Solved System boot up occasionally hangs at "Starting Windows"

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64

As the topic implies, my system occasionally hangs at "Starting Windows". Specifically, it hangs just before the Microsoft graphic plays. If I see the graphic, I know I'm good to go. Once I get past "starting windows", I have yet to see any issue with the system with respect to lockup or freezes.

The only way I can get the system to boot, when it does hang, is to hit the reset button and then select "Start Windows Normally". The system then loads up with no issues (or at least none observed thus far).

Background: This is a new PC that I built. I've noticed this issue from the very beginning and have made multiple re-installs of the OS after completely formatting the hard drive each time.

I've seen multiple reports of people having issues getting stuck at "starting windows" but none seem to have the same issue I have where it only happens from time to time. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hello Kaybek, welcome to SF!

It sounds like an issue with either the system disk, its MBR or timing....or, long shot, temperature.

Sometimes, on a (literally) cold boot, things take longer. Upon re-booting, it works...
Check your BIOS to see if you can give your System disk some more time to start up. Assuming you have the system on your SSD, make sure you have the specific SSD setting right too. Lots of info on that on this forum. see the tutorials and search for SSD.

Many thanks for your reply to this! By System Disk, I'm assuming you mean the hard drive that my OS is installed on? If that's the case, it's been my suspicion that my SSD is indeed faulty.

With respect to MBR (master boot record?), is that something that re-installing windows after a complete format of the disk would resolve? If so, I've actually formatted / re-installed several times now on this brand new SSD.

Temperature wise, running coretemp shows that the system doesn't really get past 41C in normal usage so I can't imagine it's spiking up above that during startup / reboot.

kaybek said:

Many thanks for your reply to this! By System Disk, I'm assuming you mean the hard drive that my OS is installed on? Yes, correct.
If that's the case, it's been my suspicion that my SSD is indeed faulty.

With respect to MBR (master boot record? Correct again ), is that something that re-installing windows after a complete format of the disk would resolve? Only if it is a software problem, this sounds like HW or drivers for the SSD. If so, I've actually formatted / re-installed several times now on this brand new SSD.

Temperature wise, running coretemp shows that the system doesn't really get past 41C in normal usage so I can't imagine it's spiking up above that during startup / reboot.

Click to expand...

I don't think the temps have anything to do with it...

My advice is to boot with a windows disk and do some testing of that SSD.
Maybe you just did not install the ssd correctly? One of the very good tuts: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html

Thanks again for your response. It's greatly appreciated. Would an incorrectly installed disk not give a consistent, repeatable error? At least 50% of the time the system boots up just fine and I can game without issue (my games are installed on a separate HD).

Update: I did get an issue when trying to close out from a game of Civ 5 last night, my computer locked up to the point I couldn't get the Task Manager to come up. I had to hit reset and when it started booting up I got that dreaded "BootMgr is Missing" error. Using my Win7 Install disk I was able to repair and get it back and running again.

Regretfully, no, it does not have to be consistent.

Do you have a temp, spare standard HDD (non SSD) that you can try to run on for a while to rul out the rest of the components?

Ah, good point. I'll dig one up and give that a try. Thanks again!

Updating here that my issues now seem to be resolved. I've swapped out the hard drive with a new one, installed Win 7 on the new drive, and am now no longer seeing any of the issues I had previously. Looks like it was a bad/failing drive.

Thanks for your help and guidance!

You are very welcome, thanks for posting back!