PC Hangs in BIOS, can't Boot

I suppose some one has encountered this issue before, but I haven't.

When I turn the power on, my desktop PC (a Hewlett-Packard) goes into a BIOS startup routine that says "Preparing Automatic Repair" and then "Diagnosing Your PC" which has to finish before it will load Windows or any OS. I've seen it before, and usually it just takes a few seconds. But now it's stopping at the "Diagnosing" message and won't go any further. I turn it off and on, and it does the same thing again. I can get into the BIOS menus and choose other options like booting from another drive, recovery options, etc. but no matter what I choose it starts the BIOS over again and gets hung up on the "Diagnosing" step, so I can't boot ANYTHING.

Anybody know a way to bypass or break out of this BIOS startup loop so I can get to Windows?

At Restart press Esc to get to the Boot Menu or F10 for Setup.

Yes, that takes me to the BIOS menus. But whenever I choose any kind of boot or recovery options from there, it goes back to the "Diagnosing" screen and hangs again. It's hanging during a BIOS routine that has to complete before anything can be booted or loaded.

F10 will get you into the BIOS on an HP.

You could download Hiren's Boot CD from my link below, and boot to it, go into Dos Programs and then hard Drive Tools, find the brand of your HD and use the tool for it, see if it has Read Element Failure.

Or you can download the tool for the drive from who made the drive, check the HP website for the laptop, find out who made the HD, then go to that site and download the tool. You will have to run a full drive scan, but the quick test will tell you if you need to run it.

If you have a solid state drive, you will have to use the tool from who made the SSD drive, the failure issues are different.

Thanks, but I can't download anything if I can't even boot. I've called HP and Microsoft, and everybody says it looks like disk failure and I'll need a new hard drive.

I have a USB Flashdrive configured for recovery, but I can't boot from that either. A computer can't read or load or boot anything until it finishes the BIOS startup routine, and it won't finish. Last night I left it on with the BIOS still running, and this morning it was off but when I turned it on it went right back into the same BIOS "trap" that I can't escape from.

it sounds like a windows 8 boot routine, not a bios boot routine. i had this problem and it wouldnt go past the diagnosing/repair routine. in the end i had to boot from win 8 cd and try a repair manually from the dos prompt, using the bootrec and bcdedit commands.

i dont know about your laptop, but my toshiba lets me go straight to the boot bios by holding down the F12 key when i power on, from there i get the option to boot straight away from cd, usb etc.

Dragon Drop said:

Thanks, but I can't download anything if I can't even boot. I've called HP and Microsoft, and everybody says it looks like disk failure and I'll need a new hard drive.

I have a USB Flashdrive configured for recovery, but I can't boot from that either. A computer can't read or load or boot anything until it finishes the BIOS startup routine, and it won't finish. Last night I left it on with the BIOS still running, and this morning it was off but when I turned it on it went right back into the same BIOS "trap" that I can't escape from.

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Can you get to 'Setup' in BIOS?

It's OK now. Thanks for all the advice. The BIOS menus worked, but I couldn't do anything with drive C.

It turned out that my hard drive was shot, but HP sent me a new one under the warranty. I had my data backed up on flashdrives, so not much harm done.