Laptop Went to Sleep and Now Windows Won't Load Anymore

I have an older laptop that I really like. It has Win7 Ultimate with all the latest updates and upgrades from MS on it. There's even a back-up archive on it that gets saved every Sunday.

The laptop will usually display a slide show whenever there's inactivity. But occasionally, the screen will go dark and the machine won't come out of this state. It's still on, the lights are lit and the fan's running, so it's not really "asleep" I suppose. But when this happens, I can't get it to come around. So I have to shut down the machine, then fire it back up again. And when I do, I always get the screen asking me if I want to continue or to scan the machine for errors. I always just tell it to boot and everything is always fine. But not this last time. It proceeds to the 4-color Windws splash screen and that's as far is it gets. The hard drive light is solidly lit for the first several seconds, then it flickers, and goes out. And that's it.

This last time, I told myself that maybe after all the stuff I've tried to get it to wake back up it might just need a really long time to put itself back together again and then it'll finish booting. Well, it's been over an hour now, and still no joy.

This happened yesterday. So after I couldn't get it to load, I selected the Repair option and eventually decided to use a Restore Point. So I selected a recent one and let it do its thing. After a few minutes, the machine generated a popup that claimed the Restore Point had been set and the machine was good to go. So I restarted it, but it didn't make any difference. I tried this a few different times on different restore points. Didn't make a difference.

Next I pulled out my Win7 disk. Not knowing what else to do, I figured I'd just go ahead and re-install Windows. But nooooo, it wouldn't let me do that, either. The install routine was claiming that there was (were?) missing file(s) and it couldn't continue. So then I just decided I'd suck it up and do a clean install -- deleting all my installations. But nope, it wouldn't let me do that either! Again an error message about missing files, as I recall.

So at this point I don't know what else to do, short of buying a copy of Win10 and hope for the best. For all I know, Win10 might not even install.

So I guess I'm wondering -- is there any sort of Super Windows Fix Disk available that I can burn a copy of, or maybe a truly useful utility I can download that will unstick my machine?

As always, your help is greatly appreciated.

I didn't format the disk. As I mentioned above, this is a fairly frequent occurrence with this machine, so I usually don't bother with a checkdisk scan after I've had to do a "hot shutdown." I have done checkdisks in the past, and they always turn up nothing. This might be because the machine usually has been inactive for at least a few hours before it goes into this locked mode. Problem is, when it gets like this, it is truly stuck -- totally unresponsive -- so there's nothing else that I can do but a hot shutdown. I guess this last time was enough to tip it over the edge, though.

The laptop is a Gateway model MS2252, more popularly known as a P-7805U FX Edition. It was a gamer's platform and wasn't bad when new, but it's been updated a bit since then. It came with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 / 2.26 GHz CPU, which was upgraded to a 2.8 GHz version. It came with a 320 GB hard drive, which was replaced with a 500 GB hard drive. This machine has two drive slots, so I added a 1 TB hard drive to it. It also has 8 GB of ram. Even though it's an older machine, it's been a very capable one. A lot of new machines don't have the specs this one has.

If I damaged the file system, why doesn't the disk repair deal with that? And why won't selecting a Restore Point work either? And if I did somehow manage to damage the file system, isn't there a more industrial strength bootable utility around that can fix the problem?

I'm reasonably certain that if I can just get it unstuck so it will complete the boot sequence, it will be fine.

Megahertz07 said:

You didn't answer if you still has Win 7 installed.

Actually, when I was explaining how I was trying to get it to restart, even with the Win7 disk, that's a pretty clear indication that Win7 was still installed. To me, at least.

If you tried a clean install you deleted all partitions, right?

No. It's my understanding that a clean install does not format the drive. It doesn't even format the partition. It just replaces the Windows files, but it overwrites everything having to do with my customization of my copy of Windows. Or at least that's the way it worked the last time I did it -- probably back in my XP days. If it reformats the partition, then I definitely don't want to do a clean install. I have some stuff on that partition I'd just as soon not lose.

If you still have Win 7 installed, do a check disk.
Go to repair, open a CMD window and type:
Dir C:
If C: is the disk with windows it will list all folders. If it's not, try dir D: etc till you find the windows drive.
Then type chkdsk ?: /f where ? is the drive that has windows.
Then type sfc /scannow.
Report

OK, I'll try this. What do I have to lose?

Mr. Jim, thanks for the advice. I'll be sure to set it up like that -- although I thought I already had . . .

Okay, well in the 9 years or so I've been running Win7, I've never done a re-install, so this is news to me. At least it saves all the old files to an "Old" directory, which is probably all I'd really need. I might not have the room on the drive for that Windows.old directory, though. I'm not sure.

I haven't had a chance yet to work on the laptop. It's upstairs and I'm busy downstairs -- but I will perform the routines you suggest.

Well, I have a bit of unexpected good news to report. I had let my laptop sit for a couple of days, mostly because I've been really busy with other things. So I got up early this morning and decided to suck it up and tackle the problem.

Well, I went to power up the laptop this morning and, rather than getting stuck on the Windows splash screen, it just powered on through it. And once I reached the desktop, there was a note there telling me that the Restore had been successful. Honestly, I don't know why it took the Restore this time when it didn't the few times I tried it before. But I'm glad it did.

So, even though we didn't really perform any repairs to the disk -- other than a Restore that the machine decided to finally accept after sitting for a couple of days -- I'd have to say this problem is "Solved."