On boot, Windows 7 hangs on screen with "Windows Loading"

[crispyambulance]

This Windows install is about four years old. I turn off my computer at night most of the time. When I turn it on in the morning, it will boot normally until it gets to the black screen that says Windows Loading, right before the blue one that says Welcome or somesuch. When it is hanging, the little graphic of a multicoloured window pane never appears, and the screen stays totally black indefinitely minus Windows Loading. It's been doing this for roughly a month. One time since this started has it booted completely on the first try (95% failure rate roughly), second try fails about 75% of the time, third try 50% and fourth try maybe 10%.

Before the onset of these current symptoms, I booted up my computer one day for it to randomly tell me before it could attempt to boot any operating system that I had an "MBR error". This would disallow me from booting from my hard drive no matter how much I restarted the computer. I went into the BIOS, set CD drive to first priority in the boot sequence, put in my windows disc and repaired the MBR through the command prompt if I remember correctly. I might be missing a few steps or a failed procedure because this was more than a month ago.

So immediately after fixing that, what I described first starts happening. What I started with was windows repair. That "fixes problems" for about fifty minutes and then pops up saying it could do nothing. I then went into the manual part of startup repair again, running command-prompt commands to (my memory is foggy because this was at least a week ago) fix the mbr (again) and rebuild the bcd. Basically everything related to bootrec.exe I saw on Microsoft's site. The command prompt said the commands were performed successfully but they have done nothing. Figuring at this point my hard drive must be malfunctioning in some way, I did SMART scans using both the programs Speedfan and Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (the version you run through the Windows operating system). All SMART scans from all sources have pronounced my drive as totally OK.

My hard drive setup is as such. I have a 500GB Western digital SATA drive that is divided into a 120GB boot partition and a storage partition. I also have a Seagate 750GB SATA drive and an old 160GB IDE drive I salvaged out of an old premanufactured PC that I can not even remember the brand of.

My computer specs are like this:
Intel E8400 dual-core processor
Radeon HD 3850
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L motherboard
4GB Mushkin RAM

All I can think to try at this point is reinstalling Windows, but I don't even know if that would solve it. Yet now that I think about it, 4 years is a long time to be running on the same Windows install (cue joke). The one other option I haven't tried is this system-restore business, but I have no idea how that works or if it would store a restore point from more than a month ago, which is the last time my computer didn't have problems. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[glc]

Disconnect the 2 extra hard drives. One of them may be failing and hanging up the boot process. You can run SeaTools on the Seagate - and determine the brand of the IDE drive to run appropriate diags on it. I'd also run diags on the ram.

[jdeb]

memtest 86+ for the ram test/ Run at least 5 or 6 passes. Might just want to run it before you go to bed and see what you get when you wake up.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

[crispyambulance]

OK, I was going to start by trying the suggestion to unplug the other hard drives, but I decided to just turn off the computer with everything connected to see if it being warmed up from use had an effect, let it sit for five seconds and rebooted it. It worked perfectly three boots in a row. I turned it off and left it for 45 minutes to see if cooling off would cause the problems again, but it booted it up fine, turned it off for a few seconds again, and then it booted fine again. Is it possible I just don't have a morning computer? I'm seriously at a loss for words, but the next morning I boot up my computer I'll be sure to try it with the nonboot drives unplugged.

I also installed Seatools. I couldn't find my IDE HDD's brand, but I ran a SMART check on all my drives and all passed. I opened my case up to take a peak and the IDE HDD is a Hitachi Deskstar.

I'll run memtest 86+ no later than tonight, and I also figured I might try backing up the contents of my Hitachi drive, unplugging the others and installing Windows 7 fresh on it to see if the problems can be replicated on a fresh install, assuming the problems aren't going to just disappear because I bothered to post a topic on this forum. Thanks for the helps.

[SARGE]

Do you have something set to run every morning, like a virus scan, defrag, etc?

[glc]

Hitachi has a Drive Fitness Test. It doesn't run in Windows, you have to make a bootdisk.

What brand and model is your power supply?

[Bronxbomber90]

Sounds like the same problem I had. Sometimes it would boot and sometimes it would just stay on the black screen with the "Window Loading" until it got to a point it wasn't going to boot at all.

