Windows 7 won't boot. Any suggestions

Factual Questions
1

I agreed to look at this for a friend. Its a Dell Latitude 3330. It came pre loaded with Win7. It does not have a CD Drive.

When you power it on, It goes to Windows error recovery. “Windows failed to Start, a recent hardware or software change might be the cause”. Then I can choose start Windows normally or launch startup repair.

If I choose startup repair it asks me to insert Windows installation disk. But there is no CD Drive or disk.

If I choose “Start Windows normally”, it goes to the starting windows splash screen, then briefly flashes the BSOD and back to windows boot manager.

I pulled the HD and connected it via eSATA to my PC, and all the files seem to be in order.

No hardware changes have been made. I’m thinking a BIOS setting. So I set BIOS to defaults and it does the same thing.

So friend said, this is just a secondary laptop, if you want, just load Ubuntu or something on it. So I tried to install Ubuntu by booting from a flash drive and I get ‘Invalid partition’

Any suggestions at all?

2

Check the BIOS?
Maybe it got switched from UEFI to Legacy mode, or some such? I’ve had that happen on power blips.

3

If so, shouldn’t resetting to defaults have corrected that?

4

I’ve never known startup repair to do any good (well, once, and we all marveled at it).

Have you tried booting in safe mode? It’s a long shot (it sounds more like some system files are corrupted), but worth a try.

5

I changed it to UEFI and have boot sequence set to:

1:Internal HDD
2:Flash drive

Says no bootable devices. :dubious:

6

Tried Safe mode. I get the safe mode menu, but again it starts loading then flashes BSOD and back to repair menu. I tried Safe mode, Last known good configuration etc.

Throwing Windows aside, I cant figure why it wont allow me to boot from USB?

7

Do you have a Windows 7 install disc? If so, boot from that, and follow the instructions in Method 2 of this link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2004518

edit: Oh, I see now that it has no CD drive. Huh…awkward.

8

ok, it looks like USB booting is off by default, so that explains it. Enter the bios, go to onboard devices, find the USB device, and change the option from NO BOOT to BOOT. Save and exit.

Now, if you can create a bootable USB key with Windows 7 install media, you can do what I suggested above.