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Computer will not load either operating system

=GG= Mr Moe

Grizzled Veteran
Mar 16, 2006
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Newton, NJ
Here is the situation and I am guessing it is a hardware problem.

My computer boots up but will not load either operating system even in safe mode or any of the modes for that matter.

- In safe mode the last line that shows up on the loading screen is C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll and I get nothing after that.
- I have a dual boot computer with XP and Win 7 each on its own physical hard drive. Also a separate storage drive. Never had problems booting either operating system before.
- I have two video cards, so I removed and tested each individually in the first slot. Neither worked alone or together.
- Currently running memtest on the memory while I am at work. Of course computer goes down on a day I have a double shift :/
- I checkeed the files on the drives with an old Symantec recovery disc and it appears my personal files on the drives are fine, not to mention I have duplicate copies spread out on all three drives anyways.

I have not yet:
- disconnected the hard drives and connected each of the XP and Win 7 drives up separately. I had a storage drive that failed in the past and computer would not start unless I disconnected it from the motherboard.
- Individually checked each stick of memory other than the current Memtest I am running.
- Removed sound card just in case that is causing the problem.

Any suggestions on what I should do or check next?

I will be honest, if its the cpu or the motherboard I will just build a new system. Almost everything in the computer is nearly 5 years old but since I have been able to run ROHOS with Ultra settings I decided to hold out on a new build.

Thanks in advance and have a better day than I am having!
 
I should add that I did have the computer running briefly this morning. As I was loading up my browsers, morning routine check email etc I got a quick notification that Outlook must be shut down before a restart... odd. I usually get that message when I (manually) go to shutdown or restart and have Word or Outlook still open on the desktop.

Then the computer restarted by itself and that is when the problems began (see first post obviously)
 
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Funny, I have had a similar issue that drove me MAD...
Good think I have many pc's so I had spare parts to test.

I tested a different cpu, memory and videocards... I could get it booting once in a blue moon with a low end videocard and downclocking the cpu and ram... I managed at one point to have it booting stock, worked for 3 days till bsod and never reboots past windows logo.

In my case I rmaed the motherboard back to my supplier and now using a spare E8400 with 8800GT while I wait... it still runs everything really well.




For your PC, if windows doesn't load at all, I recommend running strictly the Windows 7 OS drive, if it fails to get in windows, run the startup recovery. It usually works pretty well.

I still find it odd that both your OS's would crash, unless maybe you always used the windows 7 and literally forgot your XP untill now... then who knows what could have happened to it.


Besides that, try getting to windows with bare minimum. 1 stick of ram, 1 harddrive, onboard video if available.

If you have spare parts that fit, that is when they come really really handy.

If you have a spare computer, you can try your harddrive in the spare and run a chkdsk command within the other computer's OS. I have had luck fixing some corrupt xp drives that way... not sure about windows 7
 
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Thanks for the tips.

I used Win 7 but kept XP up to date every 4 to 6 weeks and it was current less than a week ago.

I did get to the command prompts and ran chkdsk out of the dos window and all seemed fine.

Startup recovery did not work, but I did not take out the spare drives and test one at a time yet.

So I have 2 Vid cards, 4 sticks RAM and 2 drives with OS on them. Will try using them one at a time and maybe find the culprit. I have a hunch its a hardware failure somewhere and if I'm reasonably sure its the cpu or motherboard, then its time for a new build.

Again, thanks!
 
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Ok, wasn't the battery, so I disconnected by Win 7 hard drive and the computer started right up with my Windows XP Drive. Good thing I keep everything up to date on the XP drive!

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OK, that might mean I have a problem with the hard drive itself or maybe the master boot record on the Win 7 drive?

Does anyone know how to check the drive knowing if I reconnect it, I will likely not be able to boot back up?
- Can I set up a different boot order in setup?
- How to check/fix/replace the mbr on the Win 7 drive if that is it. I have an old Symantec recovery disc that may be able to, but its prior to Win 7 came out. Don't know if that will make a difference.

In the end, I could always reinstall Win 7 if the mbr was the problem and can't fix that, but then what might have caused it?

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated! Thanks!
 
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Every hard drive manufacturer has a utility on their website that you can save to a CD and then boot into it. The utility will have the ability to do a thorough error check. I'm a chronic OS reinstaller and everytime I do one I always write zero's to the entire drive with one of these utilities before reinstalling.

What brand of drive is the Win 7 on? Use the XP drive to get to the internet and save the utility to a CD, then change the boot order in BIOS to boot from the CD and run the error checking from the CD on the Win 7 drive. If that doesnt show anything wrong with the drive, then I would write zero's to it and start over.. but I'm one of those freaks who likes a fresh reinstall every other month or so :D
 
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Do you run a disk defragmentor in the background. Something like Diskeeper?

I had a BOSD from a fluke video driver error. The Master Boot record was fubared, but only for the O/S. To save all the stuff I reinstalled Win7 on another hard drive. As I could access the fubar drive (I just couldn't boot from it), and though I had to reinstall all my programs, I was able to save my data, pics, and other stuff one tends to collect over the years.
 
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Well so far, I did a Chkdsk including full surface scan and it was clean and everything smooth.

Ran a full scan with Ad-Aware and it was clean.

Ran a full scan with AVG and it picked up one trojan, (generic28.BLIO) and I got rid of that. It wasn't there on the weekend when I did my last scan which I usually run weekly. I should note that the rootkit scan did not pick this up but the virus scan did.

Currently running Malwarebytes and clean so far, but not yet finished.

I do not have any defragmenters set to run automatically.
 
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Ever thought of trying Spinrite? [url]http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm[/URL]

I used it years ago (when it was free). I'm not usually one to quibble about prices too much, but it is a bit pricey now. Having said that, it was really a great program back in the day. Were it half the price, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it just based upon my previous experience with it.
 
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Ever thought of trying Spinrite? [url]http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm[/URL]

I used it years ago (when it was free). I'm not usually one to quibble about prices too much, but it is a bit pricey now. Having said that, it was really a great program back in the day. Were it half the price, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it just based upon my previous experience with it.

It does sounds good, except for the price. I can buy an extra hard drive for that and just back up my data. Hey already do that!

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Ran all my malware scans and my antivirus scans (twice) and I only came up with that one problem which may not even be related. Everything seems smooth at the moment.
 
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