Dell Studio 15 -Windows Vista suddenly not booting up

Hello all,
My flatmate is having a problem with her laptop (Dell Studio 15)
I'm entirely sure on the specs but I do know its Core 2 Duo, ATI Gfx card, 3gb ram, 25gb hdd, and the usual.

Basically the laptop powers on ok however during the booting up stage the laptop pretty much stops just before windows is supposed to load up where the screen is black with the mouse cursor available which can be moved however from then on it doesn't do anything.. it doesn't continue loading anything else..

The exact same thing happens when I try to boot it in safemode..

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks

 

This sounds like a software issue, not a hardware problem. If you have a Windows Vista installation disc (any 32-bit Vista disc, or 64-bit Vista disc if she uses that), I suggest you pop it in and select the Repair (or Recovery) option; it will basically copy over critical system files over to the Windows/system directory. If any of these have been corrupted, chances are that this option will fix the problem.

 

I've managed to boot from the installation CD however there are no system restore points so I can't restore it, I tried startup repair but that doesn't work

 

Given that you can't even get to the desktop, troubleshooting may be limited. Did she install any Windows Updates recently, apart from Defender definition updates? Did she install any drivers or make other such major system changes?

 

Last night she installed some windows update files... so that could be whats stopping the system from booting up..

 

I've searched around, but I couldn't find anything conclusive:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12546_102-0.html?forumID=133&threadID=262632&messageID=2575514 (no solution in the end)

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-perfo...32-vista-black-screen-cursor-after-login.html

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/02b7e62c-ac58-479f-b5f8-9ef2b26f5294/

Have you tried opening Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del)?

Also, I believe the installation disc for Vista has a tool that lets you scan the filesystem; it is possible that the NT filesystem is corrupted.

 

CTRL ALT DEL doesn't do anything

 

I'm assuming that you can hear the hard drive working; as in, the R/W heads are moving around. Can you run a CHKDSK scan of the filesystem from the recovery CD?

 

no i can't seem to find the option to run any kind of scan on the hdd ..

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa86/rvmv/RE6.jpg are the options which i can choose from

i've just put ubuntu onto cd and i can boot it up perfectly... so its definitely to do with windows vista

 

Now is as good a time as any to use the command line.

This link provides instructions on using CHKDSK from the CLI in Vista. It's quite easy, I assure you:

http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid192_gci1276029,00.html

 

C: has no bad sectors
E: has no bad sectors (partition)

Do you think format c: may be the only hope?

 

At this point, I think so. You can recover the personal data from the drive by plugging it into a desktop SATA cable, assuming the mobile drive itself is SATA. These interfaces are cross-compatible, as it turns out.

 

Or you can boot into the Ubuntu Live CD and back up data files from your Hard Drive. New versions of Ubuntu can read/write from/to NTFS partitions. Plug in an external drive when you're booted into the Live CD and it should detect it (it may be really slow but it's better than nothing I suppose.) You can then copy data files from your Vista partition to the external drive before you format it.

Good luck and let us know if you run into questions.

 

Update

Thank you both for your help which I as well my flatmate, really appreciate !
I'm currently trying to access the HDD itself in order to gather some files before formatting and to do so I'm using this serial ata 'external case' and to connect it to 'my' laptop (specs below) via usb2. With the previous HDD which was already in there it worked however upon swapping it with the one from my flatmates laptop it doesn't appear to be working for some reason, and it doesn't even come up in 'my computer'....

Now I assume that the HDD has died, so could that explain why windows can only boot up onto a black screen with a mouse cursor? and when I tried mounting it using the Ubuntu bootable disk it wouldn't mount at all!! has the HDD died?

 

Hard drive failure is definitely a possibility based on the symptoms. You could use the Dell diagnostics utility found at http://support.dell.com/support/dow...1&impid=-1&formatcnt=2&libid=13&fileid=265259 to test your hard drive.

The steps are:
1. Download the file.
2. Double-click and let it extract to a directory (usually C:/dell/drivers...)
3. Let it execute
4. Choose to burn the program onto a CD or USB drive
5. On the defective computer, boot from the CD or USB drive you just created
6. Let it run through the basic tests
7. Go to tests or advanced tests
8. Let it check the hard drive (the hard drive that you think is defective)
9. If it is indeed defective, it should give you some error codes
10. Have error codes handy when you contact Dell tech support for a replacement drive (they can't say much if you've already done the diagnostics and confirmed it to be a hardware failure)

PM or post if this is unclear (it's been a while since I used the Dell Diagnostics utility)

 

I'm currently running this test and its performed some tests in relation to 'MpMemory' and here are the results:-

Stress: Pass
WCMATS: Pass
WCMch: Pass
MATS: Pass
MarchB: Pass
XMATS32: Pass
WdPcMch: Pass
MarchS: Pass

Its called a 'Stand-alone memory test'

I'm now going to run a test for 'Hard Drive Errors' within the Symption Tree.

 

Awesome. We now know that the memory isn't the problem.

Good luck, and is the system still under warranty? (if you don't mind me asking)

 

The Hard Drive test seems to be taking a long time and I don't think it'll be finished until tomorrow morning (UK Time), and its currently 26% done (Overall).
At the moment the 'Device Quick Check' has a green tick next to it so I assume that has passed, and the 'SMART Long Self Test' has also passed, and there about 8 more hdd tests to do..

Yeah the system is still under warranty (was bought in October 2008) so it's roughly 4 months old.

 

Ok all the hard drive tests have been run and passed apart from two for some reason.. but this doesn't explain why it wouldn't work when I connect it to the external case.

 

It might be because the external case (it's USB controller) required a specific brand of hard drives. I know that some Western Digital externals allow you to switch the drive inside if they fail; however, you must replace the switched drive with another Western Digital hard drive for it to work. Did you boot into Live CD on your flatmate's laptop and try to access her defective hard drive while it was still in her computer? or did you boot into Live CD with your computer and tried to access the defective hard drive after you installed it into the USB2-SATA case?

About the diagnostics tests:
Which two tests did it not pass?
Are there any odd noises when you boot your flatmate's computer with (what we think is) the defective drive?

 

Well the external case is a generic sata usb2 case and therefore I assume it can be used with pretty much any brand of hard drives. With the Live CD do you mean Ubuntu? I tried to mount the hard drive with Ubuntu on her laptop but it wouldn't mount and I tried accessing the hard drive on my laptop but it wouldn't recognise it upon installing it into the external case.

I'm afraid I can't remember and I can't run the test again because she's taken it to our University's computer centre to see if they know what the problem may be.
There are no odd noises when booting her laptop up...
I can recall accessing the hard drive through the command prompt and doing 'dir/w' which gave me access to various files, so I assume its fine.

Yet this brings us to the first question about why Windows Vista isn't booting up and merely stops on a blank screen with a white mouse cursor just as it begins to initiate the startup procedures within windows itself.

 

I guess it could be because Vista messed up somewhere and can't recover. Vista is still too buggy. Hopefully the computer people at the university can figure it out.

 

Well they've managed to access the HDD and gather some of her university work so she's now free to format it... I understand with Vista that if some new updates don't work then it would tell you and go back to the settings before as some updates don't work for me and Vista kindly tells me.

 

Yes, I believe that is the case. It's good that you were able to access the hard drive and back up data. Reformatting and reinstalling Windows shouldn't be too bad. Post of you run into issues.