hesitant oldie with non-starting 8-year-old Win7 desktop PC: advice appreciated

[Waysider74]

My first post; apologies for arriving so late at this forum, but I've never been much of a computer geek (changing a lightbulb is about as geeky as I get) and only discovered the forum's existence a little earlier whilst visiting the Windows 7 forum.

My problem is this. I have a 2012-built Windows desktop PC which has performed reliably and without a hiccough until January this year, at which time it started playing up: wouldn't power up, and sometimes powered off in the middle of me doing something. I took it into a repair shop and the folks there were very good and fixed it, or thought they had, because 2 weeks after I got it back it started switching off again without apparent reason. Back it went to the repair shop, and a new PSU was installed. That was 7 weeks ago. It has been OK since that repair until last week, when it powered up OK but Windows 7 refused to launch: just a cursor, flickering on screen. And nothing else.

I decided not to shut it down again and merely put it into sleep mode each night. It awoke OK every morning and functioned fine, but the day before yesterday I inadvertently clicked on the shut down instead of the sleep option, and yesterday when I came to boot up, nothing happened: Windows 7 again refused to launch. Finally, after spending the best part of an hour turning the mains power on and off, Windows actually ran.

I have no idea why. I could take it back to the repair shop but this would be the third time and I'd like to at least attempt to figure out for myself what's happening. As explained, I'm not the brightest when it comes to matters computing, but though now 74 years old I hope I'm not entirely stupid. My biggest difficulty right now is that I'm recovering from a stroke, so learning anything new is physically very tiring at a time of convalescence when trying to re-learn much that I've forgotten is already very taxing. However: I'd much prefer to make the effort.

Anyway. The specific point of this post is to ask if in a case such as this I should use Tweaking.com's repair program at this stage or is it recommended that I first I go the Windows route of sfc/scannow and see what results that might produce??

Decisions, decisions. Advice appreciated: thanks.

[Boggin]

It's a pity you didn't ask the repair shop what they did the first time.

I would first check the memory modules if you are up to opening up the case.

First of all, just reseat them in different slots and try the boot.

Next would be to remove all but one of the modules and try a boot, repeating this with just one of the other modules at a time.

Ensure you only hold the modules by their edges and note where the slot is on the module and press them fully home each time.

Prior to handling any memory modules, I always wash my hands and thoroughly dry them so that they are sandy dry.

Let me know how you get on with that.

The Tweaking.com repair program requires Windows to be booted up to work, so I don't think that will help at the moment.

If moving/checking the memory modules doesn't do it and you have access to another machine you can create a Hiren's Boot Disk - use the 15.2  version download.

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6966-hirens-bootcd.html

Tap F12 as you switch the machine on then use the cursor keys to select the DVD drive, insert the disk and press enter where hopefully it will boot the machine

[Waysider74]

@ Boggin: hanks for the speed-of-light response: much appreciated. I should've made it clear in my original post that I lack the skill and the confidence to handle PC hardware, it once took me most of one afternoon merely to open the Zalman case of this PC of mine. I did, however, enquire of the repair shop first time around what had gone wrong and the answer was: 'nothing to worry about. We've given it a thorough service and everything is working properly now' -- which it did, for a couple more weeks. 

Anyway. As the PC is up and running right now, I'm going to download the Tweaking.com repair app and run it. Fingers crossed.

[Boggin]

I think I would check your HDD first followed by a sfc /scannow.

Just in case you have forgotten, go Start - type cmd - right click on cmd when it comes up and select Run as administrator - accept the UAC and enter chkdsk /r

Enter y when prompted then enter shutdown /r /t 00 to effect an immediate reboot and wait for it to do its thing.

After the reboot upon completion, go Start - type eventvwr and press enter when it comes up.

Wait for it to read the data and then expand Windows Logs - click on Application - Action/Find and type chkdsk into the Find box and press enter.

Cancel the Find box and read the log in the scrollable window below.

Other than what else it reports, check to see if it reports any KBs in bad sectors - but hopefully the repair shop will have already have done this as well as checking the memory modules.

Faulty memory modules can cause a machine to shutdown without warning and a failing HDD can cause boot problems.

If the chkdsk /r doesn't report any bad sectors then run another cmd prompt as an administrator and enter sfc /scannow to see what that reports.

Running a chkdsk and sfc /scannow are advised pre-steps to running the Tweaking.com repair program.

[Waysider74]

Hi Tom:

Sorry to have taken up your time, and many thanks for your help and advice. I *had* entirely forgotten how to initiate the checkdisk procedure so your step by step guide was much appreciated! (I've cut it out and kept it for future reference.)

Because of my own post-stroke memory problems -- rather than the computer's -- I am finding things to do and procedures to follow much more difficult than I used to, and the result of that is a rising frustration (with myself) that doesn't help at all. So.. . . having forgotten how to initiate checkdisk and hesitant about continuing to blunder along, I decided to take the risk of trusting to Tweaking.com's repair program, and running "all repairs" in Safe mode. There were some optional preliminary steps to pursue including a complete power down, but I skipped those because having just suffered the lengthy frustration of the PC failing to even launch Windows, I figured I'd best run the repair program whilst such was still possible -- admittedly, I did, however, tick the check box to reboot to Safe mode with networking.

The reboot worked fine and I left the program to it. About 90 minutes later, I returned to the PC and  there were no warning screens on display so I (again) trusted to luck (and the brilliance of unknown others) and went to Start / restart. And yay!! It worked!! The computer re-started, no hesitation at all, Windows was up and running in under 30 seconds. (I have the OS installed on an internal SSD.)


Meantime, the repair shop had been back in touch, it's a lovely, friendly, response little firm which although we're in the middle of lockdown is doing what it can to offer a value for money emergency service, and it offered to look at the PC as soon as I could drop it off.

That hasn't proved necessary, because all is cured. Or rather, I think it is. I'll post a separate query in regard to the other problem.

Once again, then, many thanks for your help and sincere thanks to all those involved in the writing of the latest version  4 of the Windows Repair program. My PC is shutting down as it should now and booting up as it should, too -- can't do better than that!   

[Boggin]

Glad to see that all it took was the Tweaking.com repair program, but perhaps you should still run a sfc /scannow to see what it reports - hopefully it will report no integrity violations.

Run the cmd prompt as an admin as I've previously described and enter sfc /scannow (note the space before the / ).

As you use a SSD then a chkdsk /r would not have applied as TRIM would have been activated by Windows to manage your SSD.