Question Windows & boot looping

Jun 20, 2022
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I'm trying to rescue a Windows 7 system hard drive that continuously boot-loops.

I've tried:
  • restore points
  • booting in safe mode,
  • Win 7 startup repair from an installation disc
  • Rreinstalling Win 7 but was told that the installation process was underway and I had to restart
  • Fresh install of Win 7 (now I have three Win 7 installations on this drive)
  • A few command-prompt edits I found online
  • checkdisk...nothing found

Any advice? It's for a friend who really wants their original system restored.
 
I'm trying to rescue a Windows 7 system hard drive that continuously boot-loops.

I've tried:
  • restore points
  • booting in safe mode,
  • Win 7 startup repair from an installation disc
  • Rreinstalling Win 7 but was told that the installation process was underway and I had to restart
  • Fresh install of Win 7 (now I have three Win 7 installations on this drive)
  • A few command-prompt edits I found online
  • checkdisk...nothing found
Any advice? It's for a friend who really wants their original system restored.
If you're saying that there are essential files still remaining on the disk you could try connecting it to another computer and seeing if you can access the disk and rescue the files. Or you could download a linux distro, mount it on a usb stick and boot the computer from that. You would then be able to rescue any essential files from the disk using its file manager. But if you've tried 3 Win 7 installations I hope you understand that whatever was on the disk before may be gone and not retrievable. There may be no more directories or file allocation tables left to restore. At this point the last resort would be to wipe the drive and make a fresh install of Win 7. You could use a partitioning tool like Gparted to remove all of the existing partitions so that all of the disk space is unallocated and check that the disk has a GPT identifier. Then you should be able to reinstall. But first you should evaluate the disk's condition and see what's retrievable is anything needs to be saved. If all of the hardware is intact, and you have all of the necessary drivers and software a reinstall may be all that's possible. Then you would just have to make sure your friend understands that Win 7 is not considered a secure system.
 

ZV505867

Prominent
Apr 1, 2022
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If it's an NVMe SSD, you'll need to make sure that there are proper NVMe drivers, so that Windows 7 can properly boot from it. If possible, try installing Windows 10 as opposed to Windows 7, since Windows 10 has significantly better support for technologies both older and newer. Instead of installing Windows 7 on the same partition over and over again, try creating a separate partition to install Windows 7 (or 10) to troubleshoot. If you can't do that, then go onto another computer and make a live CD or a Windows To Go drive (with WinToUSB, or something like that), and boot from that to make the partitions. Or like what dwd999 said, you can slave the drive to another computer to retrieve the files, and then do a completely new install of Windows. Hope this helps.
 
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ZV505867

Prominent
Apr 1, 2022
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Try spamming F8 as the Windows flag comes together and hit "Last Known Good Configuration". This has happened to me on a few occasions, all because of poor drivers.