Cannot boot to windows 7

[DHallinan]

I bought a new HP Pavilion Laptop G series days ago its running windows 7 and today it wont start up. on start up it displays the HP logo and gives the option to go the 'start up menu' then moves to a black screen with a flashing cursor.

I've entered the start up menu and tried every option in the system recovery section to get it to start to windows normally. This includes a system restore, System Recovery and Minimized image recovery.

I haven't yet made the recovery disks from the partition drive, so i don't have the option to boot from them.

I tried to start in safe mode but F8 does nothing, it just beeps at me. I've tried F8 safe mode a few times and it's not working.

I had an old system recovery disk so I booted from disk and loaded that. I tried the start up repair but it didn't work

I ran cmd and tried chkdsk /f command and also fixmbr or fix boot or maybe both I can't remember now.

below is some info I got from the recovery disk that didn't work

Problem Signature
Problem event name: startupRepairV2
problem signature 01: ExternalMedia
problem signature 02: 6.0.6001.18000.0.0.0.0
problem signature 03: 0
problem signature 04: 65536
problem signature 05: unknown
problem signature 06: unknown
problem signature 07: unknown
problem signature 08: unknown
problem signature 09: unknown
problem signature 10: unknown
Os Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.2.0.256.1
Local ID: 1033

 

[Bill2]

Tap F11 repeatedly at boot, that should launch the factory recovery.

 

[DHallinan]

Tap F11 repeatedly at boot, that should launch the factory recovery.

Yep I tried that, as i mentioned i tried the system restore, System Recovery and Minimized image recovery from the F11 option but nothing worked.

 

[Bill2]

Thats strange. Have you changed/deleted any partitions? Do you actually have a recovery partition? Did this computer come with win7 installed or has it been upgraded/clean installed?

 

[DHallinan]

Thats strange. Have you changed/deleted any partitions? Do you actually have a recovery partition? Did this computer come with win7 installed or has it been upgraded/clean installed?

Havent touched the partitions. yes it has D Drive which is the recovery. it came with win7 installed...its not even a week old

 

[DHallinan]

is there anyway i can boot the recovery partition from cmd? or copy it to an external hardrive and boot from there?

 

[Bill2]

You can try using diskpart from cmd to set the recovery partition active, then reboot so recovery launches. If you're not familiar with diskpart commands, see this walkthrough (scroll down).

How to set active partition in Vista and XP

Select the correct disk and partition! and dont rush.

 

[DHallinan]

ok, I went through that guide as instructed, just restarted the laptop and now its froze on the HP screen...

 

[Bill2]

Call HP and order win7 recovery disks fro your model. They charge a nominal price.

 

[DHallinan]

just noticed that both the partitions are set to primary, could this be an issue?

 

[Bill2]

Try marking the windows partition inactive. The command in diskpart is to select the correct partition then type

inactive

Hit Enter.

 

[DHallinan]

it says its already marked as inactive, guessing that's because i made the recovery partition active...do i need to make the C: drive active again to return it to normal?

 

[Bill2]

Exactly, I was surprised. Yes, mark it active again.

 

[DHallinan]

I can't even get into the F11 system recovery now. It says its preparing my system for first use, then encounters an error and will continue to install windows after its restarted when its restarts it just hangs on the HP screen :\

 

[DHallinan]

Isn't there a way i can copy the D drive to an external harddrive and boot from there?

 

[Bill2]

Isn't there a way i can copy the D drive to an external harddrive and boot from there?

You can but its not simple or one click. You'll need to create an image of the recovery partition using an imaging program that runs off a boot CD or usb drive first.

The other approach is to use imagex or gimagex. In the command prompt, you can navigate to the recovery partition and take a look at the files there- if these are wim files or swm files, copy them off to an external drive. WIm files can be applied to a target partition with imagex.

Another thing you can try is to restore a pristine copy of the registry using this method (scroll down the tut).

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/139576-startup-repair-infinite-loop-recovery.html

Also, sometimes after you've made the recovery partition active and rebooted, you still need to tap F11 at boot.

But all this assumes the recovery partition files are intact and good which may not be the case.

This brings us to the question- what were you doing when the problem started?

Edit: If all this is too much, just locate a win7 disk (borrow or download) and install the same edition that came preinstalled. Then activate with the sticker key.