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#1
PC usually hangs at Starting Windows
Hello,
I wasn't sure where to post this so forgive me if this is the wrong place to start.
I recently installed a new secondary SSD in my Alienware desktop replacement. I've been running with two drives for a while, but just recently started using this latest drive. In my rig I run one drive as my work drive and the other as my personal drive. Both drives have a Windows 7 (Pro for work, Ultimate for personal) installation on them. I forgo the Windows boot menu and instead tell the PC which drive to boot from using the PC's boot menu. This has worked well for me in the past with other drives.
With my latest personal drive however, the PC seems to run well in all aspects except startup. About 70% of the time, the PC hangs at "Starting Windows." The little flower logo continues to animate, but the PC never actually finishes booting. I think I left it that way for a couple hours once and seem to remember the PC going to recovery mode of some kind, but I don't remember the details. Usually I just power the PC off with a hard shut down, then power it back on and try again. This usually prompts a "startup repair" menu which I ignore.
I've had no luck with the repair methods that I've tried so far which include:
System Restore - this issue started immediately after Windows is done installing, so not much to restore to.
chkdsk /r /f
Here are the edited results. Seems pretty innocuous.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
Cleaning up instance tags for file 0x46e55.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
323072 file SDs/SIDs processed. Cleaning up 445 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 445 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 445 unused security descriptors.
sfc /scannow
No problems detected.
Startup Repair - Heres the only error I saw in the report:
Root cause found:
-----------------
Unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem.
Repair action: System Restore
Result: Cancelled
Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x490
Time taken = 193332 ms
As far as I know, all the latest drivers and Windows Updates are installed.
I'm starting to suspect that there is a problem with the SSD itself (the Samsung listed in my system specs) as it has a clean Windows installation and during the initial install, I ran into this problem as well. I wiped the drive and started again and the issue returned.
I have Samsung Magician 4.5 installed, but I don't see any tools on there to check the integrity of the drive. The screenshot I've attached is about all I can get out of it.
Any help would be appreciated.
-Daralen