I also ran Diag on my HDD and memtest and nothing unusual pop out test came out perfect. I manually pull out some documents from my HDD hot-plugin it to a laptop. I wrote zero on the first sectors and not the whole HDD. I did a fresh W7 install and now is running great!

[crispyambulance]

OK, this morning I spaced unhooking my nonboot drives for two boot attempts, both failures. I unhooked them for the third, which failed too. This time I listened closely and it sounded like the Western Digital was making a strangely loud revving sound at the point where the window-pane graphic is supposed to appear. Sounded like an acceleration of spinning up to a level just slightly louder than I get when copying files to the drive. After that attempt I hooked everything up again and about two tries later I was able to boot, at which point I shut the computer off and rebooted it three times in a row perfectly. After that, I turned the computer off for 20 minutes, rebooted it and it hung where it usually hangs, but right before I gave up on it the pane appeared and it booted normally, about ten seconds after black and Windows Loading appeared. I turned it off and rebooted again and there was no delay. It was only on the failed attempts that my hard drive was louder.

I couldn't get Memtest to boot from a zip drive last night, so today I'm gonna try burning it to CD. What I did do last night was the full test in Western Digital's HDD utility on the boot drive, which took 2 hours and passed.

Bronx, that does sound exactly like my problem. Could you give me more details? Did the hanging persist over a month or two before your computer became unable to boot at all? Were the hangs only happening when you tried to start the computer for the first time that day, yet when you turned it off and booted it up while it was still warm, it would never hang?

Edit: Here's something I remembered about that original MBR error. Fixing the MBR through bootrec.exe on the Windows disc actually wasn't what fixed it. What fixed it was editing the boot sequence for my hard drives (not the sequence of boot methods, like floppy, CDROM and HDD) from something like Seagate, WD, Hitachi to WD, Seagate, Hitachi. At the time I thought it was absolute nonsense that that could work because for four years I hadn't looked at that setting, and I assume that over that entire time the Seagate was ahead of the WD in priority with no problems. Last night I tinkered with this setting a bit again and putting the WD drive anywhere but first in priority reproduced my MBR error.

[Bronxbomber90]

I almost forgot now that you mentioned hearing that noise like something grinding against each other sounded horrible is exactly the same thing I was getting from mine. Which led me to believe I perhaps got a bad HDD my system is about 6 months old. I started getting the booting problem after 3 or 4 months after I build it.

When I started getting the booting problem it was regardless if it was a cold or warm boot. There were times I was getting frustrating and I literally sat there restarting the PC over 10xs and it still wouldn't boot. I then got tired of it and let it sat for 2 months things got in the way and I was extremely busy so I didn't have time to fix it.

Not to long ago I fix it and got it back running like I mentioned on my first post. Even after sitting for 2 more months alone it still wouldn't boot. I download a lot of crap so I am strongly believing is a bad file or a virus.

You could hot-plug your HDD and run malware programs to check on bad files. I didn't do that with mine I wiped out everything and did a fresh install. But I do have my backup on my external HDD which I know is infected because it crashed my College laptop when I hot-plug it one time and when I hot-plug my PC HDD as well.

[Bronxbomber90]

My first problem since my build


Heres my thread if it helps the booting problem starts somewhere midway on Page 2.

[glc]

The hard drive boot order *IS* critical.

[crispyambulance]

I've been really terrible about keeping up with all of these suggestions. I didn't expect this much help honestly, so I'll try to go down through the posts and answer everything I missed.

SARGE, the only thing I could think of that is set to run automatically is a scan by Microsoft Security Essentials. That was set for 2AM, and I started it during a stretch where I was running my computer for about a month between boots. I disabled the automatic scan altogether, yet the next morning my problem was still there.

Glc, my power supply is this. I had to buy a second one about two years ago because the first died.

Also, while I don't disagree with you that hard-drive boot order is critical, I hadn't tinkered with that setting for probably at least three years, maybe four. So either my BIOS glitched and reset my Seagate drive to first, or my computer had been booting fine in the wrong configuration for a very long time. I wasn't messing with my hardware at the onset of my MBR error, so I really have no idea how my hard-drive boot order could have changed.

Bronx, malware scanning seems like a prudent move, and I haven't had malware problems in excess of five years so I might be due. I run regular Spybot Search and Destroy and Microsoft Security Essentials scans; does someone know of something free and good to try on top of those?

