Error: Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change

faith · 02 Feb 2015

I have a Lenovo Desktop which have Windows 7 Professional on it running for 2 years.

Suddenly, it fails to boot into Windows and show below error messages:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.

If I click "Start Windows normally", it just hang and reboot itself and continue this infinite loop.

I searched and tried below methods but none of them help. Please see if there are any other ideas. Thanks.

- Run automatic repair tool
- Run chkdsk tool
- Run sfc /scannow
- Follow instructions in Startup Repair Infinite Loop Recovery
- Reinstall Windows 7 Professional

ICIT2LOL · 02 Feb 2015

Hello Faith now as you have done those tests and reinstalled it really points the finger at some new hardware or perhaps something going wrong with the original hardware and I am thinking of the hard drive for example it is going south then it might well cause the problems you describe.

So have you renewed the drive or added any external drives or mice or suchlike recently or say within a month? I am leaning more to the drive failing to be honest and if you can get it to run then use this
SeaTools for Windows | Seagate
Now if you cannot get the machine to power up to do that have you got access to another machine? because you can use a USB to SATA adaptor to hook it up to another computer and run that test making sure you have the target drive (your Lenovo one) marked down for testing. See my pic of the adaptor.

Now another thing I have to ask is really obvious I suppose but has the machine been dropped, spilt on, had something dropped on it or exposed to extreme temperatures recently? ie left in hot car?

I am just trying to cover all bases here so bear with me.

faith · 02 Feb 2015

ICIT2LOL said:

Hello Faith now as you have done those tests and reinstalled it really points the finger at some new hardware or perhaps something going wrong with the original hardware and I am thinking of the hard drive for example it is going south then it might well cause the problems you describe.

So have you renewed the drive or added any external drives or mice or suchlike recently or say within a month? I am leaning more to the drive failing to be honest and if you can get it to run then use this
SeaTools for Windows | Seagate
Now if you cannot get the machine to power up to do that have you got access to another machine? because you can use a USB to SATA adaptor to hook it up to another computer and run that test making sure you have the target drive (your Lenovo one) marked down for testing. See my pic of the adaptor.

Now another thing I have to ask is really obvious I suppose but has the machine been dropped, spilt on, had something dropped on it or exposed to extreme temperatures recently? ie left in hot car?

I am just trying to cover all bases here so bear with me.

Thanks for your good suggestion. No recent hardware change I notice on this computer.

This Desktop is running RAID 1, I will try your suggestion to take both harddisk to another computer and check using the provided tool.

As this computer is for normal office use, it does not exposed to extreme condition and user did not report any accidents happen on it (or hide me from knowing it).

ICIT2LOL · 03 Feb 2015

OK Faith well in that case you may be able to install the drive directly into the second computer and if it works ok then it could be something as simple as a SATA cable that is no good or just not making a good contact which prompts me to say try reseating it in the original machine.

Whatever you actually do keep us informed:)

PS I f it is a bad drive then there are ways of retrieving data and not use Windows to do that - I have on many occasions using some Linux programs namely Ubuntu and Linux Mint MATE. If this is the case post back and we can help with that.