Computer suddenly won't boot

I have a Windows 8 Pro x64 and yesterday it was working fine... Now, I turn it on, the dots go around in circles for a long while and then the screen just turns off. After a few reboots, it goes into automatic repair and I'm stuck in a loop.

I haven't done any software changes or hardware changes so I'm completely confused.

Disconnect all USB devices and try to boot a couple of times..

Yah - Sometimes USB drives cause it to hang like that. Also, my rote response to this kind of problem, run an external disk scanning program, your drive may have developed bad sectors. You can download GWscan and install it to a bootable disk, or you can download Hiren's Boot CD and use the Dos Programs that are on there. I'd just make sure your drive is in good order before trying anything else. I suggest Hiren's because it has "Mini-XP" which you can use to run a full CHKDSK without having to D/c your system drive and connect it to another system.

XweAponX said:

Yah - Sometimes USB drives cause it to hang like that. Also, my rote response to this kind of problem, run an external disk scanning program, your drive may have developed bad sectors. You can download GWscan and install it to a bootable disk, or you can download Hiren's Boot CD and use the Dos Programs that are on there. I'd just make sure your drive is in good order before trying anything else. I suggest Hiren's because it has "Mini-XP" which you can use to run a full CHKDSK without having to D/c your system drive and connect it to another system.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll try that. Btw I don't have any sub drives plugged in

Ok, then just check the status of the Drive. So, you will need to download Hiren's Boot CD from the link below my Fringe Pic. Burn it and boot from it, go into "Dos Programs" and choose "Hard Drive Tools"

Locate GWscan, WDdiag or the Seagate utility, which ever one is for the brand of the drive, usualyl GWscan can do more than one brand.

Check SMART with GWscan and then run the short test. If you come up with "Read Element Failure" then run the full test, it should take about an hour.

After you have done this, boot to Mini XP then hit Start and find the Check Disk link in the menu. Or, open the Command Prompt and run the full CHKDSK /x /r

Once that it done, boot to 8, and allow it to run ALL of it's Diag routines if it wants to. DO NOT interrupt those, unless you want to go all the way back to the beginning, because if you interrupt it, it WILL put bad sectors on the drive. Which may have been what happened.

Sometimes this happens when Win 8 begins an Auto Diag process, and then closes by itself. I've seen this happen as well. It will start the Diag, then give me a Blue Screen error - This is the same as interrupting it, and it can foul up whatever sectors it was scanning when it happened.

This was in fact the first Problem, I ever had with Windows 8 and it was the first post I ever posted in these forums, I made a kind of Tutorial on how to check your drives properly. It's probably buried in this forum somewhere. The problem is, Windows 8 can fix a bunch of things, but it cannot repair Read Element Failure.


Here, it was my first post so it may not be written well:

http://www.eightforums.com/general-support/23458-repairing-hosed-windows-8-boot.html