Windows 7 Pro Fails to Boot…intermittently

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A Dell Precision M6700 laptop that has been more and more reluctant to boot.  The hard drive gets a hit, then goes dormant (light turns off).  A hard shutdown is then required.  I have found that if I repeatedly start it, shut down and continue over and over I can get it to boot to safe mode on the laptop display or an external monitor attached via VGA cable.  It cannot provide both laptop and external monitor at native resolution 1900 x 1200.

Of course it is long out of my Dell Pro Support warranty, but a Dell support technician says it is an OS problem.  It appears to be hardware to me.  Dell support suggests I configure it to boot to a USB device with Windows 7 and reload the OS.  The current OS is on an mSATA drive.  Does this diagnosis seem reasonable to any of you still knowledgeable about Windows 7?  Thanks in advance for any and all ideas.

Barry Santana

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First big question: How old is the hard drive? A laptop HD life expectancy is about 5 years. If yours is in excess of that, your next step should be to replace it. Cost is like $50.

CT

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bwsantana wrote:

A Dell Precision M6700 laptop that has been more and more reluctant to boot. The hard drive gets a hit, then goes dormant (light turns off). A hard shutdown is then required.

That Dell model appears to be about 10-years old. Probably time to replace the hard drive.

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You can easily test whether it is hardware or the OS. You can download a free Linux ISO of any distro (I would suggest Linux Mint Cinnamon) and write that ISO to a USB thumb drive, then boot that into a live session (the default action for most of them; for others, it will ask you “install” or “try [the name of the distro],” and you would pick “try”) . You can use Linux as if it was installed and see how it behaves, without making any changes to your PC.

Like the others who posted already have noted, I would be looking at the hard drive as a possible cause. Windows could be messed up, and the hard drive could be fine, but with a drive that is that old, it would not be unusual to see it starting to fail by now. If it is indeed ten years or so old, it has performed quite well already.

If you can get it to give you a SMART report on the drive (if you can’t get it in Windows, Linux should be able to, using the “Disks” utility that comes with Mint and lots of other distros). If you post the results, we can help you interpret it.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

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Right about the age of the hard drive.  The OS is on an mSATA card, popular during that time.  Your comments confirm what the Dell tech said.  I may have trouble finding an mSATA card at this point.  The system also has 2 spinning drives that currently have data on them.  At this point, if I am going to reload the OS, I may just use one of them.

Would this explain the inability to access both the laptop display and external display?

Thank you for your comments and help!

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I just looked… mSATA cards are still available and are cheap on Amazon.

It may be the drive itself, but the data could also just be messed up on it. If you can get some SMART data, that would still help, if that is possible.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

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The mSATA drive passes a Dell diagnostics test. It gets 100% based on a thorough diagnostic test with full memory check.
I will look for a smart diagnostic tool. Thank you

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As the disk tests OK I suspect it’s something else.
The video issue may be a furphy.

Make a backup by booting to a backup USB and then reload Windows as a first step.

cheers, Paul

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After hours running the full diagnostic and fooling around moving from Admin to non-Admin account and back, the display monitor display came back to life!  Unfortunately, after a shut down the startup problem still exists.  I am hesitant to purchase another mSATA card as so far all I have been able to find that are of the same form factor are refurbished.

Crucial CT120M500SSD

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You say the computer has other drives, can you disable or remove the mSATA and install Windows to one of the other drives?  I would also change the CMOS battery (that affects bios settings and the bios chip) if it isn’t too hard.

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Energy Saver, that is one option.  I have a 1TB spinning drive as well as an original 500GB spinning drive in the system with only data as well.  The mSATA drive is doing the heavy lifting with the OS installed.  Had I known then what I know now about SSDs and read/write life, I would have configured the system differently.  The goal was faster startup, and it was successful.  At this point, I just want to save the data and software on the system and it will sit on the shelf.

Thanks for the suggestions.

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Crucial’s Storage Executive https://www.crucial.com/support/storage-executive

will give an accurate SMART report for Crucial SSD’s.

Win 10 home - 22H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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mledman, Thank you very much for the link to storage executive.  I should have thought of the Crucial web site.  I ordered a replacement mSATA card (refurbished) on eBay that is 2x the size of the original, just in case.  I am not sure that I am solving any problems with a refurbished card, but it was cheap enough.  I have no idea how a memory card can be refurbished!

