M17x R4 not booting into Windows

I tried fixing this a year or two ago, gave up. Found the laptop again, so I have to either fix it or dump it.

I was playing a game, and it was fine for a while then it just rebooted. I didn't know why. I assumed it had overheated. Then it wouldn't boot into windows. It would hang up at "Starting Windows" with no HDD activity whatsoever. Tried what I knew to no avail.

I thought the boot section was corrupted so I reformatted it. Didn't fix it. Left the CMOS battery off for an hour, didn't fix it. Reseated GPU, nope. Reseated RAM, nothing.

I'm getting frustrated. Laptop detail in sig, I recall.

 

Does it still boot up ?

 

It hangs up at the windows logo. When you see the logo coming together just before the desktop. So, yes it still boots up. I still have working have RAM, video, and HDD.

 

Try testing your HDD by powering the laptop no and pressing F12 multiple times for a boot menu. There will be an option for diagnostics.

 

Just did the diagnostics, it passed all the hardware sections.

 

Try to remove the hard drive , slap in a new hard drive , it should prompt you to install OS , if it start the install process , Your old hard drive is corrupted.

 

If you have Windows DVD, which came with your laptop, try installing Windows from that. Choose to format the HDD fully (if you are ok with data loss) in order to avoid any software issues.

You could also try removing the GPU (with the heatsink fully attached, unless you have some thermal compound and don't mind re-pasting the card) and see if it boots on Intel graphics card.

 

I found the problem. The GPU is dead. It had been using the onboard video when booting up until it gets to loading windows then hung up when it switches to the GPU because the GPU was dead. It died without warnings whatsoever. One moment I was gaming, then the next it was rebooting.

Using only the onboard video, it booted up into the desktop just fine without any issues whatsoever. 2 years of it in my dresser drawer doing nothing because of the dead 7970M...

I bought it in May of 2012, and I just discovered it died January of 2014.

Replace or upgrade? Might as well throw in more RAM and a SSD while I'm at it!

 

Just upgrade it. Whatever you can afford.