Restore from system backup image didn’t fix boot issue

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Hey all,

I have a Windows 7 Pro x64 box with a 128GB SSD and a 500GB HDD in it. Recently, I ran into some booting trouble with Windows. First, while my startups used to be lightening fast, thanks to the SSD, the time from POST to desktop became increasingly longer. The desktop wouldn’t appear for minutes at a time, and I would have to wait at a black screen after the splash logo before I’d reach the desktop.

I ran Malwarebytes, AVG 2012 Internet Security, Spybot S&D, and Trojan Hunter on my installation, but nothing turned up. One day, the computer simply stopped booting to the desktop, and would simply hang at the black screen before login, with a mouse visible, but without any keystrokes being recognized, including the venerable CTRL-ALT-DEL.

I decided to run Startup Repair from a System Repair disc I had made awhile back. Startup Repair found some issues, but it reported that it repaired them, and I attempted to reboot again. No dice. I ran Startup Repair a few more times, but no other issues were found, and booting still didn’t work.

At this point, I decided that restoring from the Windows Backup Image I had created in Windows Backup would work. I had made the backup before the slow startup issue began to appear, so I thought it was a working backup.

I connected my external drive that contained the backup, and ran the System Restore program from the WinRE disc. However, when I was presented with the option to format and erase the target disk (my SSD) I decided against it, because I didn’t want more formatting to cause unnecessary writes to the SSD. The restore ran without a hitch, and I rebooted Windows.

But it still didn’t work! I’m completely at a loss; the backup was a good copy as far as I know, and I hadn’t tampered with either the backup or the drive it resided on at all, but it still did not fix my problem.

I have a couple of questions:

1.) Naturally, my first query is, does anyone have any advice as to how I may fix this issue, and get Windows booting again?

2.) Why didn’t the Restore work properly? Was it because I didn’t allow it to reformat the drive? If so, should I run it again, this time enabling that option?

3.) I have read on the ‘net about the black screen hang issue, but does anyone have an idea what might have caused it? I haven’t made any untoward modifications of my system, except for downloading and installing the latest Windows Updates and updating all my existing apps.

4.) Would an in-place repair install of Windows work? I do have the retail disc when I purchased my copy of Windows 7 Pro, so could I insert that, boot up from it, and do a repair install to fix any issues with the OS?

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…because the Linux Disk Utility reported that the HDD had errors, and because I moved my shell folders from my User account to that drive, it could be that Windows cannot access those folders, and thus cannot load my profile.

I will probably have to reformat the drives and do a clean install; I’m loathe to do it because it’s just more writes to my SSD, but it’s probably the only way I can get myself out of this mess.

I’m not sure what exactly caused this problem: from looking at the ‘net, there are a number of different people who have had the same problem, all with varying theories as to how it started. The only two things I’ve done to change my system is install Windows updates, and I ran CCleaner’s registry cleaner. Other than that though, I find the whole situation funny, because I ran sfc both from the weird Windows environment I booted up in, and in WinRE, and no system errors were reported.

I’ll try the chkdsk method, and we’ll see what happens from there.

I, too, suspect that the problem lies in the HDD (some corruption of the user folders, I’m betting). If that’s the case, reformatting the HDD won’t necessarily fix that drive–if it’s going bad, it’s only going to continue to get worse. If you’re really ready to reformat the SSD and do a clean install, then consider either replacing the HDD or using something much more rigorous than chkdsk to test and fix it.

My tool of preference is Gibson Research’s SpinRite, which would probably fix any disk errors you have. What I usually recommend it for, though, is regaining access to a disk after you’ve lost access in order to recover data on the disk before replacing it. Since you’ve already recovered your data from the HDD (if I understood you correctly), further testing/repairing would only be for the purpose of satisfying your curiosity. Personally, I wouldn’t trust that HDD again. And since you can buy a new 500 GB drive for the cost of SpinRite, I can’t really recommend going the “further testing” route this time.

As for your concerns about wearing out your SSD: Yes, there are limits on the number of writes, but in all likelihood you’re going to replace your current SSD with a newer, faster, larger one long before you ever hit those limits (unless you’ve got a first-generation SSD without TRIM support, which I doubt). Go ahead and reformat/reinstall without worrying.

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This problem sounds exactly like one I have had happen twice with Win-XP.

PC boots, but instead of getting to the Login screen after the Windows splash, I just got a Black screen with Mouse pointer – no menus, icons, totally nada. Not even Ctr-Alt-Del did anything.

I asked for help on several Tech Forums including here.

A couple of people offered the usual common advice – “Change PSU”, “Boot in Safe Mode”, “Check Harddisk”, “Change Graphics card”, “Change RAM”, etc.
All worthy things to try out, but not one “I know this problem!” reply.
But nothing worked, and – most worryingly – not one person said “I’ve had this happen to me” or “I’ve heard of this problem”.

So it seems it was a completely unique fault that nobody had ever heard of, or had happened to them.

But it has happened twice like I said – once on a Laptop 3 years ago that had never been in Hibernate or Standby, and just last month to my main XP PC.

Two completely and utterly different machines, have the exact same ‘Unique’ problem within 3 years – but none of the Techies here or elsewhere has ever heard of it…….

Sorry to rant, but you are having exactly the same problem as I had – boots to black screen with mouse pointer, and clicks or keys do nothing.
What is really worrying me, is you are having the problem on Win-7, and mine were on XP.
And that nobody has heard of the problem, and can only suggest guesses to try out.

Do I have this same problem to look forward to in the future?
Gee, I hope not, that was a major reason for me moving to Win-7 – the hope of reliability.

Suddenly the fascistic Apple prison looks slightly more appealing, should I just give up on this whole MS crap?

Remember the old days when things were designed to be ‘Solid’?

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Don’t forget “Last Known Good Configuration” on the F8 choices.

Zig

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You might have a bad SSD.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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