Will not Boot up, even from Install Disk

[Visuvius]

Win764bit. C2D 2.66 OC'd at 3.3 6 GB Ram.

I pre-ordered Win7, and have had it running successfully since launch - i.e. months of rock solid performance. I dual boot Win XP on one HDD, and the primary OS is Win7 64bit on a separate HDD. As I said, this set up has worked GREAT since Win7 release.

Recently it would seem to fail to load the video driver properly. Aero would not function properly. Usually a re-boot would correct it, but not always. The next day it would load properly.

I do update video drivers periodically, between removing the old one and installing the new video driver I would usually go into safe mode and use clean sweep, then reboot and install the new driver.

Then I started getting errors. I would get a successful post from BIOS, and at the point when the BIOS start up ends and Windows begins I get a choice, Previous Windows Version or Win 7. Selecting Win7, i.e. I see the word 'Windows', but the flying graphics would not appear, and it would hang up - Black Screen with no sign of life - meaning no HDD access light. NOW it wont even show the word 'Windows' after my OS selection. My MB reports a code 'FF' which specifically means it successfully posted - but Win 7 does not load. Win XP DOES load just fine.

The odd thing is the errors did not start when I updated Video drivers. There was no specific trigger that I can tie it to.

Safe mode does not work. Error logging does not create an error log. The INSTALL disk for Win7 will fail to boot - it starts to load, but then crashes and re-boots. The thing that is so frustrating is that even tho it attempts to boot from the install disk, it eventually crashes. I'm frankly shocked when not even the install disk would load anything.

It has the appearance of not recognizing the Hard Drive, that is the point when the errors start, when it seems like it should be accessing the HDD but does not. I have used CHKDSK and Seagate's HDD testing tools, and they do not report any errors (using CHKDSK from XP on the HDD which has Win7).

Please if anyone has a suggestion, I am willing to try it. My last hope will be to re-format the 2nd drive FROM the XP OS, but I don't know what that will do to my boot up sequence if what is currently the primary boot device gets wiped. That thought makes me a bit nervous.

 

[BCXtreme]

Hello, and welcome to the Seven Forums!

Was it during your video driver updating routine that this error started?

If you can successfully run CHKDSK on the Windows 7 HDD, then at least we know for sure that the computer is recognizing the drive. Additionally, the bootloader that's appearing is the Windows 7 bootloader, so that also means that the computer is accessing that drive successfully.

I would try disconnecting the Windows 7 drive (with the computer off), and then try booting from the install disk.

 

[Visuvius]

The errors began some time after a video card driver update, and after they started I did uninstall, cleansweep, then install a new video driver - which seemed to work - but then a while later, as in about a week, the problems started up again.

Cant hurt to disconnect the win7 HDD as you say, at least I can see if the CD will boot after that.

I'll let you know how that goes, but ultimately I'm, not sure what that will gain me. I will still need to connect the HDD back, and somehow fix whatever is corrupt. Just don't have any Idea what is really wrong. Frustrating because I'm usually pretty good at figuring out the trouble.

I think while I have the case open I'll try removing some ram, maybe one of the sticks is going bad...

 

[Visuvius]

So I tried to boot Win7 today and it worked.

Quite random.

Someone mentioned once it could be related to the battery on the MB, don't know what to make of that suggestion, does it have relevance?

 

[BCXtreme]

So I tried to boot Win7 today and it worked.

Quite random.

Someone mentioned once it could be related to the battery on the MB, don't know what to make of that suggestion, does it have relevance?

So you didn't actually get around to removing the HDD, but then it booted up just fine anyway? Has it continued to work, or broken down again since?

I've never heard of an MB battery problem causing behavior like that, but then again I don't know everything. Does not seem logical though.

 

[iontom]

Similiar Problems

I have an Asus PK5 premium and q6600 intel with cooling. I stopped over clocking a while ago because of way too many errors.

I upgraded to Wind7 about a month ago only to meet a variety of problems, first with registry. Now I can't even boot. At first running acrobat would blue screen me saying bad pool header. So I got a registry cleaner and things seemed to get better.

Last night computer ran relatively fine, but froze a few times and had problems restarting. Now I've been trouble shooting all day. I reflashed the bios to a newer version and nothing...

The bios recognizes that the hard drives are there, but once booted the computer sits at a blank screen and does nothing.

Tried booting from Windows 7 install disk. This does nothing. If I unplug the boot disk it asks for me to install the boot media.

Am currently DLing Fedora Linux x86. If I can boot that maybe I'll know whether it is a hardware issue or not.

 

[Visuvius]

Well, hit and miss for me for a while, it finally dawned on me to check the RAM.

And sure enough, 2 of my 4 sticks are COMPLETELY dead. Should have suspected them sooner, since the lock ups / boot up failures were random, but they were solid for so long it just didn't occur to me they'd gone bad.

Tested each stick one at a time, and both sticks from one of the matched pairs were bad. So bad that in fact the motherboard gave me the audible alert during boot up sequence as if there was no ram at all, even though the stick was seated properly. Each one of the pair was totally flatlined, I never would have guessed both would die in such epic fashion like that at the same time. Totally and completely Dead.

At least it was my pair of 1Gig sticks that died, my pair of 2Gig sticks tested perfect with memtest86+ v4.10. My 1gig pair has a lifetime warranty, guess I'm going to see if OCZ will honor it.

Now my biggest complaint is I cant get the memory speed stable at what I had before, was at 916 mhz, now the PC wont even boot if I have it past 825mhz (Ram speed). Oh well. At least its working now. The CPU OC is at the same as before, native 2.66 OC'd to 3.33, so just suffering from slightly less RAM speed, I can live with it I suppose.

Anyway, thought I'd share.