Resolved Windows 7 will not boot

My HP 3100n will not boot. I upgraded my Nvidia drivers based on notices from Windows update. So I updated and have had problems ever since. This post is from my netbook. The system would occasionally boot after many, 20-50, hard starts; the power switch on the PC is not responsive. The system recovery disk is in the cd drive, Iv'e held down F8 and HPs restore key F11. On the occasional starts I've run a full checkdisk then did a restart, no restart. I've done a system restore and a restart and no restart. I tried to uninstall the driver and restart, no restart. I've tried to roll back the driver, no restart. I have tried to restart after one second, 30 seconds, 8 hours. Nothing works. When I start from the power switch the power light on the pc lights up, the cd drive starts then the system goes into sleep or hibernate mode. No display on the screen except a small blue screen "shutting down to analog power saving mode" The keyboard lights do not light. I've recently tried 50 hard starts with no luck. I do have USB devices available and an external usb CD/DVD drive. Windows 7 ran fine until I updated the Nvidia driver. Very frustrated with Windows 7 and Windows Update.

 

Well, the update you did was not a criticle update. It was an Optional update. Has nothing to do with Windows 7. That update would have showed up if you were using an earlier version of Windows and went to MS to check for updates. It would have been there also, but as an optional update just like it was in Win 7. Next time you get it to boot, go to Device Manager and click on the problem device. Then left click on it and choose Properties. Then Driver/Roll back driver.

 

So at present you are unable to boot at all. As you have already rolled back the suspect driver there may be some other problem. If the laptop has more than one memory module try booting with only one installed and then if there is no change swap the modules and try agin. After that I would follow this guide to test your hard drive and if it is ok use the format facility on the diagnostics disk to run a low level format on the drive. Then run the restore disc/s. You will need another PC to make the diagnostics disc.

 

MARKMADRAS,
Just to clear up a minor confusion, the problem is with an HP desktop not a laptop. I tried swapping my two 1GB RAM sticks around in the two slots on the PC, no change. I had a gerneric Knoppix ISO disk and also made and Samsung ISO disk since my HDD is a Samsung. The problem is as decribed before that the PC shuts down about 10 seconds after the HDD starts to spin so I cannot get to the BIOS, the DOS prompt etc. As I stated before I could occasionally get the PC to start up after many on-off cycles of the power switch but no longer. If I could get one more start I could at least do a complete backup. My lastbackup was six months ago. Is there any possibility that both sticks of RAM went bad? To me, it sounds like the HDD has failed, yet it does spin on startup. Any more suggestions?

 

The best way I can think of to deal with this is to remove the hard drive and hook it up to another PC, then run the hard drive diagnostics. Unless the drive is completely shot you should be able to retrieve all your important files and burn them to DVD or onto an external drive.

On the other hand if the PC will not boot from the hard drive it may still boot from a diagnostics disk even if the boot order is set for hard drive 1st, give it a try.

 

Are you sure the power switch is good? The computer I'm using right now will do pretty much exactly as you describe if I'm not careful when press the power switch to turn it on. It's a long rectangular button on top of the PC and if I press it down with my finger on one side of the button rather than the middle it will tip to that side and bind against the edge of the hole it's in. That stops it from coming back up and the PC starts, runs for a few seconds and then shuts down.

I know it's a long shot but perhaps try disconnecting the wires on the motherboard that come from the switch and then short across the two terminals on the motherboard with a screwdriver or some such thing. Should only take a quick short across to get it going. Might be worth a try.

To me this doesn't sound like a video driver problem. If it was, it would boot part way into windows until the driver loaded and then it would restart or crash, or whatever. The things you've tried should have fixed the problem if it was indeed a video driver thing. Even so, FWIW, I stay away as far as I can from any MS hardware driver update. I've seen way too many problems caused by them. Don't know why but that's been my experience. Get the drivers from the company who made the hardware or the manufacturer of the computer. It's the best way, IMHO.

Also, although it could be, it doesn't really sound like a hard drive problem either. If it was, the computer should really boot and then stop with an error message of some sort. No bootable device or some such thing. Could be wrong. I'm just throwing in some of my thoughts into the mix.

 

Sorry for the long delay in replying to your suggestions. I did all of them; thanks for the help. I found excellent additional ideas from Tim Fisher on About .com. I ended up building a new Win 7 system from parts I bought in Dec. I installed the hard drive from the from the HP s3100n and was able to back up all of the files. I also ran several diagnostics and the HD is good. I removed RAM, swaped RAM, installed new RAM and tried to start with NO RAM; always the same issue.
I bought a power supply tester which was useless because of the proprietay HP 24 pin mini power connector. So I tested the power supply with a digital multimeter based on the info. from Tim Fisher on About.com. The power supply is right on specs. I'm expecting a MOBO POST pci card tomorrow to test the MOBO. I've done it all! Yesterday I logged on to an HP support forum to find dozens of posts from owners with the exact same problem; motherboard failure from all of them. Turns out this ASUS MOBO made for the HP Slimline PCs was a really lousy product. They even had a recall but of course I didn't get notified and even if I did it probably wouldn't have mattered since mine was still working. Lesson learned. No more HP for me. Large number of MOBO failures with the ASUS/ HP slimline PCs and most of us got hung out to dry. What a huge waste of time. I'm building another destop and salvaging what I can from the HP Slimline s3100n.