Poll of the Day > So... my desktop won't boot (Windows 7).

(+) Yeah! (+)

A couple weeks ago, I started up my desktop, it configured the updates it had just installed, and then it bluescreened before everything finished starting up (no explicit error message there, which was weird. Only advice it gave was to check that I had enough disk space, or something like that). Since then, whenever I turn it on, it POSTs, shows the mobo splash screen, then gets stuck on "loading operating system" and has to be turned off. I can get into the BIOS and the boot options menu, but I can't get into the advanced startup options to try safe mode or anything like that. I've tried booting from a USB copy of windows 7, but that doesn't seem to work either.

My initial guess was that the update's installation got corrupted by the blue screen and borked the OS, but it should still boot from USB in that case. I have been having some random bluescreen crashes for a few months now with the error "Driver Power State Failure," as well as one with "IRQL not less or equal," so that's made me suspect some hardware's dying, but I'm not entirely sure. I also got "Modification of system code or a critical data structure was detected" once, which prompted a virus scan and a memory diagnostic, but both came up clean. Thoughts on what the issue might be?

I'd say either a driver got corrupted or some hardware is failing, likely the graphics card.

If you have a spare hard drive, you could try reinstalling Windows on a different hard drive.

If you are comfortable with it, try reseating all your hardware components and test.

If that doesn't work, then try with minimal setup as possible, ie a single stick of RAM, a single hard drive, no graphics card, etc.
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I wouldn't expect the graphics card; it's the newest component by several years (replaced in 2015 along with the PSU, pretty much everything else was part of the original build in 2011) and I've had no visual issues leading up to this. I was suspecting motherboard, though I have no concrete reason to suspect that, and the fact that the BIOS is fine suggests it's working one at least some level. I was thinking I should try disconnecting the SSD that's got my operating system on it and try booting from USB after that, but I unfortunately don't have an actual spare hard drive to try.

hard drive.

also clear your cmos
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_AdjI_ posted...

I was thinking I should try disconnecting the SSD that's got my operating system on it and try booting from USB after that

Definitely try this. It won't hurt to try and it should at least tell you if it's something to do with the hard drive.
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Bulbasaur posted...

hard drive.

I'm booting from an SSD with a secondary HDD, with that HDD dating from the initial build and the SSD being newer (similar in age to the GPU). You're thinking the boot drive?

Bulbasaur posted...

also clear your cmos

I'd forgotten that I'd seen that suggested, I'll try that.

Resetting CMOS (and then restoring factory defaults from the BIOS), disconnecting the SSD, and booting from USB is getting me to the option to install Windows. This is progress. Now I try reconnecting the SSD and seeing if I get a repair option, though I'm not sure if the USB I've got will do that.

And it's stuck on loading again. Guess my SSD's dead. That's annoying, given that it's newer than the HDD, but it is what is, I guess. I'll have to see if I can recover the data on it with an enclosure, though off-hand I don't even remember what's on there. Most stuff ended up on the hard drive. Thanks for the help, all.

Try booting with a Linux LiveCD/USB drive, if you have a spare system capable of making one, to see if the SSD can be read by something other than the Windows bootloader or something. What I call a dirty reinstall may help, if the drive itself is fine. It's where you install the OS on top of itself, so you don't lose any personal data. Not a perfect solution, but it beats the asinine "lol reformat and reinstall" suggestions a lot of people give because they perpetually wreck their computers.
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Any suggestions on which Linux LiveCD option to go with? I may give that a shot. I'll probably still end up reformatting and reinstalling if the drive is okay, just to make sure I don't leave anything broken behind, but that would let me back up the contents to my external drive without having to get a new drive and use an enclosure to recover this one.

_AdjI_ posted...

I'm booting from an SSD with a secondary HDD, with that HDD dating from the initial build and the SSD being newer (similar in age to the GPU). You're thinking the boot drive?

it's possible.

typically that's the issue when you get symptoms like this, because the drive is just failing to load.

it's possible that an update or something got corrupted too, but if you can't even get into advanced boot options, that's not a good sign in general.
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The last time I used a Linux LiveCD, it was some old version of DamnSmallLinux, and I used it to replace the corrupted Windows XP bootloader on my then-primary system. Pretty much any Linux distro will be usable, and have a GUI so you don't have to mess with CLI stuff.
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If you created a repair/reinstall/recovery partition when you first started up your windows 7 you should be able to reset your OS without losing anything if it was an update that borked it like it did mine. Took 10 minutes and all was normal again. I seriously thought my HDD or motherboard had imploded lol.
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adjl adjl adjil
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Have you tried turning it off and then off again
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