Welcome Screen stuck, flickers black. Hangs

[santissolved]

Hi there, ill be short and to the point.

Specs:
HP
DV8-1110EA
2 x 320 harddrives
i7

I accept that i can reinstall os but i need to access the settings and 'state' of this computer if there is a chance, all hardware looks ok so it is software issue only.

First i would get a black background with only the mouse arrow showing which I could move around. Stuck. On safemode too.

I went into the repair section with f8 and changed folder permissions with command prompt to 'everyone'. This took a while.

I then rebooted and no black screen, but it would show the blue welcome screen, with the curser spinning. and every 5-10 seconds the screen would flicker black.

Things I have tried:

- Running startup repair.
- Tried system restore and it failed after a long time saying it couldnt have a access to certain files, it then deleted both restore points I tried, now no restore points are left.
- Running in safe mode (same issue, with or w/out networking)
- ran DSKCHK from cmd in repair boot (locate bad sectors included, found a few things but all good)
- Ran spinrite on the discs, they are fine
- Ran the inbuild run in tests of the system (avaliable at boot) ran 20 times all passed
- machine was seriously overheating, opened everything, cleaned fans, replaced thermal paste
- Ran windows defender offine, found 2 issues
- saw that in safemode AVG~.dll's where running, i wanted to stop AVG so i ran Ubuntu, and i renamed all avg~.dll's to .bak's, computer booted ok but still same issue
- ran last known good configuration
- Ran in low resolution video

The next thing i wanted to try was to replace all drivers shown in the safemode with a copy from healthy computer but I could not see which ones are ok to remove/repace. I want minimum drivers, no AVG, nothing but essensial.

Here is images of my safemode boot:

I only post on forum for emergency, I do research but I dont know how to continue.

Thank you so much for time you are taking.

I send you good luck

 

[JeckeL]

What all USB devices do you have connected to the PC? Any printers or anything like that? While it’s powered off, disconnect everything except for the monitor and power cable and see if it does anything different when you try to boot

Did you change/upgrade/install anything significant before this started happening (including windows updates)? Or did you notice any malware/viruses/etc beforehand?

Next try: disconnect all external cables/devices from the tower, open it up and disconnect all power cables coming from the power supply to peripherals, motherboard, etc. (I would probably take the CMOS battery out and put it back in at this point for good measure) Then once all power connectors are disconnected (and the CMOS battery is back in place) press the power button about 10 times and then hold it in for 30 seconds. Let go of the power button and reconnect all cables then try to power it on.

 

[santissolved]

Hi, thank you for reply.

It is a laptop not desktop.

Nothing is connected except power cable.

I could do what you suggest with cmos battery etc but the computer powers on and boots correctly into windows, (see first post) so i dont think this will help? Maybe i am wrong.

From what i understand, nothing special, maybe updates happened before this issue.

Thank you for any further advice.

 

[JeckeL]

Ahh, I saw the "2x hard drives" and thought it was a desktop with two HDD's in it... I should have noticed from the images that the screen was glossy like most laptop screens :lol:

Instead, take the battery out, disconnect the A/C adapter and do the power button thing (press power button 10 times then hold it in for 30 seconds then let go) and see if it does anything different upon startup

 

[santissolved]

thank you for your further help,

if this was the final fix i would have given up my profession in shame. Unfortunately, and fortunately this did not work.

I removed the battery, waited a few minutes, held down the power button for 120 seconds. Then left the battery out and plugged it into the mains. The welcome screen still flashes with a cursorr i can move, now and again the cursor shows the spinning wheel whilst the screen flickers black at 10 second intervals.

 

[JeckeL]

I removed the battery, waited a few minutes, held down the power button for 120 seconds. Then left the battery out and plugged it into the mains. The welcome screen still flashes with a cursorr i can move, now and again the cursor shows the spinning wheel whilst the screen flickers black at 10 second intervals.

Yea I feel you... that was the only troubleshooting method I could think of that wasn't listed in your original post

Do you have a secondary PC you can throw the HDD in and see if it will boot? That way you can narrow it down to either hardware or software.

 

[santissolved]

I have little experience with doing this as i thought windows had licence issues with this to begin with..

then it may not load because of drivers... should i try this?

Im pretty sure its not hardware. Very difficult situation isnt it?

 

[JeckeL]

I have little experience with doing this as i thought windows had licence issues with this to begin with..

then it may not load because of drivers... should i try this?

Im pretty sure its not hardware. Very difficult situation isnt it?

License only applies to the windows operating system, you can put the hard drive that has the windows OS on it in any computer you want... trying to use a single copy of windows in two separate computers simultaneously obviously can't be done, but moving windows to a different PC by putting the hard drive in the new machine is fine.

And yes you may run in to some driver issues (i.e. the display might be at 800x600 since there is no display driver when you first start it up), but all we want to do is see if it will boot in a different machine.

If this doesn't work you can put whichever HDD was originally in the separate PC (for example if you're using a friends desktop computer), and then hook up your laptop's HDD alongside it, then boot your friends desktop to it's normal HDD and you should be able to at least browse the files on your laptop's HDD. It will show up in my computer as a separate disk drive and you can hopefully copy files from it to a flash drive or your friends desktop computer should all else fail and you decide to reformat/reinstall windows on your laptop.

 

[santissolved]

So, i tried this and i got a "The boot selection failed because a registered device is inaccessible"

So i cant boot, ive got other information, when I plug the HD via USB to my other system all the partitions come up.

But the OS partition is not accessible in the same way, I double click it and it says:
M:\ is not accessible
access denied

The RECOVERY, HP_TOOLS, and SYSTEM partition are accessible, maybe this is a problem? I have recovered the data from the OS with recovery software no problem.

When i go to computer management the OS partition is listed as:
Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)

Could this be a clue?

Still looking for opinions

 

[truerock]

You should have started by doing:
sfc /scannow
and
chkdsk C: /r

Anyway...

When you get past the logon screen and to the "Welcome" screen, you have completed the boot process. If you can get to "Safe Mode" then it usually means you have a corrupted application and you should start uninstalling applications until the problem goes away. If you can't get into "Safe Mode" then you most likely have a corrupted driver and you should start doing system restores starting with the most recent one and if that doesn't work start using older restore points.