# Windows consistently freezing after power outage



## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

I'm not sure if this is Windows or a hardware issue. A little while back, there was a power outage in the area and my PC shut off. It was connected to a surge protector, but the surge protector did not trip. Everything else which was plugged into the power strip is working fine. When I booted up the PC, everything started normal, albeit a bit slow. As soon as the PC has booted up, however, it starts moving sluggishly until windows eventually freezes. The computer will freeze after accessing firefox, the start menu, or task manager. I haven't tried many other programs, but I'm confident just about anything that runs through windows is freezing. Again, I'm not sure if windows is the problem, but it seems correlated. I am running Windows 7.

I have tried running a system restore before booting up, but the restore always fails at the very end. When I press CTRL+ALT+DEL in an attempt to access the task manager, the screen goes black and the cursor turns to a wheel. After several minutes, the wheel will stop and a prompt will appear stating "The logon process was unable to display security and logon options when CTRL+ALT+DELETE was pressed. If the operating system does not respond, press ESC or restart the computer by using the power switch."

I opened up my tower to see if any hardware was visibly damaged, but everything looks normal, at least visually. 

Any idea what could be causing the issue here?


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Hi do you have a install or recovery disc to attempt a repair ? do you have a recovery partition ? what is the make and model of the computer


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## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

I do not have a recovery disc or any other means of booting from disc. The PC is a HP Pavillion Elite 112-y (2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X4 925 3.2GHz Intel Core i5 560 with 8GB 1,333MHz DDR2 SDRAM). I have also installed an Nvidia GTX 260 (896 MB GDDR3) and a 630 watt power supply.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

You can create a Windows Repair disc with a working computer that has Windows 7
System Repair Disc - Create - Windows 7 Forums


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## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

I have a small laptop which I'm using in the meantime, but it doesn't have any optical drives. Is it possible to boot from a thumb drive or external hard drive, or will I need to find a way to get a copy burnt to disc?


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Does the computer in question have the option to Boot from USB in Setup (Bios) under Boot Sequence? If not, you can't. But if you do, Use WinToFlash to make a bootable USB Flash Drive


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## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

I'm not seeing anything for USB. I have 4 boot devices. CD-ROM, HDD, Floppy, and Network Boot. I'm guessing there's no option here for USB? Seems strange to have a floppy option on a PC with no floppy drive


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

You can not boot from a USB drive on that computer. So, you will have to either borrow a 7 disc, or burn a boot disc on somebody else's computer. You can also remove the HDD from the laptop and attach it to a working computer via USB Adapter and do a Check Disk on the drive.


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## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

So this is strange. It's been a week or two since the initial problem, which had been occurring for several days. Last night I booted up to check the setup options I had in my BIOS. I decided to leave the PC on and see how long it would go without interaction before it froze. Well, it never did. I kept at it, eventually opening more programs an pushing the envelope. It never crashed. I made some boot discs at this point but I'm curious how to move forward. There was a definite problem with the PC before. Could a week of inactivity really have solved anything? What should I do now? I'm concerned that whatever the issue is, it's in remission and will return if not checked


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Hi check the event viewer for info around the time of the issue


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## Sinrus (Nov 16, 2008)

I scanned around the time of the outage, but I'm not seeing anything. I know the outage occurred in the middle of the night but all of these reports are no later than midnight. There are a slew of errors reported by bonjour services, but I do not believe this is related


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

Can you borrow a copy from a friend and try the repair


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