Windows 7 Please help! Windows 7 starts to load logo and then reboots and goes to startup repair

Andrew Romao

New Member
I apoligize in advance as I am new to this forum if this is not the correct location to post my issue. I am currently working on my fathers desktop which is a Dell XPS 400. He had a recent power surge which killed his power supply. We ordered a new power supply installed it and now once we boot the computer it starts to load the windows logo and then reboots itself. Then it loads up to window error recovery and gives me the 3 safe mode options, last good known configuration and start windows normally neither of them work.I also tried repairing off of a windows 7 disk and restore to an earlier date but these did not work as well. I tried doing all the safe mode options and safe mode seems to stall for a few seconds on windows/system32/drivers/classpnp.sys and then it reboots back to windows error recovery. I have tried last good known config also. I disconnected all usb devices and any other internal or external hard drives connect. I also checked bios setting and nothing seems to be incorrect. When I put the windows 7 disk in it show I have a previous install of windows 7 but it shows it on the d:/ drive and the c:/ drive is the system reserve. I have a tool called EasyRE which has gparted and a few other things in it when I go to partition editor and it shows:
/dev/sda1 is fat 32 Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 is ntfs is the system reserve
/dev/sda3 is ntfs and I believe thats where the windows 7 install is located
When I right click on sda3 it shows that partition to be unmounted. Is there any way to fix this I would like to try and fix the startup this way I dont have to do a fresh install. I know I can also try and install a second OS on the same drive and just have the good install of windows and the old changed to windows.old and transfer data that way. But I would lie to try and do this without having to reinstall all my programs as well. Any suggestion would be helpful, I have searched everywhere on the internet for 2 days and haven't found to much to be the exact problem I am having. I did see a few post about going into command prompt and repairing mbr and fix mbr not sure if those will help or do more harm. I appreciate any ideas that may come my way.
 
Electrical surges are troublesome because they might have done damage to things other than the power supply. But it sounds the system starts and runs fine as long as you don't try to start Windows.... The fact it won't run in Safe Mode probably means a basic Windows operation is failing. The boot stopping a ClassPnP is normal.

You might try the following like to see if you can repair any of the System files that might be damaged.

How to Run the System File Checker (Sfc.exe) Offline in Windows 7 and Vista - The Winhelponline Blog

You could also run Chkdsk from offline, maybe it would repair some corruption. If the drive had been working when the surge occurred, the drive may have been physically damaged and cannot read certain sections.

If it still isn't booting, you might try doing a Startup Repair from the Install DVD or Recovery CD, which might take 3 times to repair some problems?

If you do not have a Windows 7 Install DVD with SP1 included, you can download and burn one from here. Just make sure to get the correct version.

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River « My Digital Life
 
Hi

If you father has data on his computer that he needs to recover you might want to make a bootable Ubuntu OS disk and boot the computer from that.

If there is nothing physically wrong with the computer it will boot and let you copy all of his personal files to another location. I.e. an external hard drive or DVDs.

Then you can go ahead and reinstall Windows without losing anything.

I had an electrical surge caused by a lightning strike a few months ago and it took out both my motherboard and my video card so it's possible that there are other issues.

If the computer has multiple sticks of ram you could try booting with one of them at a time, one of them could have been damaged by the surge.

I have had a Ubuntu disk around for years and it has saved data on many computers, it seems that it will boot almost anything.

It's worth having one around just in case.

Here's the link....

Home | Ubuntu

Mike
 
Saltgrass thanks for the suggestion I am definitely going to try those things I forgot to mention I ran tests on memory and hard drive and everything passed. I will try sfc.exe very soon and let you know how it goes. I also only did the system repair about twice so ill try it 3 times in a row. The disk for windows 7 that i have is a 64bit I can try and download the 32bit to see if it makes a difference. I will try running chkdsk from command prompt also. Thanks so much for the quick response I typed out a response 10 mins after you answered but it seems it never took my reply.
 
Mike Hawthorne thanks for your suggestion but what I usually do if I just need to get document and files off a drive is use a sata/pata/ide drive to usb 2.0 adapter converter cable. Is that basically the same idea as you Ubuntu disk? Here is a link what what im talking about. Only problem with this is I would have to reinstall all the programs again which I am trying to avoid.
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=sr_1_16?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1365186071&sr=1-16&keywords=power+sata+internal+hard+drive
 
Hi

That's similar to what I used when my computer got hit a few months ago.
Since the computer was unbootable in any way and I wanted my stuff off of it before I sent it to be rebuilt, I bought a universal USB adapter from Amazon removed the hard drives and transferred the data using my laptop.

