Windows Vista Continuous Reboot. No Splash

M

Manny5123

Member
I have an HP dv9000 running Vista Home Premium.

Here's the deal, for some reason my laptop is stuck in a continuous reboot cycle. It doesn't even give time for the splash screen to come up, nor the Windows logo screen. The ONLY way I can break this cycle is if I manually hold down the power button in the middle of one of the reboots. Then, when I power it back on, it lets me log in and whatnot. This is EVERY time that I turn my computer off or restart.

I found no solution to this, so last night I decided to do a complete system restore. I restored everything to the original factory settings. It was great, everything worked fine. Even my wifi which wasn't working began to work again. Then, I decided to run Windows Update. I chose to update the "Important" ones. This took a very long time, considering there were about 80-some-odd-number of updates. I went to bed. When I woke up this morning and tried to turn on my laptop, it began the continuous reboot cycle again.

Because of this, I'm almost certain that it has to do with a Windows Update. However, I don't know which one. I've ran a complete system restore again, but I'm afraid to install any Windows Updates.

Are there any suggestions as to which updates might be causing this? Any suggestions as to what may be causing this if it's not an update. Any suggestions as to what I could do?

Please, let me know if I need to provide more information. Thank you.

****UPDATE****

I stand corrected. After this second time around, I tried restarting, and the computer had the same issue. It began the reboot cycle, but eventually started up just fine.
 
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Hello Manny,

Its likely in the process of installing a service pack, which can require in some cases as much as 2-3 reboots. Think of a service pack like a mini install of the operating system. These things take time. The screen may even appear to go blank and not do anything when it is updating. Its best to let WU do its thing as you do need the important updates. None of those usually crash a system because they are usually security related published from MS themselves. Its when you let WU take care of more than just Windows stuff, like third party drivers for your video card, where problems can occur. Indeed, make sure you have all the important security updates and service pack 2 for Vista installed.

I would recommend setting WU to notify you but not automatically install the updates. This gives you a chance to at least go through the updates and if something does go wrong you have a better idea of what it might be whether thats a bad video driver WU installed or something else. This does require you to not ignore the notifications though, otherwise your computer may be at risk if you don't take care to update it reguarly.

If you continue to have boot issues after the next 2-3 reboots startup repair can usually fix this problem.
 
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kairozamorro, thank you for replying. I should have specified a little bitter. The laptop has been like this for the past few months. It's not something recent from a recent update.
 
Yes, but if you've recently re-installed Windows from recovery it'll need to reapply the updates. Have you tried startup repair to see if it fixes it?
 
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