Computer hangs on boot.

RogerR · 08 Feb 2014

This is an extension of a long-running intermittent problem. At irregular intervals of days weeks or months, my computer will fail to start windows at power up, hanging at that point in the boot cycle where it would decide which device to boot from.

Cutting right to the chase, if I use Minitool Partition Wizard to boot from and then select "Boot from Hard drive" (instead of into PW), Windows will start normally. Currently, if I try to start directly it hangs indefinitely.

Does this point to a motherboard / CMOS issue rather than a hard drive boot sector malfunction? I've been running this system for 4 or 5 years and nothing is overclocked - the m/b is reset to its stable defaults.

RogerR · 09 Feb 2014

OK - clarifying. They system is hanging at "verifying DMI pool". I've read lots of treads here and elsewhere about it, and have tried to repair it using the BOOTREC commands as detailed here
System will not boot to Windows 7 Professional [Solved] - Windows 7 - Windows 7
and here
How To Rebuild the BCD in Windows

bootrec /fixmbr completed successfully but
bootrec /scanos found 0 windows installations.

bcedit /export c:\bcdbackup failed - "The requested system device cannot be found."

I'm guessing this means it can't find a C drive?

What now?

gregrocker · 09 Feb 2014

The boot repair commands as well as dozens of other tests are all automated in Win7
Startup Repair. Try that first.

Since you have the PW CD, boot into it to confirm the 100mb SYsReserved or C partition is
Partition Marked Active and if not Modify>Set to Active, OK. Then highlight the Win7 disk, from Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, OK, Apply both steps. Then run Startup Repair a few times again.

If no joy work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start

RogerR · 17 Feb 2014

Sadly, the drive seems to have failed - click of death - and I am waiting on a replacement. Ugh.

I wish I could resurrect it for long enough to clone it, but it doesn't look good.

gregrocker · 18 Feb 2014

Have you tried booting Win7 installation media or System Repair Disk
to rescue your data with Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console?

RogerR · 26 Feb 2014

gregrocker said:

Have you tried booting Win7 installation media or System Repair Disk
to rescue your data with Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console?

Tried repairing from the install CD, but the failed hard drive is the OS drive - it just clicks (i.e. is powered) whenever the system tries to read it. PW can't find it either.

Does anyone have any tips on getting that bad drive to operate - for even a little while?

I'm replacing it a Samsung SSD that has data migration tools and hoping that if I could resuscitate the drive for an hour I could get windows moved to the new drive.

user31 · 26 Feb 2014

I was getting that it was your CMOS or a bad HDD.

RogerR · 26 Feb 2014

user31 said:

I was getting that it was your CMOS or a bad HDD.

So now we know - its the HDD.

gregrocker · 26 Feb 2014

RogerR said:

gregrocker said:

Have you tried booting Win7 installation media or System Repair Disk
to rescue your data with Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console?

Tried repairing from the install CD, but the failed hard drive is the OS drive - it just clicks (i.e. is powered) whenever the system tries to read it. PW can't find it either.

Does anyone have any tips on getting that bad drive to operate - for even a little while?

I'm replacing it a Samsung SSD that has data migration tools and hoping that if I could resuscitate the drive for an hour I could get windows moved to the new drive.

You can try browsing in using the method I gave you above in the blue link to see if it sees the drive and data to copy it out.

You can also try the Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure extended CD scan to see if it will repair enough to rescue the data.

Alpha · 04 Mar 2014

Is it a Seagate HDD?

Computer hangs on boot.

Computer hangs on Verfiying DMI Pool.