crashing during bootup

[Jolly polly]

No

It does sound like an inaccessible drive, seeing as you have no problems
booting from a CD

It maybe the drive, the cable, or the M/B connection or a combination of
these.

Unplug everything from the Motherboard except 1 stick of memory, the PSU, 1
DVD drive, 1 hard drive and the graphics card if you don't have on board
graphics

now try and boot from the HDD, if this fails, boot from your Win 7 disc and
choose repair, do a checkdisk (chkdsk c: /r/f/v/x)
once completed try again from the HDD

 

[wasted]

It does sound like an inaccessible drive, seeing as you have no problems
booting from a CD

It maybe the drive, the cable, or the M/B connection or a combination of
these.

Unplug everything from the Motherboard except 1 stick of memory, the PSU,
1 DVD drive, 1 hard drive and the graphics card if you don't have on board
graphics

now try and boot from the HDD, if this fails, boot from your Win 7 disc
and choose repair, do a checkdisk (chkdsk c: /r/f/v/x)
once completed try again from the HDD

I'll try what you suggest - but the drive(s) are being read for the first
part of the bootup - as I said, I see the first part of Windows boot up,
with the logo starting to form, so doesn't that mean the drive IS
accessible?


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[wasted]

You mentioned later in the thread that your computer runs fine when
booted from your backup (Paragon?) CD, so it seems like the hardware
is probably fine. This looks like a Windows issue.


Hopefully, those two cloned drives aren't connected at the same time.
A second test of the hardware, in addition to booting from your backup
program, might be to boot a Linux live CD. I'm guessing whatever
problem you're having, you transferred it to the second drive when you
cloned it.

Also, the last clone was done around a week ago, and the computer was
perfectly fine until yesterday, so doubt it is something that has been
cloned across.


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[Seth]

I'll try what you suggest - but the drive(s) are being read for the first
part of the bootup - as I said, I see the first part of Windows boot up,
with the logo starting to form, so doesn't that mean the drive IS
accessible?

Based on the 7B error and what you said elsewhere in the thread about the
CMOS being reset, go into the BIOS settings and look for a HD mode.
Something like ATA or "compatibility" (opposite of AHCI) and see if that
gets over the hump.

 

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

I think that is a BIOS setting.

Yes, it's some function key. Guess:- Try holding F11 as you boot.

Steve

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[Dave-UK]

Also, the last clone was done around a week ago, and the computer was
perfectly fine until yesterday, so doubt it is something that has been
cloned across.

Hopefully the crash will have created a minidump folder containing debugging
information. You can use BlueScreenView to see if anything helpful has
been recorded.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

You say that this is your main machine which infers you have spare machine.
Try slaving a disk from the failing machine into the spare machine and run BlueScreenView.
Open BlueScreenView and under Options > Advanced Options browse to the minidump
folder (if it exists) at \Windows\MiniDump
It might tell you something new or at least provide a clue of some sort.

 

[wasted]

Based on the 7B error and what you said elsewhere in the thread about the
CMOS being reset, go into the BIOS settings and look for a HD mode.
Something like ATA or "compatibility" (opposite of AHCI) and see if that
gets over the hump.

Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the BIOS I can see the following
settings

SATAII is set to ENHANCED - options are disabled, compatible, enhanced

Configure SATAII is set as AHCI - options are IDE, RAID and AHCI

Hot Plug is set as enabled.

Should I try changing some of these?




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[wasted]

One of the most common hardware issues I've seen is bad RAM.

The 8GB your PC has, is that (2) 4GB sticks....(4) 2GB
sticks....?

Even before running a memory diagnostic tool, I'd boot up with
each individual RAM stick in the first slot, one at a time,to
see if the problem happens with one particular stick in place.

Done that now - no change!


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[Jolly polly]

no, it doesent prove anything one way or the other.
Do as Seth suggests also...

 

[blank]

Hi

I suspect this will be hardware related rather than windows, but comments
welcome!

