Why won't this laptop won't boot up?

[Gammio]

A co-worker of mine has a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7. It hasn't been working for the past few days. It just refuses to boot up. It comes on, shows the "Starting Windows" screen, and then just sticks on a black screen and refuses to do anything. How could I make it work again? She says she hasn't installed or downloaded anything since it stopped working, so I'm clueless.

 

[mike1959]

Hi, Would be good to know how far into loading Windows 7 it gets, if at all.
You do see the BIOS notice at the top of the screen after power button pressed?
Then it changes to the black screen with Windows 4 colour flag?
Is the hard drive LED active? Do you get to the logon box?
Do you get any messages on screen? ( I'm thinking of 'O/S not found' ?).
The LED on the front edge is a good indicator of hard drive activity, plus you can normally hear drive noises,
any clues like that.

 

[Zen]

If you just want to get the the "quick" about possibly fixing this issue, then I would recommend that you bust out your co-workers O.S. disk or Systems Recovery Disk and run a simple boot repair. Sounds to me something is a miss with the boot manager, something just isn't taking and isn't able to go the next step, would be to boot into Windows from the start up screen. Watching for any hard drive activity by way of the flashing light or lights is good advise, but knowing that the thing is fixed is another thing all together.

Goof luck!

 

[mike1959]

Hi, Further info about the disc you need to use to sort out out a damaged boot loader, is at;
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Create-a-system-repair-disc
You should have a disc like this made when Windows was installed, I'm not sure if one can be made now on another similar (Windows 7) pc to help fix the non-booting one, but it's worth a try.
If the problem pc had the Windows system pre-installed, then you won't have a system disc, but still worth trying making a system repair disc on another Windows 7 pc.
I'm not sure if the repair discs are specific to that machine or can be used as a general repair on any similar Windows O/S.

 

[HuntForTheWOrst]

Could be harddrive failure or need a new battery.If it's a hardrive failure it could cost a few hundreds to fix so I sugges an new one instead.

 

[HuntForTheWOrst]

Hi, Further info about the disc you need to use to sort out out a damaged boot loader, is at;
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Create-a-system-repair-disc
You should have a disc like this made when Windows was installed, I'm not sure if one can be made now on another similar (Windows 7) pc to help fix the non-booting one, but it's worth a try.
If the problem pc had the Windows system pre-installed, then you won't have a system disc, but still worth trying making a system repair disc on another Windows 7 pc.
I'm not sure if the repair discs are specific to that machine or can be used as a general repair on any similar Windows O/S.

Mike I dont think the repair disk would work unless you it can go past the boot menu I've had to use the repair disk before and it had to go for me to the starting whe it would say press F1... F5....

 

[mike1959]

Hi, Don't overlook the change that must be made in the BIOS, to make the pc boot from the CD/DVD drive ( with the repair disc in), rather than the primary hard drive, (with the Windows O/S on.), otherwise the repair disc can't repair the MBR etc.

 

[tipstir]

Repair might even work you might have to re-image the system. There use to be an Prep too for Windows that would go in there and fix the OS issue. BartPE (opensource) WinPE (pay for) still this site here kinda tells you how to use these to fix issues on the main Windows. You would boot Windows on CD to fix your current windows issues using a command prompt. This is how I use to do in corp world.

for more info
http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

BartPE
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Just takes one thing to throw off 7 and your stuck in a endless loop effect. Worst in Windows 8 if this happen in the beta Preview.

 

[HuntForTheWOrst]

Im quoting this but on windows 7 forum moderator Adamsappleone had said for a question the same as yours "On most, if not all, retail laptops, the first partition, which should be normally hidden, is your Lenovo Recovery Partition.
If you can access the memory stick/s, remove it/them and with a pencil eraser, go over the contacts (both sides), replace making sure they're securely seated and see if that makes a difference."Said Moderator Adamsappleone

 

[tipstir]

Yes but that hidden recovery partition can get corrupted as well.

 

[HuntForTheWOrst]

Yes but that hidden recovery partition can get corrupted as well.

But if it's his Co-Worker could be succesful.