Windows 7 won't start | startup repair not fixing it

Hello everyone!

As the title says, windows 7 won't start and startup repair is not fixing it.

Let me give you the scenario:

My laptop was working fine, I installed macrium reflect and performed a full clone - no issues. I shutdown my laptop, took the battery off, took the laptop apart, and replaced my harddrive with a new one. I tried to boot up my backup drive that I just cloned to and it failed to boot.

I did some troubleshooting with my backup drive and then decided to buy a SATA 2.5" to USB adapter and hooked my original drive up.

Tried to boot to my original drive and it failed to start too. It gets to the windows logo and then a blue screen flashes and it restarts itself.

I ran startup repair: system files integrity check and repair error
Startup repair finds my Windows 7 Home Premium OS
Bootrec /fixmbr and /fixboot are successful

I tried to do a system restore to before macrium reflect was installed and it fails.
I tried to do a system restore from a week ago and it failed too.

I tried starting in safe mode with last known config and it fails.
I tried starting in safe mode and it gets to the black screen where it starts loading .dll's (drivers?) and gets through about 10-15 of them and it restarts

I am able to access all the files like it is a backup drive. I ran chkdsk last night and am currently running a defrag.

However, I am running out of ideas and am lost of what is wrong. It was working before I took it out of the laptop and now I can't even do a system restore.

Welcome to the Forum.

To boot the original disk it must be on the computer. From the USB it won't boot.
Put the original disk on the computer and try to boot it.
If it doesn't, try a boot repair.

oh. Well then.

So you can't boot from a cloned disk? or the original disk via usb?

Fist of all, you must be able to boot the original disk.
Put the original disk on the computer and try to boot it.
If it doesn't, try a boot repair.

Yeah Same idea but if u want to boot from an usb u should format that with rufus program.Then for cd/dvd even a materialed clone could work like coping materialls from reall cd to a blank 1.Hope to help!

Alright. So it is that the drives are not bootable via usb in my case.

I hooked it up to a desktop and it worked fine.

I went ahead and cloned to my new HDD using the sata to usb adapter and then plugged my new HDD to my laptop and everything is working.

After googling a bit, I found that windows doesn't like booting from usb, so cloned drives do not always work. or in my case, my original drive didn't boot from usb.

Thanks for all the help!

Another thing to consider: some of the SATA to USB adapters have faulty power supplies - they can damage the drive. Make sure you have a good power supply for the drive. If you have an unused desktop computer, you could pull the power supply out of it, and connect the drive to that power supply.

Megahertz07 said:

Welcome to the Forum.

To boot the original disk it must be on the computer. From the USB it won't boot.
Put the original disk on the computer and try to boot it.
If it doesn't, try a boot repair.

hi...i dont have a disc

here's the sequence specifically.....after the lenovo screen i get a black screen with a few lines of technical stufff, looks like informative stuff like "intel ******, NOT AN ERROR MESSAGE

at the very end there's some.......... and something that looks like a spinning cursor/hash mark

now,,,a few days ago when i encountered this prob the lenovo said something like "Cannot find boot file" or something similar followed by that spinning cursor/hash mark.

so i let the machine alone for a few days and turned it on again today. this time there's no message about not finding the boot file. there's just some information about the machine but still with that spinning cursor/hash mark

i read that i had to switch around the boot sequence or somesuch but i cannot get into bios,,,f2 or f8


at the very end there's some.......... and still something that looks like a spinning cursor/hash mark



lenovo w10