Windows failed to start

[josephcave86]

Hi,

 

I had an Acer desktop PC that I purchased about a year ago with Windows Vista pre installed. I was slowly upgrading parts to this computer as I wanted to build my own up-to-date machine.

 

I now have a new:

700w Power supply

Asus GTX 460 768MB Graphics card

Asus M4A77T Motherboard

4GB DDR3 Geil Memory 1333mhz

New copy of Windows 7 Full version

 

All that remains from the old Acer is:

460GB Hard drive

DVD/CD Player/Burner

AMD Phenom II Quad Core Processor

Generic Heatsink

 

The problem is I have installed the new version of Windows 7 which went fine and if I do a restart it boots fine. However if I turn the computer off over night or for more than say 30 minutes it boots up saying:

 

Windows failed to start. This may be due to a recent hardware/software change.

1) Start up repair

2) Normal start

 

Windows repair only asks to do restore which doesn't solve the problem, normal start leads to blue screen. I can go into repair mode then which starts to try and solve the problem, I then press the reset button and it will then give me the options again but normal start takes me into windows without fail, no blue screen.

 

The computer then stays on fine and works, if I put it in sleep mode, fine, restart, fine, turn it off for 30 minutes, problems.

 

Can anyone help me with this as I am wracking my brain.

[RandyL]

What was the last thing you did prior to the error?

[Dalo Harkin]

Also did you re format the drive when installing the new Win7?

 

Have you had a look in event viewer?

[josephcave86]

The last thing I did before the error was install the new motherboard and RAM. I am not sure if I re-formatted during the windows 7 install as it was a clean install but it showed some partitions in my hard drive and I was confused as to where I should install the new windows.

 

Haven't had a look in event viewer. When I do the system repair it finds no errors and loads windows when I reset but as soon as I turn off the computer overnight the same problem again 'Windows failed to start'

[josephcave86]

Ok bit of an update, new hard drive installed, so everything in the system is new even windows 7.

 

Did clean install with new hard drive, installed fine and loaded to windows. Didn't install anything more firewalls, drivers etc as I wanted to narrow things down. Turned the PC off and did a restart...no problems.

Turned the PC off and left it for 1 hour...blue screen of death when attempting to load windows. Error 0x00000019 BAD POOL HEADER.

 

What is wrong with this newly built machine I don't know, please help.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, after a dig around in Microsoft I found this page related to that bad pool header message, most seem to point to a corrupt driver, but have a look at some of the answers and see if anything makes a connection.

 

Search The Knowledge Base

 

One answer from one guy was basically what you have already done, which is a total reformat of the hard drive and a reinstall of W7.

Another had a problem with a driver associated with AOL. and some other entries are driver related.

However in your case, you haven't got anything much more than those drivers W7 will have installed as it installed itself.

You just might have a bad copy, might be worth trying to ask for a replacement, it isn't unknown for a windows disk to be faulty.

Nev.

[josephcave86]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the reply, I don't think Windows is the problem as I had blue screens on vista before I upgraded with W7 full version.

 

This is a cold boot problem because once in Windows I can shut down and if I turn the PC back on within 20 minutes it boots no problem. If turned off overnight i get the BAD_POOL_HEADER blue screen error.

 

I think this is a hardware problem as it occurs even after a full clean install of W7, I am slowly narrowing things down to the following parts:

 

Hard Drive - Brand new and BSOD with old one

Motherboard - This is the second one, with both BSOD

Power Supply - 700W really new

Ram - New, did Memtest86 no errors

GFX Card - New, BSOD with the last one

CPU - From my last PC, not new but not ancient

CD Drive - From my last PC

 

Any ideas? I am certain everything is plugged in and where it should be, all risers in the right place, flashing BIOS doesn't fix it. The ram is listed in the authorised distributers for the motherboard but the C7 version, mine is C9...could the timings be off?

I have increased the RAM voltage to working level.

[Plastic Nev]

Hum, we seem to have swapped just about everything out except for three components now, one is the CD drive, so first off, pull all plugs from that CD drive and see what happens, there just may be some oddity in it pulling power supply voltage down till it has warmed up a bit.

Next is that CPU, only a swap of that can prove it one way or the other.

The only thing left after that is the power supply itself, Doubt it, but again a swap is the only way to be sure if the other two don't sort it.

Nev.