My main computer, using Win 7 keeps crashing during bootup - I get to see
the "Starting Windows" message and then the coloured bits of the Windows
logo appear and start to move in towards each other, but never quite get
to form the logo because then the screen goes blank, followed by a bright
blue screen with text for just an instant (too fast to read), then it
starts to reboot.

Now, my computer has two hard disks, D: being a cloned copy of C: (last
cloned about a week ago, well before this problem started) But the same
happens whichever of these two disks I try to boot from. It crashes at
exactly the same point.

I also have a smaller spare hard disk that was in this same computer as a
fully working C: drive up to a few months ago, when I replaced it with the
current larger one. So this spare disk is fully functioning. But when I
put this one in and try to boot from it, the computer still crashes at
exactly the same point.

If I try to boot into safe mode, again it goes so far along and then
crashes and reboots.

So to me the fact that 3 different disks crash at exactly the same point,
says its not a Windows fault.

Do you agree?

Does anyone know what is going on behind the scenes of the boot up process
when those colours are circling to form the Windows logo - I'm wondering
if that will give clues as to any particular part of the hardware that is
being accessed.

By the way the cooling fans are all clean and operational.

Many thanks

JIP




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Have you by any chance a Western Digital USB hard drive connected? If so,
disconnect it and boot again.

 

[blank]

Yes, it's some function key. Guess:- Try holding F11 as you boot.


F8 on my laptop...

 

[Paul]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the BIOS I can see the
following settings

SATAII is set to ENHANCED - options are disabled, compatible, enhanced

Configure SATAII is set as AHCI - options are IDE, RAID and AHCI

Hot Plug is set as enabled.

Should I try changing some of these?

The idea is not just to change them.

The idea is to verify whether the settings are the same, as when
Windows 7 was installed.

If you recently changed the CMOS coin cell (CR2032) that helps store BIOS
settings, then BIOS settings could change because of that. Similarly,
using the "Clear CMOS" jumper or pins on the motherboard, could change
the settings as well. Even an Asus "system failed due to CPU overclock",
could potentially change the settings (many motherboards change the
settings if the system crashes, and some BIOS designs are more
stupid than others in that regard).

While Windows 7 has drivers for all those modes, changing the BIOS
setting behind Windows 7 back would not be helping matters.

When the BIOS starts up, it does disk reads with extended INT 0x13 calls.
But at some point, the OS boot process takes over with its own disk
driver. If that driver doesn't match the hardware setting, you
could end up with an inaccessible boot volume (error 7B).

Paul

 

[wasted]

Well, latest is that I decided the best test of whether it is is a Windows
issue or hardware was to format the D: drive and reinstall Windows. I did
that, it installed, and that disc will now boot fine.

I'm nor running chkdsk on the original C: drive to see if it fixes
anything - I'd ratehr not have to reinstall everything, but will if need be.

JIP


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[Paul]

Well, latest is that I decided the best test of whether it is is a
Windows issue or hardware was to format the D: drive and reinstall
Windows. I did that, it installed, and that disc will now boot fine.

I'm nor running chkdsk on the original C: drive to see if it fixes
anything - I'd ratehr not have to reinstall everything, but will if need
be.

JIP

It still sounds like a disk interface operating mode issue.

If you could "re-arm" the drivers on the C: drive, it would
probably boot.

Basically, the methodology would be similar to this, only you'd
edit the registry on C:, with the copy of regedit on D: .

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/inaccessible_boot_device-windows-7-vista/

This article, gives the registry keys that control the drivers.
Setting the Start value to zero, "re-arms" the driver, so that
a change in BIOS disk operating mode can be resolved during boot.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-57789.html

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\pciide\Start <== 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci\Start <== 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV\Start <== 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Start <== 0

The first one there is for IDE mode. The second one for AHCI mode.
The third one re-arms the Intel Vista RAID driver. The fourth one
would be if you separately installed an Intel RAID driver. It uses
a different key.

Now, all you need, is instructions on editing the registry, while
running from another OS.

There is a Fixit here, but that only works if you're booted from C:,
and then it edits the registry on C: for you. Hardly a "big fix".