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Barry wrote:

Had I known then what I know now about SSDs and read/write life, I would have configured the system differently

There is nothing to know about SSD life, except “it is much the same as an HDD in a consumer system and will last years without issue”. Anything you read about low / poor life expectancy is FUD spreading.
The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes

Barry wrote:

mSATA card (refurbished) on eBay

That may well be a pup! Test it with the manufacturer’s diagnostics software before using it.

cheers, Paul

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mledman, satrow, Alex5723

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How would I do that without installing it and loading the OS on it?  What is a pup?

Thanks for your help!

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pup = potentially unwanted program.

Barry wrote:

At this point, I just want to save the data and software on the system

If you remove the two data drives from the laptop, your data will be safe while you try the refurbished mSATA drive (also eliminates the possibility of installing the OS to the wrong drive).

Win 10 home - 22H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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pup = sold a pup

You can test any hard drive by simply plugging it into a spare power and data cable on the machine, then running the manufacturer’s diags. You do not need to install anything on the disk – you should run full tests before installing anything on it.

cheers, Paul

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Paul, I’m not sure how you would do that with the mSATA card.  I don’t have access to the card yet, but as I recall it plugs into a slot like a WiFi card (similar to a memory slot).  I’m not sure how I would connect the refurbished card to an mSATA connection in a laptop.  I do have a spinning disk base connection I can plug into a USB port, maybe even an external SATA port, but I will have to find it.  Hasn’t been used in over 10 years.

Alternatively, I was thinking I would work on restarting the system, installing the Crucial storage executive program, check the original mSATA card for errors, reboot  to the BIOS, change the boot sequence to bypass the mSATA card and boot to an OS Disk and shut down.  Replace the original mSATA card with the refurbished mSATA card, shutdown and reboot to the Windows 7 disk and see if I can see the Storage Executive .exe file on a data drive, install the program on the spinning disk and check the refurbished mSATA card.

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As it’s a laptop your idea of swapping the mSATA drive and booting to a W7 USB is the only option.
Copy the diag utility to the W7 USB.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks, Paul.

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The inability to boot this laptop was not resolved with a new Windows 7 OS reload or a bad mSATA card.  I was able to cajole a boot to CD and reloading of the OS on a new mSATA drive.  After loading the OS and ALL the Dell drivers, the first total shutdown resulted in a no boot situation,  I was able to get into the BIOS one more time to assure it was set to boot to the mSATA drive, but nothing since.  My early suspicions of a hardware problem now seem more likely.  I am at a loss as to what to try next.  Replacing hardware does not seem sane other than replacing the CMOS battery, which I have on order.

Any additional suggestions and opinions appreciated!

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If you normally run the computer plugged into the wall, try removing the main system battery.  Many laptops will run well with no battery, but a bad battery can sometimes cause no boot.  I feel like this is a long shot but it is free to try.

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bwsantana wrote:

Replacing hardware does not seem sane other than replacing the CMOS battery, which I have on order. Any additional suggestions and opinions appreciated!

Try a bootable USB with a Linux distro such as Mint. Or even with a bootable rescue disk from your backup software. But Linux would let you do a bit more system system exploring than a rescue disk would since it is a full OS.

If the system boots OK from that USB, then you would have narrowed things down a bit from the mSATA, Windows OS disk, boot sector, etc.

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Take the cover off, reseat the connectors (easier said than done), put it back together and test.

If it still plays up it may be time to get a new laptop – yay!

cheers, Paul

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John, Paul, Energy Saver,

I have tried connecting w/o battery, reseated connections, besides reloading Win 7 on a different, larger mSATA drive.  The computer is an older very nice laptop I am retiring and I really wanted to put it on the shelf in good condition.  I have not tried a Linux boot, but will if I can figure out how.  I’m not sure drivers will be available for the Precision M6700, but if it will run on Linux I will give it a try.  Thanks for your help!

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bwsantana wrote:

I have not tried a Linux boot, but will if I can figure out how. I’m not sure drivers will be available for the Precision M6700, but if it will run on Linux I will give it a try.

I wasn’t actually suggesting to install Linux on the laptop hard drive, just to use it for a USB boot as a test to see if the system will boot up from an external boot source.

That would rule out your internal boot drive and the drive interface as the source of your issues, and confirm that the motherboard, CPU, and RAM are stable.

As far as drivers are concerned, the Linux kernel generally supports older hardware better than the latest.

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JohnW wrote:

just to use it for a USB boot as a test to see if the system will boot up from an external boot source.

John,

Please excuse my ignorance. What would be different booting to Linux on a USB device compared to booting to Windows Windows 7 on a USB device?  I have attempted the USB Windows boot as well as booting to Windows 7 on a CD.