Last night I ran two passes of memtest which came out fine. I didn't want to leave it running over night because then I would have been unable to try booting it in the morning. This morning on the first try it did not even reach Windows Loading; the screen was black with nothing but a flashing white underscore at the top left to indicate I could type? I didn't try typing. I let it sit hanging for fifteen minutes to see if being on for a while would make the second attempt work. The second attempt was the usual hang, and I left it on the Windows-Loading screen for ten minutes for the same reason. The third attempt hung for about ten seconds, and then the pane appeared and it booted. I turned it off, and the next boot did not hang at all.

So here's my current plan. I'll run memtest some more, and before bed I'm going to try unplugging my SATA drives and installing Windows to my Hitachi tonight, so I can see if a new install still hangs in the morning. Thanks again for all the help.

[glc]

I'm betting your PSU might be starting to fail. FSP is decent, but not perfect. That particular one is a bit overrated - it's really a 400 watt unit, which may be a bit marginal with that video card - ATI recommends 450 watts or more.

If you know what you are doing with a multimeter, you can pop the side off the case and check the voltages when it's hanging.

This is an outstanding deal on a very high quality unit (rebate, promo code, free shipping):

Newegg.com - CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply

[crispyambulance]

That's an excellent suggestion and now my current most probable possibility. This morning I tried booting up a fresh windows install with my Hitachi drive. The two SATAs were also connected but moved back in the boot sequence to ensure that they would be drawing some power but not interfering. After those tests, I switched my hard drive boot order back to what it was. I got out a stopwatch after the Hitachi attempts, so the numbers for that drive are only estimates. Here are my results:

Hitachi Attempt 1: 5 seconds to pane, 35 seconds to reach desktop
Hitachi 2: 1 second (if even) to pane, 7 seconds to desktop
WD 1: 1:45 of no pane, give up
WD 2: 1:00 of no pane, give up
WD 3: 22 seconds of no pane, 1:51 to reach the desktop
Wd 4: 4 seconds to reach pane, 30 seconds to reach desktop

While this isn't indisputable proof that my psu is failing, and sadly I don't have a multimeter, I'm still considering buying that psu. Here's something else I want your opinion on though: Way back four years ago when I bought this thing I wanted to overclock it. I would set everything correctly in the BIOS for a modest overclock, yet when I booted it would always run at factory speeds. I ended up updating the BIOS version on my mobo as well as a million other things, and I could never get it to listen the settings I put in the BIOS. How plausible is it that this is a result of my psu being only a 400w unit? Could my mobo be built to reset the CPU's clock if it can't draw enough power or somesuch?

[glc]

A weak PSU won't prevent the settings from holding - it just might cause it not to boot.

[crispyambulance]

I ordered that power supply. Seemed like the prudent move even if it's not totally guaranteed to fix my hanging problem because my current one is less watts than I need. Should arrive tuesday or wednesday, so I'll update the thread around then most likely.

Do you know of anything that could cause those settings to hold, or should I make a thread in another forum? I would overclock it, it would boot at factory speeds, and when I went into the BIOS again the settings were still overclocked. Could never figure that out.

[glc]

You can only overclock by raising the bus speed - the processor multiplier, while changeable in the bios, is locked.

[crispyambulance]

Right. The default bus speed for this processor is 333.3MHz with a multiplier of nine. I set the bus speed to 400Mhz without changing the multiplier, and when it posts the motherboard reports the bus speed as 333.3Mhz, and when I'm in Windows, CPU-Z reports my bus speed as 333.3Mhz as well. If I go back into the BIOS and look at the settings, the bus speed will still be set to 400Mhz there. I set the bus speed to only a very slight increase at 350Mhz, and the result is the same.

[crispyambulance]

I did some googling and it appears ignoring user-defined bus speeds is a rampant problem for Gigabyte motherboards circa 2008. I just tried a suggestion from a thread at Anandtech to input the custom settings, power off, unhook the power cable, press the power button to "drain" what's left and reboot. This causes my motherboard to boot with my custom settings; though if the computer is powered off, on the next boot it will begin to ignore them again. But I had never ever been able to find anything that made it listen to my settings at all, even if only temporarily. I'm going to keep googling.

[glc]

Why are you trying to overclock it? When I first put my E8400 system together a few years ago, I tried overclocking just to see what it would do, and it didn't get very far at all before it became unstable.