For my 3rd computer, I have to reboot it about 10-20 times until it finally pops up with a screen letting me pick start windows 7. It just sits there with a black screen otherwise. Thoughts?
Can you tell us a little more about what happens when you don't get the "boot windows 7 normally" option? Does the hard drive make any noise or is it just blank screen and silent till you give up and reboot?
I have had similar issues in the past and have diagnosed and resolved it in a number of different ways. I had a bios issue once that was solved by updating the bios. I used MemTest86+ configured to boot from a USB drive to find out I had a bad stick of memory on one computer. I had a drive die on me but that us usually more catastrophic and I am not sure I ever fully made it back into windows after a drive problem.
If I were put on the spot I would guess the most likely culprit to be a heat problem. I had a computer have it's CPU fan get so dusty that it eventually clogged and my system would eventually overheat. This caused the system to reboot, and then it would not boot all the way to windows without multiple boots. I eventually learned this was because the CPU got too hot and shut down, then it needed time to cool down before it would work again. It didn't come back up because I rebooted multiple times, it was more the rebooting gave the CPU time too cool off.
I would check your CPU fan and see if it is running. I would look in your bios as sometimes they have CPU temp displayed there and see if it looks high. I have had similar issues with graphics cards as well when they overheat and reboot the system. I would consider that too if you happened to be doing lots of gaming or heavy graphical stuff when you noticed the problem.
Oh one more heat tidbit, I also once had a computer that required very specific airflow to work properly. I ran the system with the side of the case removed and that caused heat issues. I had to put the cover back on so that the fans blew the air over the parts that actually needed the cooling.
Are you seeing the POST and then a blank screen? Any beep codes? Are the fans and HD spinning up?
1) Try unplugging any usb drives
2) If you are seeing POST then hit F8 to see if you can get to windows boot options
3) IF no POST then possible bad cmos battery
4) make sure things are seated properly (video, memory, etc..)
5) Possible bad power supply
Having any luck? Great suggestion about the power supply. I had a really hinky power supply in an old HP machine I made the mistake of impulse buying. I had very similar symptoms thinking back. It is hard to verify that sort of thing too, which is annoying. If you have a lot of draw on the system perhaps you don't have enough wattage.
If I remember correctly HD's tend to spike on start up so if you have a lot of hard drives all trying to start at once, perhaps sometimes they collectively spike over what you can handle and other times happen to stagger just enough to get through the boot? I don't really know what happens when there isn't enough juice, I would expect a reboot but a "frozen system" could be possible too.
Hope you find the answer, I hate how flaky computers can be.
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