[njay]

Hi all,

My computer (Win7)no longer wants to boot up. I've had this problem before, and even a system restore didn't fix the problem. I later noticed that it was related to my printer being on during start up. Turning it off would solve the issue every time.

Except today. I've also unplugged all others USB devices, but to no avail. It goes through half of the POST before the screen goes black and unresponsive. My monitor still does recognise some type of input, though, because it doesn't go on stand by.

Strangely, I can't even get to system restore and safe mode any more. F8 does not respond (don't remember if it used to), but F5 leads me to the Boot manager, where I can select advanced options by pressing F8, or do a memory diagnostic (which didn't solve the issue).

Pressing F8, here, unfortunately also gives me a blank screen (pressing enter, delete or escape doesn't do anything either). Once, I waited really long, and it went to start up repair (which is supposed to be one of the options in the menu that is supposed to appear), but despite applying some changes, it didn't actually repair the start up.

I don't see what other options I have, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

NJ

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Howszit?... and sorry to hear that your computer has become start up challenged.  

 

Can you access CMOS?  You do not mention your hardware specs so its hard to really advise you further, but in my experience even the keyboard or mouse can be become faulty and cause start up problems, but if you know how to enter your CMOS, (sometimes the Delete key, sometimes F2), try that and see if there's a PC health category.  It should show you temps and voltages and leave it there for sometime just to see if the start up problem is operating system related, (if your CMOS screen goes dark, then its definitely your hardware).  

 

Again, please advise your specs and operating system, (Home, Pro, Ult?), and if you you have a CD that you can try to boot from instead of the hard drive...

 

Hope this helps...

[Mark D]

Howszit?... and sorry to hear that your computer has become start up challenged.  

 

Can you access CMOS?  You do not mention your hardware specs so its hard to really advise you further, but in my experience even the keyboard or mouse can be become faulty and cause start up problems, but if you know how to enter your CMOS, (sometimes the Delete key, sometimes F2), try that and see if there's a PC health category.  It should show you temps and voltages and leave it there for sometime just to see if the start up problem is operating system related, (if your CMOS screen goes dark, then its definitely your hardware).  

 

Again, please advise your specs and operating system, (Home, Pro, Ult?), and if you you have a CD that you can try to boot from instead of the hard drive...

 

Hope this helps...

[njay]

Hi Mark,

 

Thanks for your response. I knew I forgot something. I'm using a Packard Bell ixtreme M3720 with 4 GB RAM and a Pentium Dual Core E5300 Processor (2.6 GHz). The graphics card is a NVIDIA GForce GT 220, and I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

I've previously encountered BSOD's because my power is too weak for some of the components (thanks, Packard Bell).

 

Yesterday, I left it on the black screen for over an hour, and eventually it did go to the log in screen. My computer functioned normally after that. I tried a restart later, but I got the dreaded black screen during the POST again (it's always at exactly the same point). I waited an hour again, and strangely it went on standby after 45 mins (which, I assume, is a setting that only loads towards the end of the boot?). Pressing a key would take it off stand by, but the screen remained black. At some points, it seemed to be loading things (more fan activity, blinking light...), but no visual results.

 

Another restart right after that worked normally and Windows booted just fine (for the first time since I made my first post). I haven't shut my computer down since, because I kinda want to make a new backup before it decides to never boot up again.

 

As for the CMOS: Yes, I have been able to enter the PC health option. Everything seemed normal and it never went to the black screen in any of these pre-start up screens (I mentioned a memory diagnostic scan which took 20 mins to complete, during which everything seemed to function properly). I haven't really monitored this for more than a minute, though, which I will do next time I restart my computer (if it gets stuck again).

 

If any of this gives you any sort of clue about what's going on, please let me know what I can try.

[Mark D]

Howszit?  Good to hear that your system can start, (even if only every once and awhile).
 
My Win 7 Ult system has been giving me fits the past few weeks with spurious reboots until I realized my mouse or keyboard were causing the problem.  Changed both mouse and keyboard and no reboots since.  I also recently had a problem where my system would take a good ten minutes to get to the start up screen.  After checking the event log I found that one of my hard drives was starting to fail.  I didn't really believe it until I couldn't click on the drive anymore, (it was there but if I clicked on it I got an error message saying drive not available).  After pulling the bad drive my startup returned to normal.
 
So I guess we got a "good news / bad news" thingy here.  :smashcomp:If you have one drive, try to do an error check on the drive, (you may have to boot from a startup disk and run chkdsk /r).  If you have more than one disk, look through the event log for any disk errors.  Hopefully you have more than one drive and one of the secondary ones is causing your problem.
 
Just a few more thoughts... In the PC health screen do you see voltage swings?  That may indicate a PSU problem...  and how much dust is inside the box?  Some CPU heat sinks will gather dust over time to where heat is an issue...Check the dust on the DDR chips as well)...
 
Hope this helps...

[njay]

Hey Mark,

 

Thanks again for your response. Everything seems to have gone back to normal, and I can't really tell what the cause was. I can't seem to find anything weird.

 

Either way, as it was previously the printer that caused these issues, they're less likely to return, because I bought a new printer