Win7 Freezing on startup Please Wait Screen
While I was working on my History assignment, my computer froze randomly. I had no control over anything at that point, and even my music I had playing flat-lined and just kept going as a one toned "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep."
I hard-reset my computer, and whenever the "Please Wait" screen appears, my computer would freeze there, with the windows logo staying in place.
On the off 5% chance somehow it doesn't freeze there, it goes to my desktop, but EVERYTHING is black. I can't see anything, but I can see my cursor, and have complete control over it, just can't click anything.
Nothing like this ever happened in the years I've owned this computer. I'm typing this right now in SAFE MODE, so that still works fine. I thought it may have been my computer had too much dust, so I opened it up and cleaned it out, but the problem still persists.
I currently run Windows 7 64bit. Not too familiar with other information, so post below if you need me to clarify any info, and how I could find out where that info is.
Thanks for any help you guys can offer
1 Comment • Newest first
The symptoms sound like a hard drive problem, where it's having trouble loading some Windows files from the disk. Apparently Safe Mode skips whatever files are causing the problem, allowing you to regain partial control.
In Safe Mode try running the Windows "Error Checking" tool to scan the hard drive for errors.
Open "My Computer" then RIGHT-Click on the C: hard drive.
On the popup menu that appears click "Properties"
On the Properties window that opens click the "Tools" tab at the top.
On the Tools page click "Check Now" in the top Error Checking section.
On the small popup window click BOTH boxes, then click "Start".
A window will pop up telling you the drive is in use and asking you if you want to run the disk check the next time Windows starts.
Click "Yes", then restart the computer.
When the computer reboots it will run the disk scan looking for errors in the filesystem and bad sectors on the disk.
It'll attempt to fix anything it can, and then will try to start Windows normally.
The scan will most likely take a long time depending on how large the hard drive is. Just let it run and don't try to do anything with it while it's scanning.
Hopefully it'll fix whatever the problem is.
If this doesn't bring it back to normal, THEN consider reformatting and reinstalling Windows and all your applications.
This is a far more drastic step, but may clear up the problem.
Your computer may have a "factory restore partition" on it that will do most of the work for you. You'll need to find out how to access this partition, assuming your computer has one.
And yes, take this opportunity to backup any important files NOW, before doing anything else.
If it IS a hard drive problem, it's possible none of this will fix it, and the drive will have to be replaced, meaning all your files will be lost.
Edit-- there's also the possibility that a driver, likely the video driver has gotten corrupted and is hanging the system when Windows tries to load it.
Safe Mode doesn't load any specific video drivers and just defaults to a "plain vanilla" VGA driver (which is why the screen looks funny in Safe Mode), so it doesn't try to load any broken or corrupted drivers.
You can try opening the Device Manager and deleting the video driver, then in "Safe Mode with Networking" go to either your computer manufacturer's web site or your video card's manufacturer's web site and redownload and reinstall the video drivers for your computer.