Windows 7 Windows 7 Booting Issues

[The88shrimp]

Hi I'm new here and I desperately need some help,

Last night I Updated my nVidia graphics driver and that all went well. I was just watching youtube videos and plaing an online game (League of Legends) when I thought that It's time for me to get some sleep but I accidently left my laptop on.

I have a Dell Laptop XPS 17 L702X with:
8gb DDR-3 Ram,
2nd Gen Intel i7-2670QM 2.20 GHz processor,
3G nVidia GeForce GT555M GPU,
2 750GB 7200RPM hard drives
2 operating systems [(Ubuntu and Windows 7), Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1]

Anyway when I woke up my Laptop was off so I just thought that the battery had ran out but I then realised that it was plugged in. When I turned it on everything seemed normal e.g. GRUB boot loader started and I selected windows 7. Then Before the windows 7 boot logo appeared my computer restarted. I thought this was just a once off bug so I tried again and I got the same result. I tried Ubuntu and that loaded up fine (That is what I'm using now to post this). I turned my computer off again and tried loading windows 7 in safemode, However when I press F8 for options on how to boot windows 7 my computer just restarted before the options came up, So I cant load windows 7 normally or in safemode.

This goes on with the things that I tried to fix this.

I borrowed my friends Windows 7 CD to boot from to repair my computer. When I do that and get to the window that says to select an operating system nothing appears. So I just ignored this and went to start up repair, This went on and on for hours and It wouldn't finish so I just restarted my computer and tried something different. I couldnt do a system restore because I couldn't select an OS form the list. I ran a windows memory diagnostic scan and that finished with no results. I searched on the internet for fixes and I came accross System file checker via CMD, I tried the steps on that but still had no luck

(sfc /scanfile=c:\windows\system32\zipfldr.dll /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows)

(sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows)

So Im stumped on what to do, I have tried the start up repair, Memory Diagnostic and System file checker and they didn't fix the issue. I don't have a Dell recovery Partition because I Re partitioned my hard drives for dual booting and setting them up to my liking.

The last thing I did before I left my Laptop (hardware related) was install new video drivers which I can't think of why that would cause this since I have done all of that before. Also I thought maybe my hard drive that had Windows 7 installed on it just wasn't showing up but when I use Ubuntu I can see my Windows 7 Hard drive there and I can move files to and from it, So it is being detected from Ubuntu.

Please help I really can't think of anything else to do and I really don't want to do a clean install because I have a heap of things on there that I don't want to loose including school work.

Lastly when I installed the video drivers my computer required a restart which is normal and when I restarted in it was fine and after that all I did was play games and watch videos perfectly fine.

 

[Saltgrass]

Can you remove the Ubuntu drive while testing? It might help Startup Repair since it uses the boot system to find installs.

Maybe if you do you can get into the F8 option and try some of those repairs like safe mode or Last Known Good.

If nothing else, perhaps it will present with a different set of symptoms to help determine the problem.

Edit: Oh, do you have an F key to open a boot device option to allow you to boot directly to the Windows 7 install and try to bypass Grub. This may only work if you installed your system as independent installs.

 

[The88shrimp]

Yes I have installed Ubuntu on one Hard drive and Windows 7 on the other so If I set my Windows 7 Hard drive to first priority I go into the windows boot instead of Grub. But on that screen when I press F8 to choose how I want to boot my computer just resets.

 

[Saltgrass]

It all depends on how your system was set up. I suggest removing the other drive to simplify things. If you only have the Windows 7 drive, you should be able to boot to a Install DVD and do a Startup Repair. This assumes you have an active partition on that drive.

If Windows 7 is in a reboot loop, you may have a bad driver causing the problem.

If you could get us a picture of some type of Disk Management window, even from Ubuntu using G-Parted, it might help. Attach using the paperclip on the advanced replies.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

At least you have access to the drive.
You can copy all the important stuff to your second hard drive.
I'd do that before you go much farther, if you haven't already.

As mentioned above if you can disconnect the Ubuntu drive after backing up all your data to it, then if worse comes to worse you should be able to do a complete reinstall of Windows 7 from the DVD, on the Windows drive and not lose anything.

If it doesn't detect any drive with the Ubuntu drive disconnected then, that a least points to some other issues then the boot process.

I've never tried this but this says that you can run EasyBCD in Ubuntu and Windows together.

This might be of some help...

Ubuntu - EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

EasyBCD can create a whole new boot sector if necessary.

Mike

 

[The88shrimp]

Thanks for your help guys I appreciate it.

I'm currently transfering my files from the Windows 7 HDD onto an External HDD, after that Ill try what you both suggested and If that doesn't work Ill try a clean install on the Windows 7 HDD and If that won't work I can afford to get rid of Ubuntu since I don't use it very much.

 

[The88shrimp]

Here are some pictured from GParted showing you My Windows 7 HDD and Ubuntu HDD.

Windows 7
Ubuntu

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I notice that you have very little free space on the Windows 7 drive.
That can cause problems because there isn't enough space to swap files to it.

I had that myself just recently, I was trying to move some large folders and it wouldn't do it.
I didn't know why I couldn't copy them to the new drive.

I'm running Windows 8 in a 120 Gig partition.

I finally realized that there wasn't enough space on the drive to swap the large folders full of photos that I was trying to move.

After I cleared up some space on my C:\ drive, it worked fine.

I usually try and keep Windows on a fairly small partition 120 Gigabytes and install all of my software on a different one.
Some software won't give you the option but most will.

In my case I have a folder on my D:\ drive (second internal hard drive) named Windows 8 Program File which acts the same as my C:\Program Files (x86), and Program files folders.

I also have my Windows 7 software installed on the same D:\ drive in a D:\Windows 7 Program Files folder.
This is also the disk that has the Windows 8 partition on it.

You will find that even with a complete reinstall of Windows much of the software doesn't have to be re-installed if it's not on the drive that gets wiped.

When I installed Windows 8 much of the software I had installed from Windows 7 would run without being installed again.
All I had to do was create a link to the .exe file on my Windows 8 start menu.

The bulk of my data goes on the rest of my first drive in the space unused by the Windows 7 Partition and is backed up to 2 external hard drives.

If you are going to have to reinstall Windows 7 from scratch you might want to reorganize and not have all your data and software in the same partition.

When I switch over to Windows 8 and remove Windows 7 I'm going to install Ubuntu as a back up.

At present I can run it from a DVD, but it's a good way to make sure you can save your data in an emergency.

You can put Ubuntu in a pretty small partition as a backup.

Mike

 

[The88shrimp]

Ok what I did now is that I copied all my stuff that I need to an External HDD and took out my Ubuntu drive. This still wouldn't work or display an Operating System in the repair tools but then I found out that my Dell Driver Disk actually had its own memory diagnostics in it. I tried that and everything worked fine except for that first HDD, It was showing a lot of hard to read areas so maybe this Drive could have bad sectors on the boot part of it.
I tried to preform a clean install on the Faulty HDD and it failed at the formatting. I then tried an old windows XP disc on the drive to repartition it and install xp on there. That just failed as well. So now I got rid of Ubuntu from my 2nd HDD and installed windows 7 on there and it's working fine now. I'm still going to look into my Faulty HDD some more though.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Hard drives aren't that expensive, it might be easier to just replace it since it really seems that the issue is the drive itself.

Mike

 

[The88shrimp]

Yeah I think I might be able to get a replacement since I'm still under dell warranty, Ill still have a look at it and mess with it some more. Also will Dell replace a hard drive that has been formatted and repartitioned by myself?