HP G61 Laptop Extremely Slow, Can't Get Into Windows

Jephph

Senior member
Feb 11, 2006
333
0
0
I've got an HP G61-429wm Laptop here. It's running really slowly, and won't boot into Windows, or even a Windows disc. On bootup, it will show the underscore for ~15 seconds, then it will start to load Windows (I believe it's Windows Vista). Once it's done with the loading screen, the screen will go black, for hours.
The computer was running very hot, in the upper right section especially. I opened it up, and cleaned out the fan, and it's running cooler now, but it still runs really slow and won't boot into Windows.
When I try to boot to a Windows disc (I've tried Vista 32 and 64, as well as Windows 7), it will get to the load screen, go black for a few minutes, then show the default background, with a cursor, and I can move the cursor around, but there is nothing to click, and no combination of buttons does anything either (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Windows+R, Esc, Enter, etc) Right click also does nothing.
Other things I've tried:
UBCD- got in and ran clamscan (I could only scan the boot sector of the main drive, the partition wouldn't show up in a normal scan.
Also tried AVG Recovery CD- came up clean (not sure if it actually scanned the Windows partition though)
Tried removing memory sticks one at a time (there are two total, I tried many combinations)
I tried to get into UBCD4Win, but it would pop up a Blue Screen every time (0x7B), I looked that up, and it seems fairly common, but none of the fixes seemed to work for me.
Also, went into BIOS and set everything to default.
Can't get into Safe Mode or Last Known Good (same result, black screen, forever)
None of these things had any effect.
Any help would be much appreciated.
 

Bubbaleone

Golden Member
Nov 20, 2011
1,803
4
76
The HP website says the OS for the G61-429WM is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. One option would be to try a factory reset which gives you the option to backup your personal data.

See this link for instructions: Performing an HP System Recovery (Windows 7).

Before trying that, have you tried accessing the advanced recovery options by tapping the F8 key during initial boot?
 

Jephph

Senior member
Feb 11, 2006
333
0
0
So... I ran SeaTools on the drive. The scan found errors and was able to fix some of them but not all. After that, when trying to boot up the computer normally, it automatically ran chkdsk, and fix more errors, and after another reboot, it's now loading into Windows. Issue resolved. Thank you.
 

fastamdman

Golden Member
Nov 18, 2011
1,335
70
91
I highly recommend reformatting and re-installing windows 7 if you have the ability to. Good to hear you are back in windows, but I doubt ALL of your issues are fixed. I recommend a fresh install of windows once a month if you have your data backed up and it's not to difficult for ya.