CLD Kevin Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 (edited) This is non-LOR related but figured there are many computer savvy people here. Running Win7 Ultimate and PC is locking up every time I boot. I shut down 2 weeks ago, then my son turned it on for me so I could remote in but forgot to shut down and left it on for a week. Now when I turn on it locks up as soon as it completes booting. The mouse curser moves but has that "thinking" icon and none of the keys work. I have to do a hard shut down but removing power. I can boot fine in Safe mode. Ran virus scans, spyware, malware and reports clean. I went 1 day back to the last known good configuration and still locks up. So then I went back 2 weeks to the last known good configuration which now seems to be working. The only things that installed between 2 weeks ago and now is windows updates when the PC was left on (set to auto update). Since it works fine is Safe Mode and now working good I'm thinking not a hardware issue. Anyone having the same issues from recent Windows 7 Update? Could it been a bad Windows update download? I have disable the auto update. Edited December 11, 2015 by CLD Kevin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 I have seen several times where after a Windows update, you will get Mr. Spinney for inordinate amounts of time. Let it run. Take a look at the HD LED and watch it for a little while. What you want to see is 'random'. What you don't want to see is off, on solid, or some repeating pattern. If you see random - let it go (insert Frozen pun here). I've had it do things for 45 minutes and then all of a sudden BOOP it reboots, or you finally get the 'Windows is updating' or something else. Windows Servers (especially the one I am most familiar with, 2008R2), are notorious for doing this. MS will push down an update for .net and MS exchange server, and the next thing you know an hour has passed after the reboot and it is STILL not even on a startup screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 One thing you can do, open a command prompt but insure you do so as an administrator. Run the command "sfc.exe /scannow" without the quotes. This will force windows to look for and repair messed up critical files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLD Kevin Posted December 11, 2015 Author Share Posted December 11, 2015 I did let it sit for 20mins and nothing. Didn't watch the HD light. I will let Windows do it update and walk away for hours. Hopefully it takes. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLD Kevin Posted December 11, 2015 Author Share Posted December 11, 2015 So after going back the 2 weeks "last known configuration", I shut down PC for a couple of hours and rebooted just now and doing it again. "Mr Spinney" is back. No HD light. So sign that anything is happening. Can't run command as it won't respond to anything. I'll leave it as-is an couple of hours and see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerry72 Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Csnt day for sure, but my other Tower did the same thing, Hard driver crashed bad. Can you hear the HD spin up at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 (edited) You might also need to update the BIOS. Its a drastic step but in rare cases of a windows update causing problems, this might be needed. You would need to see which version of bios you have, then find the latest and greatest for your exact machine. BIOS updating is not something to be taken lightly as if you do it wrong, you could stop the machine totally. If you were able to get it going again from a previous restore point, get things back to as normal as possibly then manually create another restore point. Run your AV program on the entire drive and delete anything it finds. Then manually run the windows update again. Edit: Let me add, absolutely anyone who tries to do a BIOS flash/update, must insure its the exact one for your machine. Using the wrong one might turn it into a brick. Do not attempt this except as a last resort and if you are not computer literate, don't attempt at all. Find someone who knows how. Edited December 11, 2015 by dgrant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LORisAwesome Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Gotta love Microsoft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LOR Staff Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 So after going back the 2 weeks "last known configuration", I shut down PC for a couple of hours and rebooted just now and doing it again. "Mr Spinney" is back. No HD light. So sign that anything is happening. Can't run command as it won't respond to anything. I'll leave it as-is an couple of hours and see what happens.Unfortunately that will point at bigger problems. Good news is that it still does boot in Safe Mode (and you know how to get it into safe mode!). Here is what I would do next: Boot that puppy into safe mode and get some Thumb drives. Get your data backed up JUST IN CASE. Next, go back to your install CDs (or possibly the install partition on the hard drive). Start a Windows re-install and when it asks, REPAIR your windows installation. That may get you back on track. If that does not work -- there is some boot logging you can turn on to capture a file to see exactly where things are going south. If you end up there, you may want to find a PC Support forum, read their rules about posting for help (they are notoriously strict), and ask there. People that post in those groups are amazing. They are probably going to want that boot log (or some log of some tool they tell you to use). This one is excellent: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 I agree with DevMike completely. FYI, usually when I see this happening, its the video card driver that got replaced with one that's not compatible or the driver became corrupted. Its not an absolute though as you might very well have a fault on the hard drive....back up your files right away as Mike said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Short comment first. If you have remote access software so that you can remotely access your computer from another one, you also have a backup if as David said a video card problem. See if you can remote into it. That allows you to help restore stuff. Longer story. With this thread going on, I had a sort of related. Wednesday evening when I went to shut down my family room computer (what I normally use for sequencing), I noticed that it wanted to do Windows updates. So I set it to do the updates and then shut down. Got ready for bed and then checked and it was on update 2 of 12. Thursday evening, without remembering that it had done updates (which often results in a really slow bootup next time), I powered up the computer and went off to do something else for a few minutes. Came back about 5 minutes later and the monitors were not even on. Without thinking about it, I punched the power button, and then realized that I had done that a few minutes earlier and that the computer had done updates prior to the last shut down. Uh Oh. Sure enough the computer shut down (without having completed the post update startup). Waited 20 seconds or so and powered it back up. After quite a while, the monitors had not powered up, but there was occasional hard drive activity. After close to two hours and no longer seeing any hard drive activity, I powered it off by holding down the power button for about five seconds (the momentary punch didn't do anything) Waited 30 seconds and powered back up. No video activity after a half hour so I went off to bed. Not good... This morning I got up and checked no video and no hard drive activity. Hard power down and reboot. Oh Happy Day - it booted normally. So whatever it was unhappy about, finally resolved... Of course it was after all that that I remembered that I do have VNC server setup on that computer and I could have tried accessing it from another computer in case it was a video card failure. Turns out that video was not the issue, but it's nice to remember that remote access is an option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLD Kevin Posted December 12, 2015 Author Share Posted December 12, 2015 I have kinda given up on this now, but will check it out when I return. Seems every time I boot, it does it. But if I start in safe mode, then go back to the last know good config (which was 2 weeks ago), it works fine and runs good all day. Shut down at the end of the night and start to next day it does it again. So it's every time it reboots it happens. I'm thinking I'm at a point where I just need to format and start over with latest update BIOS and reinstall OS. I was going to switch to Win10 after the season always so probably go that route. My PC is auto backed up to Dropbox and in house NAS. So all my files is okay. Little anal with BU, but stuff I can't afford to lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilkie Posted December 12, 2015 Share Posted December 12, 2015 one thing I started doing the past few years is backing up my whole system, so if I have a big crash, I can re load Win and be back up in running quickly, usually within a few hours; been using Acronis for this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EmmienLightFan Posted December 12, 2015 Share Posted December 12, 2015 I have kinda given up on this now, but will check it out when I return. Seems every time I boot, it does it. But if I start in safe mode, then go back to the last know good config (which was 2 weeks ago), it works fine and runs good all day. Shut down at the end of the night and start to next day it does it again. So it's every time it reboots it happens. I'm thinking I'm at a point where I just need to format and start over with latest update BIOS and reinstall OS. I was going to switch to Win10 after the season always so probably go that route. My PC is auto backed up to Dropbox and in house NAS. So all my files is okay. Little anal with BU, but stuff I can't afford to lose. If you are going back to the last known good point then shutting down and then problem comes back maybe the PC is doing an update every time you shut it down and this update is causing problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLD Kevin Posted December 12, 2015 Author Share Posted December 12, 2015 I turned off any updates so it shouldn't. Something a bit weird should be last night before logging off....pop up to install Win10, but it's all in Chinese? Fist the Chinese symbols show in the show player and screw everything up and now they are invading my PC!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted December 12, 2015 Share Posted December 12, 2015 Hope you have a good AV program...one that's worth having. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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