At this point, based on what I have been able to find on the internet it may be that the repeated startup shutdown attempting to get the system to boot to the HDD, then repeated requirements to get it to boot to USB or CD has caused a problem with capacitors somewhere in the power supply circuit probably requiring a MB replacement.

The only easy fix I found (after trying a complete restoration of the OS on the HDD) was to detach the CMOS battery for 10 minutes to clear the BIOS, then replace the CMOS battery.  I am waiting for a new CMOS battery to try that.

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It was a long time ago, but I saw a computer that with an aging spinning hard drive or two would sometimes fail to boot.  There was a bios setting called hard disk pre-delay that by adding a few extra seconds to would allow the old spinning hard drives to spin up before being  accessed by the bios or O/S.

If you can find that setting, try increasing it.  Alternately, disconnect all spinning hard drives and see if you can boot a Linux USB reliably, or boot the internal SSD reliably if no data drives are connected.

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JohnW

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bwsantana wrote:

Please excuse my ignorance. What would be different booting to Linux on a USB device compared to booting to Windows Windows 7 on a USB device? I have attempted the USB Windows boot as well as booting to Windows 7 on a CD.

If you know how to create a portable Windows 7 that boots directly from USB, go for it. I must have missed the part where you had already tried that.

I merely suggested Linux because it is readily available, portable, and easy to use as a full “live” OS running from RAM.

The free Rufus utility can make a bootable USB stick from just about any downloaded Linux ISO file that permits a “live” boot (no install required). When you boot your hardware directly from the USB stick, the OS is running in RAM, and completely bypassing your system disk.

I have used Rufus to build a Linux Mint USB that has made a great diagnostic tool for my Windows PCs. This is a great way to access and test a system when it becomes otherwise un-bootable, and/or you need to access the data on your hard drives, or adjust the partitions. Running a full portable OS gives many more options than using a basic “repair disk” USB.

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JohnW wrote:

If you know how to create a portable Windows 7 that boots directly from USB, go for it.

Well, here I am displaying my ignorance.  The USB key that I have was provided by Dell as a way to reinstall Windows 7.  It appears to be pretty much the Windows 7 SP1 that I got with the computer on CD/DVD.  During this process I have been able to reinstall Windows 7 from both devices by repeated start/shutdown cycles using the power button until the system recognised either the USB or CD with the OS.  So maybe it is not bootable, just a device with the OS on it for reinstallation.

I like the idea of the Linux boot on a a stick as a diagnostic tool.  I would like to create one.  I do have a 32-bit Linux Mint bootable USB key a friend made for me several years ago.  I use it for an old M6300 (when I want to get on the internet)  that also has Windows XP, but my M6700 is a 64-bit system.  I will pursue your suggestion of the Rufus utility and attempt to make a 64-bit Linux Mint bootable USB.  I suspect the USB I have with Windows 7 is not really a “bootable” version.  If Linux will boot, I will try to install it on the mSATA card and retire the machine from Windows use.  Thanks for your help.

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Use Ventoy free portable app to create a bootable USB with multiple OSs (Linux versions, Windows 7, Windows 10…).
You can boot from any of the OSs.

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bwsantana wrote:

If Linux will boot, I will try to install it on the mSATA card and retire the machine from Windows use.

I wasn’t actually suggesting to install Linux, rather to just use it as a boot diagnostic to eliminate your hard drives, their controllers, and the ports on the motherboard, as well as  eliminating the Windows install as the cause of the boot issue.

If Linux boots consistently from USB without any issues, then you have narrowed the possible cause down a bit.

If something else is wrong with your hardware, and it still will not boot reliably from a portable OS on USB, you will then know it is not either Windows or your hard drive. In that case you would have a decision point to proceed to look further into the motherboard or not.

Good luck!

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Energy Saver wrote:

Alternately, disconnect all spinning hard drives

That was one of the things that the instructor in my service and support class had the class do (back in the 90’s).

That process generally included unplugging everything possible in the computer chassis except for the motherboard/CPU/RAM/power supply/keyboard/monitor. Then turn the power supply on and hit the power-on button. If you could get past the power-on-self-test (POST) to the BIOS screen, then you knew the basic components were OK.

Then in a methodical manner, you shut down and added back one removed component at a time and tested the power-on again. Repeat until you find the failed component.

They used to “bug” the classroom PCs we were working on with various failed parts before class. Then they would watch with amusement as we tried to discover them. 🙂

So yeah, things like failing disks or disk controllers can cause boot issues. Best to eliminate them first!

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