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

This article shows how to edit a registry file on another partition.
Apparently, you use the "Load Hive" thing. But it would be a lot
easier to just change the BIOS setting, than take a chance with this.
At the very least, you'd back up copies of the registry files
on C:, so that if any of the edits go wrong, you can put the
original files back from D:.

http://4sysops.com/archives/regedit-as-offline-registry-editor/

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

The option to disable the automatic rebooting on system failure has not always been available
on that Advanced boot screen. Before that the only way to stop the loop was to boot from a rescue
disk and edit the registry ( or slave the disk in another PC and edit the registry.)
It must have been added in one of the Windows updates.

You could be right, but did you check the link above, and did you read
Stan's post, quoted above? It has nothing to do with the Advanced Boot
screen.

 

[Dave-UK]

You could be right, but did you check the link above, and did you read
Stan's post, quoted above? It has nothing to do with the Advanced Boot
screen.

--

Yes I did read the link. The first part of the article talks about un-checking a box in the Advanced
systems settings via Control Panel. Well that's fine if you can boot into Windows.
What we are talking about is the loop where the user switches on his pc, it blue-screens for a split
second and then reboots, blue-screens for a split second then reboots, ad infinitum.
There used to be no way to get out of that loop unless you edited the registry off-line somehow.

The article in the link also mentions this scenario at the bottom of the page under Tips.

Quote:

" If you're unable to successfully start Windows 7 due to a Blue Screen of Death, you won't be able to
disable the automatic restart on system failure option as described above.

Luckily you can also disable this option from outside of Windows:
How to Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure From the Advanced Boot Options Menu."

Following that last link takes you on to a page which describes the Advanced Boot Screen.

Actually Microsoft describes how to edit the registry in method 2 here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314466
And they briefly mention the 'new boot option' in method 4, but give no details on when
it appeared in the Advanced Boot menu.

 

[DanS]

in message

Done that now - no change!

It was worth a shot.

 

[Char Jackson]

Yes I did read the link. The first part of the article talks about un-checking a box in the Advanced
systems settings via Control Panel. Well that's fine if you can boot into Windows.

Yes, and that's exactly what this branch of the thread is about. See
above, where Stan begins with, "And to the OP: once you do get your
system working..." As you can see, this part of the thread is not
about the Advanced Boot options seen during startup, but about what
you can do once the system is operational.

What we are talking about is the loop where the user switches on his pc, it blue-screens for a split
second and then reboots, blue-screens for a split second then reboots, ad infinitum.
There used to be no way to get out of that loop unless you edited the registry off-line somehow.

The main thread is about that, but this sub-thread is about what you
can do once the system is working. I was simply pointing out that
Registry access isn't required in at least the last three versions of
Windows.

 

[Seth]

Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the BIOS I can see the following
settings

SATAII is set to ENHANCED - options are disabled, compatible, enhanced

Configure SATAII is set as AHCI - options are IDE, RAID and AHCI

Hot Plug is set as enabled.

Should I try changing some of these?

Specifically changing, under SATAII to "ENHANCED" to "compatible" and\or the
"AHCI" to "IDE". I was only able to speak in "vague" terms above due to not
knowing your specific hardware\BIOS choices.

Making these changes will NOT hurt anything, keep a record of what you
changed and where it was at so you can change them back if ineffective.

 

[Seth]

Well, latest is that I decided the best test of whether it is is a Windows
issue or hardware was to format the D: drive and reinstall Windows. I did
that, it installed, and that disc will now boot fine.

I'm nor running chkdsk on the original C: drive to see if it fixes
anything - I'd ratehr not have to reinstall everything, but will if need
be.

Yeah, this tells me that making the BIOS changes I mentioned elsewhere in
the thread would have done the trick as well. Basically your "old"
installation was with the BIOS set to IDE\Compatible (not enhanced\AHCI) and
therefore those drivers aren't there. Changing the BIOS back with your old
installation would have made it boot again.

Doing a fresh install with the current BIOS settings caused Windows to use
those drivers and hence it works. You are better off this way though as by
being in this mode it is a better performing mode.