Stuck at blinking cursor

[whiteholes]

Whenever i boot my laptop for the first time in the day, it will get stuck at the blinking cursor screen after the samsung splash screen appears. Restarting or pressing ctrl-alt-del after a few seconds will cause it to reset and windows logo will show and it boots normally afterwards. I have an external hard drive plugged in always if that matters. I've tried changing the boot order but it doesnt work. No hard disk errors too. Reinstalled windows but it didnt work either. Does anyone have a solution?

 

[MvdB]

Hello whiteholes, welcome to SF!

Yeah we've got some ideas... but it is very hard to be specific as you haven't filled in any details in you System Spec's.
Anyway, there are many possible reasons for this but the most common one is a timing issue. Strange as it might sound, a cooled down system (as from being off overnight) takes just a little longer to power up all parts than a warm system that is rebooting. A cold part (like your boot HDD) being too slow could cause this... but, in this case I'm not sure because I'd expect a message on "boot disk not found"or something like it. So it is another component. You just need to check for that. I would start by trying to boot one morning without having the external HDD plugged in.

For more specific help, update system specs.

 

[whiteholes]

There is no boot disk not found error. I have also tried booting without anything plugged into USB but still same problem.

intel i7-2630QM 2.00GHZ
8 GB RAM
windows 7 64bit operating system
just bought the laptop about 2 weeks ago.

Any other relevant details needed?

 

[MvdB]

For details needed generally, see fourth post here: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/8-forum-rules-info-please-read.html#post256049

If your LT came with OS installed... please use warranty and go back to the shop. That would probably be smartest. But if you want to figure it out yourself and need help, we'll be glad to try to do just that of course!

As a test for the next morning (or cold boot) please boot in Safemode w/Networking and see if that makes a diff?
Safe Mode - Windows 7 Forums

 

[whiteholes]

I will follow your advice on next cold boot. Here are the required details.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
System Model RF511/RF411/RF711
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz, 2001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 10HX.M034.20110426.SSH, 26/4/2011
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.91 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.51 GB
Total Virtual Memory 15.8 GB
Available Virtual Memory 12.1 GB
Page File Space 7.91 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys