"Loading Operating System..." Hang after shutdown/restart

Hi guys,

This is my first post and wasn't sure which exact board to post to so I thought installation might be one.

I have a windows 7 64bit machine installed on a 250gb hdd. Here is the exact sequence of events.

Shutdown computer last night (it had been on for 2 days straight).
Turned it on this morning, bios screen loads fine then it jumps to a black screen with the text "Loading Operating System..." and it hangs there.

I tried multiple configurations to detect the problem. I feared for the life of my hdd.
I unplugged my other 2 hdd and the dvd drive from power and sata and rebooted.

Now I get "Loading Operating System..." BOOT DRIVE FAILED INSERT CD AND PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE.

Re-install any other drive combo and get the standard hang screen. I made no major changes to my setup in the last 2 days, no software, no windows update, no hardware changes whatsoever.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks again.

Sounds like the Boot drive has failed or been corrupted in some way. It has been my experience that drives don't just get corrupted for No reason. It just does not happen.

The causes of that corruption could be from a drive failure, a Virus or in rare cases from the OS not shutting down properly (Like you Pressed and held the power button down while the OS was writing needed OS files back to the drive).

I suggest you use a another drive, preferably a New drive, as your boot drive and load the latest image, Backup, of your system on it and see if that boots. If you have no backup then do a Reinstall of the OS on the drive and see if it boots without problems.

Thanks, I will try re-installing first, if that fails I will buy a new drive and install on that. (will I lose my files on a re-install or will it be moved to a windows.old).

I am a freelance graphic designer that works from home, I back up my files every friday, so I would rather not lose the last 5 days of work.

Thanks.

If you do a Repair install it will install over the top of the current and hopefully not lose your data. Doing a New install without formatting and or Wiping the drive should move your current install to Windows.Old. But I'm not sure about that as it is something I have not done in years, Many years. I now use Acronis True Image to make Backup images of my system and program drive so If something like this happens I can just reload the latest image and be back up and running in about 15 minutes.

Something you might want to look into.

I do the imaging from the BOOT USB thumb drive that has a File manager on it so If needed, and the original boot drive is accessible, I can copy files off of it before I Re-Image the drive.

Good Luck.

Work through these steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot

First enter BIOS setup to see if HD is detected. If not replace the cables or possibly HD. If so work through the steps above.