System boots from recovery disk, then shutdown immediately at Win7 startup logo

[bherber]

I run a small repair shop.

My customer has an older P6607c.  It was intermittently booting all the way up to login, then shutting down.  After many attempts at repair using the recovery partition, we gave up and ordered a replacement hard disk.  (Customer DID create the Recovery disks from the partition when purchased!)  Have replaced the hard disk, but when trying to boot up with Recovery Disk-1 in the CD-drive, (or from a USB recovery flash drive), the system goes through "LOADING WINDOWS FILES", then displays the Windows7 logo with the swirling colors, and then immediately shuts down.  I've tried resetting (unplug power, hold down power switch for at least 30 seconds, then plug power back in, and then reboot); but this has no effect.  Since this is a brand new hard disk, this appears to be a problem in the BIOS or in the onboard video.   I'm out of ideas.

[Grzwacz]

Hi,

I don't work for HP. I also build new PCs and repair them

I don't know, the HP Recovery disks could be bad.

Try a clean Windows 7 install (Link) using a compatible graphics card. The chipset is about 13 years old so this could be a problem.

You have video so the onboard GPU should be okay which means a discrete graphics card is not the problem (sorry,may not be the solution).

You can get Windows 7 drivers for this system at this (Link).

[bherber]

I thought the recovery disk might be bad also.  So I have a flash drive with a Win7/64-bit install on it, and tried booting from it.  The same thing happened.  It loads the "Windows Files" from the USB and right after the Win7 logo comes up, the machine shuts down.   I agree that since the Windows logo comes up that rules out the onboard video.  But it's not loading enough of the OS on the new hard drive to even get to the point of loading drivers...

The fact that it was running Win7 and letting me login to the users account (before it stopped completely) tells me that the chipset shouldn't be the problem.  ... ???

Still stuck.

[Grzwacz]

Hi,

That is strange, maybe the power supply?

So you can't get to the Widows 7 main installation screen.

Is the USB stick set up to install Windows 7 using UEFI/GPT? Your problem description does not align with my experiences when the OS installation boot drive does not match the PCs capabilities.

This is just a thought.

How does the motherboard look, healthy? Again, a 13 year old PC is well past it's useful life.

Maybe it is time to get a new PC.

Added thoughts (edited):

How does the BIOS look? Can you see the HDD? Test the RAM.

Try replacing the motherboard battery.

Regards

[bherber]

Motherboard looks healthy enough.  Not much accumulated dust-bunnies and dust coverage.

I replaced the CR2032 motherboard battery.  BIOS came up and forced me to reenter system date/time.  Forced the BIOS to recognize and save the Seagate drive identifying information on the new drive; saved with F10.  Rebooted, both to the Recovery-1 DVD, and to the USB/Win7 disk installation image.  All reboots exhibit the same behavior: "Loading Windows files", "Starting Windows" graphic screen starts and then immediate system shutdown.

[Grzwacz]

Hi Bherber,

Gee, I don't know what to say.

Maybe try running HP USB or CD diagnostic software to check hardware.

Both downloads are in Diagnostic at this site (Link) when W7 is the selected operating system.

Regards

[bherber · Accepted solution]

I downloaded the "Vision DIagnostics Tool", and ran it.  (That's a GREAT tool!  Thanks!)  Everything was testing out great until it got to the Random Disk checks.  Apparently there is something wrong in the controller on the motherboard.  As you so correctly pointed out, it's a 13-year-old machine and at that point I just decided to contact the customer, "wrap it up and call it a day."

Thanks for the suggestions and for pointing me to the diagnostic tool.  You saved me a bunch of time and head-scratching.

B>