Windows 7: Major StartUp and Performance Problems After Blackout ???

Thanks for explaining the "lake" business.

Whenever I do embark on that mission, I most definitely will be bombarding you guys with plenty of questions; I have more than my share just keeping our regular machines running.

Alas, you may very well be right.

During this debacle, each time that I did something and the O/S would come back to life and all would seem good, then in a few hours everything would start degrading again.
I finally gave up on fixing that particular O/S and cloned the O/S of an identical machine onto the problem HDD; everything was then good as new (see post #17 of this same thread)

That was a week ago and two nights ago everything went down the drain to the point that, after sitting idle for a bit, everything was froze up again; after a forced shut-down, it would not boot past the Welcome screen; and, on the few times it did get past the Welcome screen, it would get to the desktop, load maybe half of the icons, and hang right there.
No amount of booting from the repair disk would get me any farther, not even in SAFE mode.

After I fix something, it will work for a bit and then get all corrupted again; is that typical of a damaged HDD?


At the present, I installed a different HDD that has a recent clone of the O/S and everything seems to be working as it should, although I have not as yet really put it to the test.

I have the problem HDD USB-connected and can read/write to anything I have tried so far.

I marked this case UNSOLVED as it appears that I ain't out of the woods just yet.

first off, it's a DELL. There's your problem. lol. but no, SERIOUSLY, you do need to run chkdsk c: /f /r AND SCAN FOR ERRORS.

NOTICE: IT THE HARD DRIVE IS SEVERELY SCREWED, IT COULD TAKE HOURS OR EVEN DAYS TO REPAIR. I HAD ONE THAT TOOK 72 HOURS TO SCAN. JUST SAYING.

YOU COULD ALWAYS BOOT FROM THE HIDDEN PARTITION. MOST COMPUTERS NOW DAYS HAVE ONE. IT COULD BE ALT+F10, ALT+F11, OR ALT+F12, CHECK THE MANUAL OR LOOK ONLINE TO VERIFY.

Thanks.

I could not see any option to prevent or allow a start after power loss; maybe I didn't look in the right place.

What I did find in BIOS is an option saying "Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure."

I Google-searched that and, as best I can gather, it has more to do with an O/S crash than a sudden loss of power.

Always before, as soon as the current was off, all of our machines shut down and remained shut down; I do not know what caused this one to begin starting as soon as the power returned.

"Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure." is equivalent to not to start after power loss.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.