The short story: I've got two Windows 8's on a machine: one OEM and one retail Pro which I just installed. The light-blue "OS Selector" screen which it boots to will hang after about 10 seconds. Within those 10 seconds, I can click to boot the OEM Windows 8, and it will boot fine. If I select the new retail Pro, it'll start booting that and then hang.
The longer story: I've got a Samsung Chronos7 laptop which has an OEM Windows 8 installed on it. For reasons which I won't go into, I got it into a strange state such that I can't use it for development work. So, I decided to install a fresh Win8 Pro retail next to the existing OEM version.
The install went fine. I could boot into the new Win8, and I started installing my development tools, mail client, Dropbox, etc. etc... and installed about Windows 48 updates (and I noticed that a few items in Device Manager which had, when I first looked, were unidentified, had disappeared from "Unidentified Hardware" and, presumably, were in their proper categories and without yellow problem flags).
Then, when I rebooted, I got the light-blue OS selector screen where I got to choose between the two Win8's (and then I heard an interesting "thump" from the speakers)... and the 30-second timer started counting down... until it got to 20 seconds, and then the machine just locked up. No mouse cursor movement, no hard-drive activity... nothing. Every time I boot it, it does that same thing: Thump from the speakers, clock ticks down to about 20 seconds, and then hangs.
Now, within those 10 seconds, I can click on either of the Win8 icons and get them booting. If I click on the OEM one, it'll launch fine (but it's still unusable for my development work, mind you). If I click on the new retail one, then it will hang at the little circling dots. If I start launching the new Win8 before the "speaker thump", I'll still hear it while Windows 8 is launching (before it hangs).
So... I'm figuring that something about the stock Win8 drivers is different from the OEM-packaged drivers, or something about the Windows updates on the new version has altered the boot loader, of all things. But now I'm kinda stuck, because I can't figure out how to boot into any sort of "Safe Mode" in the new Win8 install (I tried pressing F8 at just about every step of the boot process), so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to disable any hardware or roll back some drivers or restore to a previous restore point.
- Joe
The longer story: I've got a Samsung Chronos7 laptop which has an OEM Windows 8 installed on it. For reasons which I won't go into, I got it into a strange state such that I can't use it for development work. So, I decided to install a fresh Win8 Pro retail next to the existing OEM version.
The install went fine. I could boot into the new Win8, and I started installing my development tools, mail client, Dropbox, etc. etc... and installed about Windows 48 updates (and I noticed that a few items in Device Manager which had, when I first looked, were unidentified, had disappeared from "Unidentified Hardware" and, presumably, were in their proper categories and without yellow problem flags).
Then, when I rebooted, I got the light-blue OS selector screen where I got to choose between the two Win8's (and then I heard an interesting "thump" from the speakers)... and the 30-second timer started counting down... until it got to 20 seconds, and then the machine just locked up. No mouse cursor movement, no hard-drive activity... nothing. Every time I boot it, it does that same thing: Thump from the speakers, clock ticks down to about 20 seconds, and then hangs.
Now, within those 10 seconds, I can click on either of the Win8 icons and get them booting. If I click on the OEM one, it'll launch fine (but it's still unusable for my development work, mind you). If I click on the new retail one, then it will hang at the little circling dots. If I start launching the new Win8 before the "speaker thump", I'll still hear it while Windows 8 is launching (before it hangs).
So... I'm figuring that something about the stock Win8 drivers is different from the OEM-packaged drivers, or something about the Windows updates on the new version has altered the boot loader, of all things. But now I'm kinda stuck, because I can't figure out how to boot into any sort of "Safe Mode" in the new Win8 install (I tried pressing F8 at just about every step of the boot process), so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to disable any hardware or roll back some drivers or restore to a previous restore point.
- Has anybody heard of this kind of problem (hanging at the light-blue OS selector) before? Any suggestions? Is there a way for me to, perhaps, replace the Win8 boot files in the EFI System Partition with the "working" ones from the OEM install?
- At what point of the boot process am I supposed to be able to switch to Safe Mode?
- Is there a way to roll back driver or restore to a restore point if I have a Windows 8 Recovery CD or USB?
- Joe
My Computer
System One
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- OS
- Win8