Infamous Win7 Black Screen/Blinking Cursor (HP Laptop)

I apologize if this was posted in the wrong forum. It's not really a BSOD but rather a BLACK screen of death? I have an HP Pavilion G7 laptop that simply won't boot up. This was given to me under the premise that the HDD was most likely ready to fail. I was able to image the existing drive and restore to a new fully functional HDD. Only as indicated, the system will not boot. I suspect this machine had a few infections at one time or another based on the number of anti-malware directories I can see in the root.


WHAT I'VE TRIED SO FAR:
- Cannot boot in any other mode since system will not proceed passed a flashing cursor (i.e. safe mode, safe mode w/ networking, etc.) and black screen.

- Created Win7 boot disk (no install disk provided since PC has recovery partition). Also with boot disk, tried system repair, chkdisk, master boot record fix, etc. No luck there. Ran these a number of times.

- BIOS is set to only boot to HDD, no other devices attached except for the DVDROM (and empty tray).
- Downloaded to a flash drive "Farbar Recovery Scan tool" and have the results of the scan log (if applicable).
- Something very odd that occurs is I can boot up the old HDD but operation is very spotty. Something is definitely wrong with it but I'm surprised it still boots. Why would the image not boot if the drive signature was restored accordingly (using Acronis True Image)? Perhaps I should try another software package like Macrium Reflect?


I'd like to avoide a clean install/complete recovery if possible since this isn't my own machine and I'd like to perserve the user's other installed programs and corresponding software licenses. Once I can get the machine to boot, I can take it from there in the way of eradicating any malware that may exist on the machine. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. :)

If WIn7 doesn't boot after recovering using an image, confirm the System REserved (preferred if you have it) or C partition is Partition Marked Active then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times to see if it will boot.

If that fails everything possible that can be done to boot Win7 is here for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start

gregrocker said:

If WIn7 doesn't boot after recovering using an image, confirm the System REserved (preferred if you have it) or C partition is Partition Marked Active then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times to see if it will boot.

gregrocker thanks so much for your suggestion! Not sure why the system reserved partition wasn't marked active since this was a complete recovery image, but no matter since the machine is now booting. Very much appreciated.

Some imaging apps don't ask specifically, or the option to Mark Active is buried in a sub-menu. The app itself can't always be relied upon to pass through the Active flag and MBR intact, even though it should ask to be sure - usually a setting to Mark Partition Active or copy MBR or Track 0.