Win7 Won't Boot, Need Help

Rebooted my 32-bit Win7 HP computer after three weeks of uptime. Right after the bios switches to a pure black screen (right before Windows loads, during the time you would try to bring up Safe Mode with F8) the PC encounters a boot problem. A screen pops up. It has a black border around the entire edge and inside the border is pure blue. There is no text, no mouse cursor, and I know Windows has not begun booting. After a short while, the computer auto-restarts, like it had encountered a genuine blue-screen. Is a textless bluescreen even possible?

Safe Mode cannot be triggered. However, if I load a Win7 Repair Disc, my system will tell me to press a key on the keyboard to load the CD/DVD at startup. If I wait for this message to disappear, and then hit F8 as soon as it does, I am then taken to the Safe Mode menu I would normally expect.

Launching windows takes me to the blue screen/black border I described. If I tell it to enable Windows Boot Logging, the text file it produces (%Windir%/ntbtlog.txt) contains four gibberish ascii symbols. I have a second computer in the home and that file contains text you would expect to see. Further proof Windows isn't actually loading.

On the off chance something was up with my MBR, I ran the Win7 Recovery CD. I waited until the first screen came up where I can interact. Here I pressed Shift+F10 to bring up a command prompt. I typed "bootsect.exe /nt60 SYS /force", rebooted, but same issue with Windows not loading. Went back and I tried "bootsect.exe /nt60 ALL /force", rebooted, same issue.

When I try to used the Repair function of the repair disc, it tries to locate my HD's. Immediately it only shows 1 (there are three and multiple partitions), it is Windows, with 0% for partition size, and unknown for the final column. It searches for other hard drives for five minutes or so and then allows me to select the hard drive from the list and click on Next.

I run the repair function but it cannot find any errors. I also sometimes use a program called WinPE Easy Recovery Essentials. It uses, what I assume is, a Live Linux CD and includes an Automated Repair function for Windows 7. This brings up a list of all of my hard drives, and their sizes are reported properly. However, it claims that not a single partition contains a Windows installation.

This same CD contains a file browser. I can see all of the files on my Windows drive. This is how I checked ntbtlog.txt earlier. My problem is that I have no idea what else I might be able to try to diagnose why Windows isn't booting. Any ideas? Thanks!!

YaMoonSun said:

i do "booted.exe /fixmbr"
I think your disk may be failing.

I performed a diagnostic test on the drive using the utility that came with it. It reports zero errors/bad sectors. I tried the command "bootrec.exe /fixmbr" and "bootrec.exe /fixboot". Both commands said there were successful, rebooted, no change.

A Microsoft article suggested changing the permissions on my BCD Store, rename it, and then run "bootrec.exe /buildbcd". It claimed it should now find an installation if this method will help, but it still returned a result of 0 Windows Installations found.

UPDATE
Going to edit the first post. I said that if I stay at this weird bordered bluescreen, that it never did anything. That has changed. Now it auto-restarts after a short while. Just like a real blue screen. So I'm assuming this is a bluescreen without text? If such a thing is possible. Bluescreen's are the only time that I am aware the computer will auto-restart itself.

I grabbed GParted. On my Windows drive there are two partitions; Windows and a System Reserved partition. Windows was not set to boot, System Reserved was. I checked my other Windows 7 PC and verified that the Windows partition should be set to boot. So I corrected it.

Now it boots to a black DOS screen with the text "BOOTMGR is missing". Windows Repair Disc and WinPE Recovery Essentials still don't see any drives, so they can't fix any errors. Tried running the command prompt commands I described earlier, but not changes to the BOOTMGR is missing situation.

Some OEM computers has some programs on the Reserved partition (like computer health check, disk check, factory recover etc) so it's normal to have this partition as active and even have the Windows boot loader.
Go back and set Reserved partition as active and restore the MBR.

Boot from a win 7 installation disk, go to repair and launch cmd window.
Check your disk. On a cmd window type chkdsk C: /f
Do a system file check. On a cmd window type sfc C: /scannow

If everything fails, you can always reinstall windows.
With the MS iso downloader (https://www.heidoc.net/php/Windows%2...Downloader.exe) download your win 7 OEM brand,
With the Linux, copy the \Users folder and the HP drives folder.
Do a clean install. Clean Install Windows 7
Use your COA stick key to activate.

For the updates:
MS releases SP2 for Windows 7

I can't offer any more information than you have already been given but I would strongly urge you, once you are up and running again to download the popular backup software Macrium Reflect and back up your system using a system image on a regular basis say once a week at least. Then if you have a similar problem in the future you can be up and running again within the hour.