Diagnose startup/boot hang ups in Windows 7

[angkor]

***********************EDIT***********************

PROBLEM FIXED

I'm editing the 1st post for anybody who stumbles on this thread after researching the same problem.

Flashing the BIOS solved my issue, which was that my new pc would freeze at startup.

Read below for other suggestions concerning the registry, hardware drivers, corrupt system files, etc.

Thanks to everybody, and especially to Schan for his wise counsel !

READ DOWN FOR THE ORIGINAL 1st POST.

**********************/EDIT***********************

Hi,

I'd really appreciate suggestions on how to diagnose boot problems.

I recently bought a new system (specs below) and installed Windows 7.
Everything runs fine, except for occasional hang ups at startup. Occasional but very regular.

More precisely, when I boot the pc, as the 4 color spheres appear and start whirling toward making the MS logo, everything freezes.
I then have to manually shut down and reboot. I am then offered to start Windows normally or let Windows attempt a startup repair.
I have tried the latter a couple of times, but Windows failed to come up with anything.

The pc will boot fine 4-5 times in a row, then freeze 2-3 times, sometimes more, then fine again, and so on...

I have tried to consult the Event Viewer after the problem occurred, but nothing dramatic shows up.
[At the moment, I have 2 warnings: A 1014 (DNS client event) and a 3036 (Application, SystemIndex Catalog).]

As far as I can tell, it could be related to software or hardware, but I don't really know where to start looking and how to troubleshoot.

If anybody would be generous enough to offer advice, I'd greatly appreciate.
Thanks.

............
System specs :
cpu : Phenom 2 555 x2 3.2Ghz 7MB Black
Motherboard : GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H
ram : Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/4GX Hyper X
Graphics : SAPPHIRE HD5770 1GIG

Running Windows 7 x32.

Windows and drivers all up to date.

............

PS - I've registered an account with this forum, but haven't received the confirmation email yet.
I've asked for it to be resent, checked my email address and everything, but still nothing...

 

[schan]

Although it's a simple question the answer is quite complicated and it's all speculation.

For example, if your issue concerns with a corrupted entry in the registry. Windows may or may not sometimes try to load that entry. My technical knowledge is not strong enough to understand what exactly it loads and how it searches for what to load. If it tries to load it then it will get corrupted.

If the issue is ram, then the problem will definitely not be consistent. It may be the case that Windows is trying to load up something onto ram during load up and it screws up there. Of course, Windows is not trying to always load it in the same address so hence the inconsistencies.

I guess another good effort is to check the Event Viewer (eventvwr) after it jams under (application and system) to see if it logs anything.

Also, the BIOS controls a lot of things especially how hardware on the motherboard communicates with each other/etc. With an outdated BIOS, it may not perform optimally hence these inconsistencies. This is why you should update the BIOS.

Writing this up caused me to think of two other things you can try. First, load up your Windows 7 cd once the system boots into Windows. Run the sfc /scannow command in a dos prompt or through the run command. This will check the integrity of the system file and replace them if they're corrupted. You can find what it finds through the Event Viewer. The task will be called "Windows File Protection"

You can also do a repair installation. This will re-install Windows while leaving EVERYTHING intact so you won't have to format and re-install. You can do a bit more research on repair installations, but yeah it should not lose anything...again though...use at your own risk. If something screws up in the process then you may be forced to format/reinstall if it can't recover. If you are thinking about this, then at least back up beforehand.

If they're still under warranty, I would at least try to get new RAM and see if it resolves the issue. Try not to overuse memtest either. It puts a lot of stress on the RAM and they usually will get a lot hotter than normal.

I'll post more if I think of more.

 

[foscooter]

Could be bad RAM. Have you tried diag. that?

I don't know what the program is called, sorry.

MemCheck?

 

[rwpritchett]

Could be bad RAM. Have you tried diag. that?

I don't know what the program is called, sorry.

MemCheck?

Memtest86

 

[gerry410]

Hi,

I'd really appreciate suggestions on how to diagnose boot problems.

I recently bought a new system (specs below) and installed Windows 7.
Everything runs fine, except for occasional hang ups at startup. Occasional but very regular.

More precisely, when I boot the pc, as the 4 color spheres appear and start whirling toward making the MS logo, everything freezes.
I then have to manually shut down and reboot. I am then offered to start Windows normally or let Windows attempt a startup repair.
I have tried the latter a couple of times, but Windows failed to come up with anything.

The hang ups will happen roughly 1/5 times that I boot the pc. The other times it boots just fine and very fast.
Sometimes it will hang for several attempts in a row; sometimes not at all for a while. That's why I say it appears to be pretty random.

I have tried to consult the Event Viewer after the problem occurred, but nothing dramatic shows up.
[At the moment, I have 2 warnings: A 1014 (DNS client event) and a 3036 (Application, SystemIndex Catalog).]

As far as I can tell, it could be related to software or hardware, but I don't really know where to start looking and how to troubleshoot.

