(Perplexing) Windows 7 or 10 sometimes (often) failed to boot, while L  

(Perplexing) Windows 7 or 10 sometimes (often) failed to boot, while Linuxes mostly boots fine.


I bought 2 HP Elitebooks 8730w 17" laptops (Intel P8700 and ATI Mobility Radeon 3670) for less than $150 each back in 2017.

One of them works fine, while the other constantly often fails to boot Windows. It fails about 70-80% of the time (at least). While Linux (Ubuntu 16.04) will be successfull (at least 90% of the time). For Windows 7, it will show "Starting Windows" screen as shown here:


Then it will NOT go into login screen, but to a blank black-screen as shown here (otherwise, it will show a pointer and then the Windows login screen):


and it will freeze as if there is no CapsLock or NumLock respond anymore. The similar thing happen to Windows 10 LTSB too, that I installed earlier before I switched to Windows 7 (I switched, becoz I thought Windows 10 did not support the hardware, but the same thing happens later to my Windows 7 Installation).

I thought it was the old HDD, so I also had replaced a new HDD and even tried on another new SSD, but it did not fix it (So it was not because of the old initial HDD that came with the laptop, as I also had thought of). Already run memtest86 too, found RAM problem, switched the RAM, new RAM is clear (but the Windows 7 boot problem still persist).

The same Windows image run fine on the other laptop, so it was not becoz of the OS image.

This failure to boot occurs only mostly to Windows (7 & 10) (But NOT all the time) (70-80-90% failure rate at least) (sometimes it successfully boots) (Isn't it perplexing???), while Linux (Ubuntu 16.04 or Kali 2019.01) would be successfull (at least 90-95% of the time) (With Kali Linux prob 99%-100%). This is the only strange clue. If it had successfully booted, it will run no problem (pretty much normal and crashless whatsoever). The other same laptop that I had bought (same type), runs just fine.

Google only take me as far as : https://www.maketecheasier.com/windo...iled-to-start/

What could be the problem here? As replacing the HDD and reinstalling OS doesn't solve the problem. I haven't checked the CPU, GPU or other hardware &/ connections, but the strange thing is that Linux mostly starts (boots) fine. Some people say that it's probably driver issues.. I don't know...


I actually posted this on another forum (tomshardware), but I haven't found the answer / solution yet, I haven't even pinpointed the cause for this. I am still perplexed by this behaviour. I hope you can find this perplexing problem / question insteresting. I will update this thread as time goes with more info.

Thx in advance and I appreciate for all the helps.

Welcome to the forum. Can you post a screenshot fromm disk manager showing all the details so we can see whats going on

Hi


The same Windows image run fine on the other laptop, so it was not becoz of the OS image.
really - different drivers for gpu - 1 will fail!!!!
(MS will help by installing its generic drivers)


Which is failing, AMD <my guess or Intel

check your Bios settings

note W7 hates being no 2

Roy

I found a way to get to 'Advanced Windows Boot Option' by pressing F8 during early boot time.

I did 'Enable Boot Logging' few times already. Here are the resulting logs: ntbootlog.txt - Pastebin.com
Only the last boot from 01-14-2020 16:47 of the log is successfull iirc. This last boot log, shows that Win7 managed to load several more drivers or whatever .sys files those are. But idk why. Still don't know what exactly caused the boot failures.

I also tried the 'Disable Driver Signature Enforcement' option, but it still doesn't fix anything, sometimes it boots, most times it doesn't.

All the 3 'Safe Modes' boots 100% (but I hvn't tried that many times thou, maybe only bout 20 timish. So, I consistently was able to boot those 'Safe Modes' iirc

samuria said:

Welcome to the forum. Can you post a screenshot fromm disk manager showing all the details so we can see whats going on

I am sorry, but what is 'disk manager'? Did you mean 'Device Manager' ??

I hvn't been able to successfully boot Windows in this past week or two. My Linux bootability has also degraded too, with about only 40-50% bootability,, I will detail and explain later bout the Linux behaviour.
I hv provided the 'ntbootlog' thou.. but still Iam unable to make much sense from it

torchwood said:

Hi

The same Windows image run fine on the other laptop, so it was not becoz of the OS image.
really - different drivers for gpu - 1 will fail!!!!
(MS will help by installing its generic drivers)

Which is failing, AMD <my guess or Intel

check your Bios settings

note W7 hates being no 2

Roy

What should I do then ? I hvn't been able to boot W7 in past week or two (Only able to boot Safe Modes with 100% bootability and Linux to some extent). I will post my BIOS settings in other time.

k00ly said:

I am sorry, but what is 'disk manager'? Did you mean 'Device Manager' ??

No, its 'Disk Management'.


Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

samuria said:

Welcome to the forum. Can you post a screenshot fromm disk manager showing all the details so we can see whats going on

Bree said:

No, its 'Disk Management'.
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

Well, we are all lucky today, I was able to boot W7, only after 3 boot attemps this morning..
Here are the Disk Management pics:


I have 3 Linuxes ext4 partition, 1 Linux swap, 1 W7 NTFS and 1 NTFS Data for easy backups and data.

There is one Linux partition that is 'Active'.. I am confused, does anybody knows what that means? That partition also is the last Linux OS I installed..