned drive (in a mobil rack), I walked away briefly, and came back to see the computer powered on but the two monitors black and in standby mode. No mouse movement or keyboard activity would wake the monitors or produce any other response. I hit the reset switch and it booted to a B&W DOS-like "Windows Error Recovery" screen that said "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware of software change might be the cause," which gave me two options, to run the startup repair via the install CD or start Win7 normally. I selected the latter and it booted fine and has worked well until this morning, with several successful boots in the interim.
Today I had the same issue during my morning boot, but like before I did not watch the boot process and came back to two unresponsive black monitors. As before a hard reset got things working again after the same B&W "Windows Error Recovery" screen. I tried to duplicate the issue by doing a restart and then a shutdown with my normal restart with the power button, and all worked fine for both tries.
I did some searching and found many reports of this issue, but all that I saw were systems that would not boot at all, not the intermittent problem that I have. None that I saw said that doing the startup repair (first option on the B&W screen) worked, so I have not tried that. The only updates I've gotten recently were one for Adobe Reader and three definition updates for MSE. The last system update was five days prior to the first incident, and there have been no other software or hardware changes recently.
Event Viewer shows nothing except during the second boot which produces the B&W "Windows did not start" screen. It is an Event #3 ("The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly."). I also see no Memory.dmp file in the \Windows folder. I have not watched this procedure unfold, which I will try to witness for future boot events. Right now I'd appreciate any ideas.