If anybody would be generous enough to offer advice, I'd greatly appreciate.
Thanks.

............
System specs :
cpu : Phenom 2 555 x2 3.2Ghz 7MB Black
Motherboard : GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H
ram : Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/4GX Hyper X
Graphics : SAPPHIRE HD5770 1GIG

Running Windows 7 x32.

Windows and drivers all up to date.

............

PS - I've registered an account with this forum, but haven't received the confirmation email yet.
I've asked for it to be resent, checked my email address and everything, but still nothing...

Hi, I just built my 1st computer and did a lot of reading in preparation to do it. All is well so far. One of the most mentioned reasons I've seen for a computer not booting is a problem with hardware. The mother board, memory or to much heat. Since its a new computer, and I assume you don't have that many important files and stuff did you consider resetting the mother board to default values (pretty easy) and reloading windows ?

 

[angkor]

Thanks again everybody for all the advice. Thanks especially to Schan : your detailed explanations on possible causes do help me tackle this problem with a more strategic approach. Greatly appreciated!

I also believe that, even if I end up not finding the solution for my own problem, this thread will certainly prove useful for other people researching similar problems. This is the great thing with these forums : I can’t count the number of times I’ve found the solution to problems like bugs or virii this way.

...
I'll keep trying things out this coming week.

-I'll keep doing overnight memtests, but from now on, I'll do them with only 1 stick at the time. This should help find any eventual problem more efficiently. (I can't believe I haven't thought about this before.)

-I will also try to run the "sfc /scannow" prompt.

-And maybe a complete repair routine from the installation cd, if the above doesn't work.

-As for flashing the BIOS, I looked into the documentation and it appears trickier with this board than with my previous machine.
For one thing, apparently I can't do it from Windows : I have to do it from a floppy. Problem is, I don't have a floppy drive installed at the moment. So I'll first have to connect one and buy floppies…

I will report as I progress.

Thanks again Schan, Foscooter, Mhelm1 and Gerry410 !

 

[schan]

Thanks for your appreciation, Angkor! It means a lot. I am trying to take my knowledge and training to the next level so things like this will prove useful.

I hope you'll be able to resolve it soon.


P.S. For flashing the BIOS, you should be able to burn the ISO (I'm assuming) image onto a CD and flash it from there. It doesn't have to be from a floppy.

 

[angkor]

P.S. For flashing the BIOS, you should be able to burn the ISO (I'm assuming) image onto a CD and flash it from there. It doesn't have to be from a floppy.

Good to know. I wonder why they don't mention this in the documentation : I'm assuming less and less systems come with floppy drives these days.

-I tried the sfc /scannow routine yesterday, and it reported that it couldn't find anything wrong.

Going over the event viewer afterward, I found a good number of errors and warnings.
Especially, there are VOLSNAP errors (ID 36), which goes : "The shadow copies of volume C: were aborted because of an IO failure on volume C:."

Then VSS errors (ID 8194) : "Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005, Access is denied.
. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process. "

There are also JRAID errors (ID 117) : "The driver for device \Device\Scsi\JRAID1 detected a port timeout due to prolonged inactivity. All associated busses were reset in an effort to clear the condition."

(I'm only reporting the ones that appear most meaningful here.)

I'm starting to wonder if my problem couldn't possibly be related to a defective HD (even though the Seagate test came out clean).
The reason is, my HD is the only part of this system that I didn't buy new.

I'll try a CHKDSK /R routine later on.
I'm also considering buying a new HD anyway, if only to get a bigger drive.

 

[angkor]

...Also a Disk error warning (ID 51) : "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 during a paging operation."

 

[angkor]

Knocking on wood here, but I've just flashed the BIOS and I seem to be out of the woods.

-I hadn't realized Gigabyte has a little app called @BIOS, which downloads and installs BIOS updates.
After using it, I've rebooted some 11 times so far and... NO FREEZE !

Now, it may just be an incredible string of luck (or bad luck, depending), but it's definitely the highest number of times I've booted w/o problems in a row.

...
Even though it was suggested from the beginning, I'd put off flashing because that operation always makes me a little nervous. Though I guess I shouldn't be, now that I have a dual BIOS motherboard. But I guess I was trying to avoid any operation that could possibly have me spend any more time into further rescue operations.

Now, I'll keep testing by rebooting as often as I can whenever I leave the PC.
I'll report whether all keeps going well or not.

If all's well, I guess I'll move on to figuring out all those Event Viewer errors and warnings.

You know, I'm tempted to paraphrase Homer Simpson here :
-Computers : The solution to AND the cause of all our modern problems.

 

[foscooter]

GR8 to hear! Anything else?

 

[schan]

Great to hear, Angkor! Quite honestly, those Event Viewer errors could be a direct result from a flaky BIOS. Now that you flashed the BIOS and it appears to have resolved the issue, I am assuming that those errors you see in Eventvwr will self-resolve. I wouldn't worry too much about it. However, if you continue seeing it, I would look into updating your SCSI/RAID driver.

