I need help with a stumper. I received a laptop (for repair) that wouldn't boot into Windows 7, its native OS. Performed two full surface hard drive diagnostics, including a pass using SpinRite in Deep Recovery mode: no errors. Cleared the CMOS. Performed a full RAM diag using Memtest: no errors. This laptop will not boot Microsoft Windows anything ! Can't boot into the native recovery environment, nor any of three different WinPE systems (based on Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Windows 7 !) The laptop simply hangs well into the boot process. However, all of my diagnostics discs are ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX-based and those launch no problem. When I try to boot the native recovery environment, I get the initial progress bar, then the 'Starting Windows' logo and that's all she wrote. Disk activity simply stops. When I try the XP and 2003 PE discs, there is the initial progress bar, then the Windows logo is displayed, but the "marquee" is completely dead (no activity) and no further disc activity. With my Windows 7 PE disc, first there is the progress bar and the laptop goes dead altogether, after the blanking the screen. My live Linux disc (PCLinuxOS) boots, but the touchpad doesn't work, nor does the recognized Ethernet adapter (never happened before.) I've fixed thousands of PCs and have never encountered any as persistently resistant as this one. Suggestions are welcome. TIA....:-- MR --:
You could try a Linux live distro that is more likely to have the built in drivers needed. Also it would be good to determine if current BIOS is different than mfg. latest BIOS to rule out bad BIOS mod. It sounds like a driver is not present to take it to the next level. Maybe you could compile a OEM windows 7 install dvd that contains the missing driver.
from what you have posted, a few things spring to mind. -if you have repaired thousands of pc`s messing about with linux beyond the bios and the mbr, then you have been very lucky indeed, thousands of times.. i wish i had half your luck.... -the user, whoever he was, f***ed up this machine, and no linux is going to help you. if you could find out how the first crash occurred, this might help. -suggestions, other than that; the first suspect is a non-original bios, just like redroad said. download and flash the original article from usb. the second suspect is the mbr. boot from usb into dos, not linux, and try to load something like ntfs4dos. if you can acces the recovery partition from that, you may be able to copy that stuff to usb, and start from there.. i don`t believe in a driver problem, you can simply not acces a basically sound harddisk.. hope his was helpfull. regards, nodnar
The reason I suspect driver issue is the point at which the boot stops. I am not sure if he sees pointer or welcome but it seems to be at the point of hand off to the OS drivers. Just a thought. With the live Linux distro he was able to boot further . Maybe set bios to default and try.
good idea, redroad,, and yes, it dawned on me that he got somewhere halfway into booting.. but that machine stops for a reason...and we have got very little info. and very little reaction, the bios is the first thing, for sure, but i put my money on the mbr...........
DV6 has problems with its VGA overheating. Try VGA mode, if it will work then it will mean GPU fail. if pointer is moving try pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL in welcome screen, had problem on older machines with xp, after launching task manager it booted all the times it means driver prob, also can be MBR, if it will work try chkdsk /r using recovery console, if it will repair something and it will successfully boot, then it means MBR, and probably you have SATA controller/north bridge problems, in that case you need to increase voltage on the bridge or reflow it using hot air soldering station(it can be soldering iron crystalization due to bad chinese soldering(too high temp for faster producing) it can cause short circuit under north bridge if its BGA type(its BGA unless its 8086)). I haven't repaired thousands PC's maybe hundred or less. But have seen strange bugs like MOBO's that were killing hdd's to that level that bad sectors will occur(on both VIA and Intel chipsets).
I'm not lucky at all with Linux. I've been cooking my own diag discs including live Linux distros for several years, but I don't wish to get sidetracked.... You will never get the story from the user. Most have no idea about documenting and reporting failures, even when they're totally innocent....
By my practice its always client faults, almost always. But my work is repairing not saying them that broke they're pc, cause they already aware of that...
AHA ! Thank you ! I bet it's heat ! Always have to be reminded of this ! As I see myself on Monday, I never turned the laptop off, trying disc after disc. And the laptop got hotter and hotter ! Generally, when they get hot, they simply shut off, but maybe not this time. I can actually see a hypothesis where some part of the [already faulty] chipset gets hot, fails, the laptop crashes and corrupts Windows. It could be that simple. Regarding some of the other comments, my toolset is very mature, including the live Linux part of it. They boot without regard for whether there is a hard dirve in the PC or not....
I hesitate to to give any more attention to this thread however in the interest of someone down the road getting a solution from it I ask you to confirm your results from gabris[LT]'s suggestion. This comment is all telling IMHO nor do you. So to help out in turning this thread into something useful, other than to you, post your results. With regards to your "mature" toolset one thing that seems to be lacking in it is the ability to click on on the thanks button to gabris[LT]'s solution if you feel it helped you. Can you feel me?
@gabris[LT] I completely agree with the original anecdote, that the problem was some sort of heat-related, chip-failure on the motherboard. When I got to work on Fri, I put the laptop on the bench, since it had days to cool off. Powered it up and tried System Recovery again. No joy. The built-in diagnostics still detect nothing wrong with the laptop, so it's going back to HP for warranty service. Thanx again for your insight and thanx to the other contributors. I'm out....:-- MR --: