I've had a PC running Windows 7 in my office which I'm not using at the moment (cause I'm working elsewhere as a consultant atm). I access the PC using Team Viewer which means the PC has been running for quite some time now. I've restarted it maybe twice a week though. A few days ago I couldn't access it using Team Viewer and when I got to the office the screen was black with only the mouse pointer showing.
The PC has four hard disks, three of them (all 1TB) is using RAID 5. This is what I've done so far:
I reboot and everything seems to load correctly. I get to a screen that gives me two choices – boot Windows normally or perform a startup repair. Choosing to boot Windows only gets me to the Windows 7 logo screen which only animates over and over again. Choosing to repair gets me to the repair screen that "checks for problems" and then it gets stuck on the "Attempting repairs…"-screen (I let it run for about 24 hours before giving up).
What is the next step to take? I don't have any backups and no system restore points saved. I can access files and folders through a terminal window using a Windows 7 DVD so I guess nothing is lost yet.
Best Answer
This can either be hardware or software.
Boot in Safe mode, and if this works go backward and restore to before the problem happened. Else try to boot to The Last Known Good Configuration.
Next try is with How to Do a Repair Install to Fix Windows 7.
This will refresh Windows without erasing the installed applications.
If this doesn't work, try the Windows Memory Diagnostic from the Windows 7 boot CD or Memtest86+. A disk-test product may be found on your manufacturer's website.
If nothing is found, format all disks with slow format (not quick) and install Windows from scratch.
If this doesn't work, next stop is at the tech-shop.