Solved Windows 7 Start up Problems

[hcravi]

Hello friends at SevenForums. I am new and this is my first post.

I have a DELL computer with Windows 7 Home Premium as the OS. It was running perfectly until yestereday when it would not start. Windows 7 logo appears and then the screen becomes hazy with all colours and goes back to start. I removed all USB's attached, tried in Safe mode and also did a System Repair - NO Success.

Then I came across your wonderful site (through my laptop) and read through this thread - Excellent.

I tried the system restore option and boom it worked and I was so happy to have found your website and registered myself assuming I might your help in the future. I never thought it would the next day itself. I normally do not switch the PC off and after an hour it goes into sleep mode. This time the problem again started - windows 7 logo appears and then the hazy colourful screen and back to start up.

Before I tried the system restore agian, I want to take the help of this forum and find out the root cause of the problem and how to fix it permenantly.

Thank guys for your help.

BTW, my PC came with the OS preinstalled and I dont have a disc.

 

[Jacee]

If you have it set to hibernate, then disable that option

 

[hcravi]

No it is not set to hibernate. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Tews]

Hi, and welcome to SF! You might want to do a system restore to a point before the problem began ...

This will show you how to do a System Restore to restore your Windows 7 system files to an earlier point in time. It's a way to undo system changes to your computer without affecting your personal user files, such as e‑mail, documents, or photos.

System Restore

 

[hcravi]

Thanks Tews.

As I had mentioned in my original post, I did the System Restore to a date and it worked fine. But the problem again started when it was rebooting today. I can do a system restore again, but I want a permenant solution to the problem.

Also I can do the system restore only if it boots fully, right ? It goes into a loop everytime the windows logo appears and goes back to reboot again.

I did the system restore once by pressing F8 repeatedly.

 

[Tews]

Ok ... do the system restore, then open a command prompt ( type cmd in the start bar and enter sfc /scannow. This will scan/repair your critical system files, and hopefully resolve your problems. Let us know the results, before we go any further ... also, please fill in your system specs so we know what we are working with ...

 

[hcravi]

Thanks Tews.

I did the scan but the log file is 20 MB and cannot be attached. Is there something specific you want me to copy/paste here ?

In short the cmd prompt results said - Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix them.

I have included the system specs as well.

 

[Jacee]

Have you looked here (Dell), for a repair, or possibly a 'clean' install? Computer Does Not Boot to Microsoft Windows 7 | Dell

 

[Britton30]

Hello hcravi and welcome to Seven Forums. You said after waking from Sleep the system hung at the boot screen. If you are waking from sleep, there is no booting since the PC goes into a low power state and saves everything to memory. When woke it should appear exactly as you left it. It may be you have Hybrid Sleep enabled where after sleeping for a set time, it Hibernates, saving the system state to disk and shuts down.

Go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings\Change Advanced Power Settings. Scroll down the list and see that Hibernate is set to Never.
Alternatively type cmd in Start\search, right click cmd.exe and run as Administrator, type in powercfg -h off and hit Enter, This will disable hibernate and remove the big hiberfil file.
If you want to do a new install, Dell should have a built-in system Recovery or something like that. It has a HDD partition with the Windows installer on it. It may be you press F10 or F11 or some key, to enter it while rebooting.

 

[hcravi]

Thanks guys. All you help is much appreciated.

The problem again cropped up this morning and when I was choosing the system restore dates, I noticed that all the dates shown by the system had the same time - 11.00 pm. So I realized that the system was set to automatically download and install updates from Microsoft, which I thought might be the problem. I have now disabled the option and hoping it would take care of the problem.

Let me know if my assumption is right or wrong.

 

[Britton30]

I don't think auto updates will cause your issue. I set my updates to download and let me choose whether to install.

You can try to run the sfc /scannow 3 times with reboots after each one.

 

[hcravi]

I am not sure if the updates are causing the problem or something else. But the problem still exits every time I shut down and restart and every time I am required to choose a new date for the system restore, as restoring to a previously used date also does not work.

I tried running the scan and this is what happened all the 3 times.

 

[Britton30]

Before we suggest a clean install again, go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features and post a snip of it. You may have to make two snips to get it all. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html#post93869

 

[gregrocker]

Run SFC again to see if it will fix the files. If not, sometimes a Repair Install can set things right short of a clean reinstall or running Factory Recovery from disks or its partition.

A clean reinstall is much superior to the factory install, however, so take a look over the steps in the Perfect Reinstall link in my signature picture below to see if its something that interests you.

 

[hcravi]

Before we suggest a clean install again, go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features and post a snip of it. You may have to make two snips to get it all. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html#post93869

Here are the two screen shots as per your advice.
[/ATTACH]

 

[Britton30]

I don't know what you did wrong but those two snips aren't readable. I was going to check your installed programs for any which may cause issues.

 

[hcravi]

See if you can read this now. I was able to zoom it and read it.

 

[Britton30]

Here are my thoughts.

 

[gregrocker]

You can also monitor the logs and system resources in the Troubleshooting link in my signature picture below to look for clues to what caused your problem.

Since you have this curiousity, might as well get to know the tools which suss these things out.

 

[hcravi]

Now I have run out of system restore dates. The system provides me with about 5 dates and I tried using all 5 of them with no success. How do I get some date, say three or four months ago ?

I did check the box "look for more dates" and it does not give any new dates.