Vista Boot Issue

[RogueHart]

yay for more vista issues >.>

Anyway a proper startup on my laptop into the windows partition is it loads up the initial splash screen, then the screen goes black where there is no power to the screen, then the screen gets power but remains black, and it brings up the loading screen and then login.

9 of 10 startups recently it has gotten to the point where theres no power (assuming no power due to no backlight) to the screen and stays there. to see if it was just a slow boot i left it for 45 min and it was still at that. so i have to do a hard shutdown and restart from the beginning. at first it would work the second time. then the 3rd or 4th. but last night i rebooted 12 times and it would not work.

i booted into linux to do some web surfing but there were files and thing i needed in windows and linux couldnt even mount the partition. i tried to force it to mount and it disappeared from the places list and the command to mount wouldnt even give an error.

this morning 3 more reboots got windows working and now i need to find out why and fix the problem. ive done about 10 minutes of googling so far (and im going to continue) but in the years ive been here ive found the people on this forum more knowledgeable than any i find from google.

any help is appreciated. i can still use linux for work for the most part but i still need my windows partition.

[Sparda]

Hard disk is struggling?

[RogueHart]

Hard disk is struggling?

thats what im thinking but its not just that.

i cant get it to read cd's anymore either. for some reason it writes just fine. but i cant get it to read. i was trying to boot up a vista recovery disc since that has helped startup issues before but it wouldnt read. it sounds like the drive cant get it up to speed and ive had that problem with old game systems so i opened the drive and started it spinning fairly quick and closed the drive like i used to with my ps1. it starts to read the disc and then stops.

tried cleaning the lens but it hasnt helped.

im running a chkdsk right now to check the hdd. if no errors come up im gonna try a defrag. ive used windirstat and cleaned off a bunch of trash recently.

if chkdsk shows something ill edit this post

edit:

i forgot to add the computer is a gateway laptop model w350i

edit2:

140279576 KB total disk space.

110601200 KB in 399336 files.

206064 KB in 62154 indexes.

0 KB in bad sectors.

681968 KB in use by the system.

65536 KB occupied by the log file.

28790344 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.

35069894 total allocation units on disk.

7197586 allocation units available on disk.

the chkdsk results so that didnt tell me anything new. i have my computer automatically doing chkdsk once a week and saving the results in a log file for a month. going back over the logs theres no abnormalities in them either. defragging now

edit:

wouldnt defrag. so i tried running chkdsk again and it said there were errors and needed to be fixed with /f. so i ran with /f and i have to restart. so im gonna try and hope it starts back up

Edited December 16, 2010 by RogueHart

[digip]

Few things to check, but sounds like the screen could be failing on its own.

Test by booting a live linux disc just to make sure its not a complete windows issue. If you can't reproduce it under linux at all after multiple reboots and usage, then most likely something is corrupt under windows.

Go into power settings of windows control panel, make sure there isn't anything changed to turn off the monitor or put the machine in sleep mode of any manner, via timer or even sleep key/state(which could be stuck, but I highly doubt that is the cause)

Check to make sure there is no short in the hinges of the lid. Sometimes the wires wear from opening and closing the lid and can cause the screen to blackout from a short or bad signal in the wires or ribbon. It could also be that the blacklight ribbon or connector is loose in some manner, but more than likely an interrupt in power is happening somewhere hardware wise.

My sisters XP laptop is doing the same thing lately, but I haven't had the chance to inspect her laptop yet, since we don't live together and haven't had access to the machine, but I'm wondering if any recent windows updates have foobared something like a driver or power setting. Hers was doing more than blanking the screen, it was also giving her boot issues about the disk as well.

The other possibility is malware, but I also doubt that is the case because you should have other issues than just blank screens.

Do you run the laptop on battery or only wall power? Try removing the power cable and only using the battery, see what happens. If the battery is not charging and is low, the machine could be trying to turn stuff off based on power settings. This would mean either the battery is bad, and the power cable is not 100% and is switching back and forth between the two and not charging properly. Just something to check and rule out.

You may have to take the lid apart to inspect the screens connections, but be careful with anything you do, even putting it back together could damage the screen in the process. This is a last resort, but I would only do this if the problem comes back repeatedly and all other trouble shooting fails.

Best bet, back up everything sooner than later, then start inspecting things in the event the HDD is failing in some manner as well.

note: defrag can also fail if it is out of disk space, so check how much you have left on the system. it might not be low enough to warn you that you are low on space, but still too low to defrag, although I think defrag will tell you if there isn't enough space to do the defrag, don't quote me on that.

Edited December 16, 2010 by digip

[RogueHart]

Few things to check, but sounds like the screen could be failing on its own.

Test by booting a live linux disc just to make sure its not a complete windows issue. If you can't reproduce it under linux at all after multiple reboots and usage, then most likely something is corrupt under windows.

Go into power settings of windows control panel, make sure there isn't anything changed to turn off the monitor or put the machine in sleep mode of any manner, via timer or even sleep key/state(which could be stuck, but I highly doubt that is the cause)

Check to make sure there is no short in the hinges of the lid. Sometimes the wires wear from opening and closing the lid and can cause the screen to blackout from a short or bad signal in the wires or ribbon. It could also be that the blacklight ribbon or connector is loose in some manner, but more than likely an interrupt in power is happening somewhere hardware wise.

My sisters XP laptop is doing the same thing lately, but I haven't had the chance to inspect her laptop yet, since we don't live together and haven't had access to the machine, but I'm wondering if any recent windows updates have foobared something like a driver or power setting. Hers was doing more than blanking the screen, it was also giving her boot issues about the disk as well.

The other possibility is malware, but I also doubt that is the case because you should have other issues than just blank screens.

Do you run the laptop on battery or only wall power? Try removing the power cable and only using the battery, see what happens. If the battery is not charging and is low, the machine could be trying to turn stuff off based on power settings. This would mean either the battery is bad, and the power cable is not 100% and is switching back and forth between the two and not charging properly. Just something to check and rule out.

You may have to take the lid apart to inspect the screens connections, but be careful with anything you do, even putting it back together could damage the screen in the process. This is a last resort, but I would only do this if the problem comes back repeatedly and all other trouble shooting fails.

Best bet, back up everything sooner than later, then start inspecting things in the event the HDD is failing in some manner as well.

note: defrag can also fail if it is out of disk space, so check how much you have left on the system. it might not be low enough to warn you that you are low on space, but still too low to defrag, although I think defrag will tell you if there isn't enough space to do the defrag, don't quote me on that.

again i gotta apologize for leaving out info

i have 2 partitions on my harddrive. one for vista (about 140gig) and 1 for linux(about 20gig)

im assuming its a vista issue because i can boot into linux without any issue whatsoever. repeatedly and nothing even close to what happens with windows.

im gonna adjust the power settings now and once i finish my torrents and backing up all my data ill restart and test different solutions.

im thinking theres something wrong with the harddrive (at least the windows partition. i may just not understand how partitioning works but the way it acts seems physical considering the nature of HDD's in general). if my setting changes in windows dont fix the problem ill load up a live linux distro and see if i can repair the harddrive.

if worse comes to worst i'll wipe the harddrive entirely and start from scratch. once ive gotten off most of my personal files and what programs i can salvage it wont be a big deal to re-install windows though if i can get the cash i need for gas to and from college for a month ill be able to afford a new laptop from living expenses anyway so if i have to wipe the harddrive i may just turn it into a linux box with backtrack and ubuntu.

ill post more info as i work on it. tyvm for the help