Fortunately both of my Hard Drives were not affected by the lightning strike, but it killed my router, motherboard, video card, the ram, out Dish Satellite box, our phone system, our furnace, and a number of other things.

I now have a master plug that I can unplug for all my computer stuff if there is a thunderstorm moving in.

Better safe than sorry I guess.

Mike
 
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Saltgrass I tried doing the sfc.exe and it stated it didnt find any errors or violations...I also ran a chkdsk which stated it made corrections to the file system. I rebooted and same result starts to load windows logo and reboots back into windows error recovery. I put the windows 7 disk in for the first time again and ran system repairs and it seemed to act different this first time then it had earlier in the day. It said if made some fixes so I reboot but it was still rebooting on me but when I went in to do it the last to time now it called the drive windows 7 :D\ recovered which before it never had the would recovered by it. I tried the system repairs 3 more times and it stated if I added any cameras or such to disconnect it from the computer and reboot. All I have connected is a monitor, mouse and keyboard. Also am I supposed to reboot between the 3 system repair attempts? Any other suggestions would be appreciative. Thanks so much.
 
Rebooting between repair attempts is preferred. That way, it might be able to correct one problem, then go to the next...

It will rename the install as "Recovered" to identify which install it worked on. You can change that back later, if it starts booting again.

I can't really think of something that is wrong with your boot system if it gets all the way to the logo. If it does quit there, a possible video problem might exist, but usually Safe Mode would work around that. Some other driver might be involved, but the same situation with Safe Mode should get around it.

Do you hear any beeps when the system boots?

When you run Startup Repair, it is supposed to show what has been repaired. You may not understand it, but we may recognize something. If it shows the same thing every time, then it can't fix it.
 
I have to leave in a few minutes, so you might try resetting the bios to its default values, reboot and set it back if you want.

But before you quit for the night, shut the system down and unplug the power cord. Perhaps letting it sit overnight will allow the capacitors to discharge and reset some item....

Oh, and keep your fingers crossed... :)
 
Ok ill will reboot between attempts and do it three more times. All hard ware is the same except for a new power supply.It could be possible a video card issue ill see if I have one laying around I can try. Also There is no beeping what so ever I listened to that to see if it may have been an issue with memory but I also did those very long memory test which everything came back as passed. Also I don't know if it help but when system repairs.comes.back with nothing repaied i.checked the results and saw it said offline or.something..for some reason it changed my c drive to the d drive and made the c drive system reserve do you thing it may be trying to boot of a different partition or something? Thanks
 
Ok i will try resetting the bios as well. I will also be taking out the hard drive and copying all the files to my server for a backup for future attempts to repair. Thanks alot for your help ill post tomorrow with my findings.
 
No such luck resetting bios to factory settings computer still rebooting. I havent found an extra video card yet but, but if the card was back would it show no video at all? It leads me to believe a start file is corrupt or something because it reboots at the exact same spot when starting to load the windows logo every single time. I will try and unplug it for the night and start again in the AM. If you can think of any other suggestions I would appreciate it. Thanks
 
I plugged the OS drive to my desktop to copy over files and it shows in disk management (From left to right) first whte box is 55MB Healty OE...2nd box shows System reserve 100 MB NTFS Healthy (Active)...and the 3rd box is D: 232.68 GB NTFS Healthy ( Primary Partition). Would wiping the system reserve partition maybe help? Would mbr fix or repair help? The c drive changing to D leads me to beleive maybe its trying to boot front the wrong partition..I could be wrong just taking a guess. May get extra ideas. Thanks for your time.
 
I also noticed there is a startup repair and system repair whats the difference with these? I tried both but also never got past the windows logo again.
 
If your data is all safe you could just do a repair install of Windows.

If there is no physical damage then it should get it up and running.

If you have service pack 1 installed you will need a Windows install disk that has it included.

Repair Install - Windows 7 Help Forums

Download Windows 7 ISO - Official Direct Download Links

The process shouldn't take more than a half hour or so.
And should retain most of your installed software data and settings.

I've done this several times and the fact that you can't do this with Windows 8 is one of the things I don't like about it.

Mike
 
I feel as if I just wipe and reinstall I let the problem beat me until I have tried every resource to get this drive up and running. I am going to try a few more things today such as MBR fix and ill let you guys know how it goes. If anyone can think of anything else please let me know if not tonight I will probably just wipe it and reinstall windows. Thanks for your help.
 
The one question I have is can I format the other two partitions on the drive and leave the whole drive empty and then install windows on it?
 
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