My laptop won't boot.

DiscoStu

And so again I turn to the tech savvy of this forum...

My Lenovo Z570 running Windows 7 64-bit won't boot. It gets 15 seconds in, freezes, there's a split second BSOD, then it starts again and runs startup recovery. This doesn't work though. I've tried the other options to get to System Restore but it can't find any restore point.

The internet suggests that I boot from the W7 disc, but my laptop didn't come with one. Another suggestion is a faulty stick of RAM so I've taken one out at a time to isolate the 'faulty' one but it still won't boot with either one removed.

Here's the full sequence, all 90 seconds of it!

Windows 7 won't boot:

I managed to get a freeze frame of the BSOD, here is what it says. It might make sense to some of you!

https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10350408_10152724342349597_8663315651561585608_n.jpg?oh=676f6ffe9aac994116ac061c93f5cda4&oe=5506C323

Any ideas on what's wrong and how to fix it? You know more than me!

TheMarlin

It happened to me.  Basically, my HDD was kaput.  I had to install a new hard drive, and reinstall everything.  I hadn't backed up in a while either, so lost a shed load of data.

Hope yours is salvagable.

Marlin

DiscoStu

Oh crap.

Bod

I don't know about the IdeaPad range, but with Thinkpad range, there is a hard disk diagnostic built into the BIOS setup.  If so, give that a go...

digitalscream

The best description of this that I found was:

"Bug check 0x50 usually occurs after the installation of faulty hardware or in the event of failure of installed hardware (usually related to defective RAM, be it main memory, L2 RAM cache, or video RAM).

Another common cause is the installation of a faulty system service.

Antivirus software can also trigger this error, as can a corrupted NTFS volume."

So...unless you've installed some new software prior to the first instance, it's most likely video RAM (very bad news) or a hard drive issue.

It's not necessarily a bust hard drive, though - just a corrupt filesystem. Back up all your files, and wipe/reinstall Windows.

One easy thing to do - assuming you have a working computer somewhere - is to make a bootable Ubuntu USB drive and fire it up with that. This will achieve two things - first, it'll let you check that the computer will actually boot given a functional OS image. Second, it'll let you back your stuff up to an external drive without pulling the computer apart.

DiscoStu

I can't backup anything because Windows won't boot. There is no Safe Mode that I can find either. The laptop came with W7 pre-installed and there was no disc, so I can't wipe/reinstall either. If I got a disc from someone else would that work to boot it or does it have to be the EXACT disc that was used originally? 

The only recent new software I can think of is a Windows update at the end of last week.

digitalscream

Yes, you can - re-read my last paragraph

DiscoStu

digitalscream said:

Yes, you can - re-read my last paragraph ;)I 

I read it the first time. It didn't make any more sense the second time around hahaha! I have an old W98 desktop in the loft, would that work?

digitalscream

DiscoStu said:

digitalscream said:

Yes, you can - re-read my last paragraph ;)I 

I read it the first time. It didn't make any more sense the second time around hahaha! I have an old W98 desktop in the loft, would that work?

No, unfortunately. Borrow a laptop from someone (or even nip round next door and use theirs), go to the Ubuntu site and download the latest desktop installer image, then follow these instructions to make a bootable USB drive:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

Then, in theory, you should just need to fire up your laptop with the USB stick in and it'll boot to Ubuntu. Plug in an external drive, and you can copy all your files from there.

DiscoStu

If the second computer is just to download a file and write to USB, why won't my desktop work? Just curious.

digitalscream

DiscoStu said:

If the second computer is just to download a file and write to USB, why won't my desktop work? Just curious.

Because the software used to write the image to USB probably won't work on Windows 98. By all means try it, though

DiscoStu

Ok. The machines at work are W8. I'm popping in to town later so might just go in and use one of those.

digitalscream

Excellent. Good luck

grungebob

It's related to a driver issue, have you installed any new drivers or hardware? Do any drivers need updating? You could disable the page file for awhile until you find the culprit. Do as digitalscream suggest but you may need to enter setup on boot to make the sub stick a bootable device, it's usually del or F1 on startup to access the setup

digitalscream

grungebob said:

It's related to a driver issue, have you installed any new drivers or hardware? Do any drivers need updating? You could disable the page file for awhile until you find the culprit

It's not referring to the page file - it's referring to memory pages (basically, something tried to access an invalid memory address). He couldn't disable the page file anyway, because he can't get far enough into the OS to do so.

grungebob

I was referring to virtual men page filing in case that would help but then watched his vid to see its not getting to boot.

digitalscream

grungebob said:

I was referring to virtual men page filing in case that would help but then watched his vid to see its not getting to boot.

I know you were referring to the virtual memory, but as I said...that's not what this error is talking about at all. 99% of the time, it's either faulty hardware or a filesystem problem.

EDIT: For more clarity...nonpaged memory is a set of locations which must reside in physical memory and not virtual RAM, and almost exclusively used for kernel operations. This error means that something has tried to page one of those locations, which can't be done. Therefore, it can't be anything to do with the page file, because such an operation isn't allowable regardless of whether the page file is enabled or not.

grungebob

I'll bow to your knowledge. This worked for me on a Mac dual boot issue I had so thought it worth a shot.

Danny1969

That particular error can be caused by loads of things from a corrupt driver to bad ram \ HD

Try booting from the Lenova recovery partition, F11 on most models 

DiscoStu

@digitalscream I have ubuntu on a flash drive as per your link.

Switched my machine on with USB plugged in but it tries to load W7 as before with the same error.

Tried switching on then holding F12 which gives me the option to boot from USB drive, but still nothing. The USB drive blinks and lights up but nothing happens on screen, it's just black.

What does this say to you?

digitalscream

Did you follow those instructions above exactly? It looks like your USB drive just isn't bootable, which is odd.

Trying (genuinely!) not to sound condescending, but...you didn't just copy the Ubuntu image to the USB drive as a file, did you?