double b26
New Member
Dell Studio 1537 Laptop
windows 7 ultimate 64-bit
ati radeon mobility 3450 video card
okay, the night before last, i was on my laptop and it was working normally. i shut it down and went to bed. the next day, i went to start it up, but it will not load the logon screen. it says 'starting windows', and the colored windows logo appears, but then the screen goes black instead of showing the logon screen. it will set there on the black screen for a couple minutes, with the hdd pegged the entire time, then automatically restart itself. the cycle repeats itself.
when the computer restarts, it offers to repair windows or start windows normally. when i run the repair, it just says that it cannot fix the problem, and asks me if i would like to send a report to ms, which i did. it also says to disconnect any new hardware that has been added to the system, but nothing changed from the night it worked to the next morning when it wont boot up.
so, its pretty much a perpetual cycle.
next, i threw the windows 7 install disc in there and booted from the cd drive. i ran repair on there, but it tells me that "this version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair". i tried using system restore from the disc, but it says there are no restore points found. then i ran a memory check, and it came back with no errors.
finally, i googled around a bit and found a forum post about a similar issue. they say that its due to a video driver issue, and recommend that i boot to safe mode, uninstall the video driver, and restart the pc/windows. then download the newest compatible version and reinstall. the problem with that is that A) a couple weeks ago i installed the newest driver for my video card from the dell website, and B) it wont let me boot to safe mode or anything... only give me options to start windows normally, or run repair.
so at this point, i'm pretty much fed up and have exhausted all ideas that i can come up with. i'm a few clicks from saying "F it" and just doing another clean install of this OS. i recently backed up my data, so the file loss due to formatting would be minimal. that's my last resort though, and hopefully it doesnt come down to that.
thanks for reading, and for the help!
windows 7 ultimate 64-bit
ati radeon mobility 3450 video card
okay, the night before last, i was on my laptop and it was working normally. i shut it down and went to bed. the next day, i went to start it up, but it will not load the logon screen. it says 'starting windows', and the colored windows logo appears, but then the screen goes black instead of showing the logon screen. it will set there on the black screen for a couple minutes, with the hdd pegged the entire time, then automatically restart itself. the cycle repeats itself.
when the computer restarts, it offers to repair windows or start windows normally. when i run the repair, it just says that it cannot fix the problem, and asks me if i would like to send a report to ms, which i did. it also says to disconnect any new hardware that has been added to the system, but nothing changed from the night it worked to the next morning when it wont boot up.
so, its pretty much a perpetual cycle.
next, i threw the windows 7 install disc in there and booted from the cd drive. i ran repair on there, but it tells me that "this version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair". i tried using system restore from the disc, but it says there are no restore points found. then i ran a memory check, and it came back with no errors.
finally, i googled around a bit and found a forum post about a similar issue. they say that its due to a video driver issue, and recommend that i boot to safe mode, uninstall the video driver, and restart the pc/windows. then download the newest compatible version and reinstall. the problem with that is that A) a couple weeks ago i installed the newest driver for my video card from the dell website, and B) it wont let me boot to safe mode or anything... only give me options to start windows normally, or run repair.
so at this point, i'm pretty much fed up and have exhausted all ideas that i can come up with. i'm a few clicks from saying "F it" and just doing another clean install of this OS. i recently backed up my data, so the file loss due to formatting would be minimal. that's my last resort though, and hopefully it doesnt come down to that.
thanks for reading, and for the help!