Ironically, flashing the BIOS has now been the 1st thing I do as a troubleshooting procedure. There is no point investing time in all these tests/trials and errors if the BIOS is outdated. If I were to compare it to medical health, it's pointless for the doctor to prescribe medicine, physical therapy and all that stuff, if they skip the x-ray portion. All that investment is unnecessary if it turns out the patient had a broken/fractured bone.

Flashing the BIOS, to me, is like getting an X-ray - extremely important and necessary before anything else.

 

[angkor]

Flashing the BIOS, to me, is like getting an X-ray - extremely important and necessary before anything else.

Advice well noted. I'll keep it in mind for future reference.

Now I've cleared the event viewer. I'll see what new messages pop up in the next few days.

Thanks again !

 

[angkor]

Maybe I do still need some help after all.

Below is the result of a chkdsk /r routine, which found some problems.
Apparently something funny in step 3, and then something quite worrisome in step 5 :
"Write failure..." "The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable"

I found a forum thread on Google where the problem was fixed using something called "Acronis"
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6228

Should I consider doing that ?
Should I take this as a signal that I should buy a new HD ?...

Thanks for any advice.

*****************************************************

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Wininit
Date: 2010-09-14 05:09:33
Event ID: 1001
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: XXXXXX
Description:


Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
141824 file records processed.

File verification completed.
711 large file records processed.

0 bad file records processed.

2 EA records processed.

44 reparse records processed.

CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
185028 index entries processed.

Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.

0 unindexed files recovered.

CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
141824 file SDs/SIDs processed.

Cleaning up 788 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 788 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 788 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
21603 data files processed.

CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35234800 USN bytes processed.

Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
141808 files processed.

File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
9646131 free clusters processed.

Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Write failure with status 0xc0000015 at offset 0x3a32225e00 for 0x200 bytes.
The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable.

Internal Info:
00 2a 02 00 cf 18 02 00 e0 e5 03 00 00 00 00 00 .*..............
0f 85 00 00 2c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....,...........
40 8f 04 00 50 01 03 00 f0 19 03 00 00 00 03 00 @...P...........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Wininit" Guid="{206f6dea-d3c5-4d10-bc72-989f03c8b84b}" EventSourceName="Wininit" />
<EventID Qualifiers="16384">1001</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-09-14T09:09:33.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>8062</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="0" ThreadID="0" />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>XXXXXX</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
141824 file records processed.

File verification completed.
711 large file records processed.

0 bad file records processed.

2 EA records processed.

44 reparse records processed.


CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
185028 index entries processed.

Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.

0 unindexed files recovered.


CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
141824 file SDs/SIDs processed.

Cleaning up 788 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 788 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 788 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
21603 data files processed.

CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35234800 USN bytes processed.

Usn Journal verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
141808 files processed.

File data verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
9646131 free clusters processed.

Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Write failure with status 0xc0000015 at offset 0x3a32225e00 for 0x200 bytes.
The second NTFS boot sector is unwriteable.

Internal Info:
00 2a 02 00 cf 18 02 00 e0 e5 03 00 00 00 00 00 .*..............
0f 85 00 00 2c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....,...........
40 8f 04 00 50 01 03 00 f0 19 03 00 00 00 03 00 @...P...........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

 

[schan]

This is the first time I've encountered such an issue, but the second NTFS boot sector is actually a backup of your boot sector. It apparently got corrupted. I do have a couple of questions though.

You said this is a newer system and the hard drive was transferred from the old computer to the new one. Can you give us a bit more details about that? I am assuming it had Windows 7 on there. Nevertheless, I would follow the instructions on the link that you posted. Basically, you need to make a backup image copy, shrink the size of the partition (the 2nd NTFS boot sector lives at the end of the partition - therefore, shrinking the size will automatically get rid of it), restore the image copy, and then expand the partition back to its original size. Then, Windows will backup your primary boot sector, which will create a clean second NTFS boot sector. My experience with this issue is pretty much none, so I highly advise that you follow everything step by step in that forum. If you would like to double check before performing something you're uncomfortable with just let us know.

As far as the physical hard drive itself, it does not seem like it needs to get replaced. Everything seems fine except for the NTFS secondary boot sector. The issues at step 3/5 could simply be from all those crashes in the beginning where you had to shut the computer down and turn it back on. Hard drive failures are pretty apparent. Some symptoms of them are EXTREMELY slow start-up/navigation...loads of disk errors in the event viewer trying to access different sectors, SeaTools are pretty good at detecting them, and chkdsk should've given an error message saying something like this sector is unreadable...bad...etc. It doesn't seem like the case here.

FYI - the freeze at startup COULD sometimes be caused by this second ntfs boot sector corruption.

 

[angkor]

Actually, when I bought the new system, this HD was given to me by a friend. Whatever was on it originally, I formatted the drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7.

I also wrote to this friend for his advice on the matter. He happens to be a programmer and has a partial formation in computer engineering.

I'll see what he has to say on the matter.

 

[angkor]

Best answer selected by Angkor.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey