Intermittent Freeze at Blue Logo during Boot

jester4519 · 25 Oct 2018

Within the last few weeks, my PC started having an issue where it intermittently hangs at the blue windows logo during boot. About 50% of the time, it boots normally without hanging. The other 50% is a mixed bag. Sometimes it will boot fine after 1 or 2 hard resets. Other times it takes a trip or two through the "Automatic Repair." Whenever it goes into automatic repair, I always get the "could not repair your PC" message. Once the computer finally boots into Windows, it works perfect. No errors or issues. It is rock solid.

To date, here is everything I have done:

1. Scanned HDD for errors using CHKDSK. No Problems detected
2. Tested HDD with SeaTools. Passes with no issues
3. Tested RAM with both Windows Memory Diagnostic & MEMTEST. No Issues
4. Ensured that all device drivers are up to date.
5. Updated to the latest BIOS revision for my MB
6. Scanned for malware - nothing found
7. Ran SFC \Scannow
8. Ran Dism Restorehealth
9. Disabled fast startup in Windows
10. Disable AppXSvc in the registry

My PC was originally a Win7 machine but was upgraded to Win10 during the free upgrade period. It never had any of these issues until recently. Not sure if it could be related to a windows update or not. I haven't installed any new hardware recently. It is the same exact hardware from the day I built it.

I haven't tried re-installing Windows yet. I don't want to go through all of that work unless I am confident it will solve the problem. Any suggestions on what else to try?

DreadLord · 25 Oct 2018

Check the event viewer for the times it does this, will likely give you a better idea.

joeandmarg0 · 25 Oct 2018

Freezing is often caused by graphic card/ tdr problems.Check Reliability History for any indications,the most frequent culprit is "nvlddmkm.sys".
The time delay response[tdr] can be reset to zero via regedit and this has the effect of working as it did in XP.
The key to visit is:
hklm\system\controlset001--or 002\control\graphicsdrivers The 001 or 002 seems to vary,don't know why.
The "tdrdelay" can be reset to e.g. 10 and this will cause the gpu to wait for longer before responding.
Warning regedit can be a health hazard.

spunk · 26 Oct 2018

Try a Clean Boot. If that works, add one Startup item or Service at a time rebooting each time, until the computer hangs, then you will know what the problematic program is.

AndreTen · 26 Oct 2018

Another thing to try is resetting hibernation file (assuming you have one). Turning off fast startup isn't good enough. Type in elevated command:

powercfg -h off

reset machine, and you can revert it, if you want (no need to).

And rebuild your boot menu. many ways to do it, I prefer doing it with Macrium (boot with Macrium recovery stick and select repair boot). You should make a backup image, if you don't have one, anyway. Macrium is great for that too

hello10 · 26 Oct 2018

You might also want to make your startup verbose to be able to note in which stage the issues are coming up.

jester4519 · 29 Oct 2018

I haven't had it hang up on me now for about 3 days. In my experience, intermittent problems like this are really difficult to diagnose. Anyway, I looked at reliability history and I could not find any reference to nvlddmkm.sys. However, I did see this message multiple times: Windows failed to start because of missing system files. When I view the technical details, it shows this: The following file necessary for Windows startup was corrupt: d:\boot\resources\custom\bootres.dll. What I find strange, is that if this is truly corrupt, wouldn't it prevent Windows from starting every time? I don't see how the machine would boot fine after a hard reset. To be clear, when the computer fails to boot, I am not getting a BSOD. It just simply stops at the blue windows logo screen where you would normally see the spinning dots. I might get 2 or 3 frozen dots and that is it. Now, since I disabled fast startup, there are no dots any longer but this is the screen I am trying to describe.

hello10 · 29 Oct 2018

jester4519 said:

What I find strange, is that if this is truly corrupt, wouldn't it prevent Windows from starting every time?

I understand DLL is a library file. Probably, if you hit a corrupt EXE file, you wouldn't even be able to continue the process.

AndreTen · 29 Oct 2018

jester4519 said:

I haven't had it hang up on me now for about 3 days. In my experience, intermittent problems like this are really difficult to diagnose. Anyway, I looked at reliability history and I could not find any reference to nvlddmkm.sys. However, I did see this message multiple times: Windows failed to start because of missing system files. When I view the technical details, it shows this: The following file necessary for Windows startup was corrupt: d:\boot\resources\custom\bootres.dll. What I find strange, is that if this is truly corrupt, wouldn't it prevent Windows from starting every time? I don't see how the machine would boot fine after a hard reset. To be clear, when the computer fails to boot, I am not getting a BSOD. It just simply stops at the blue windows logo screen where you would normally see the spinning dots. I might get 2 or 3 frozen dots and that is it. Now, since I disabled fast startup, there are no dots any longer but this is the screen I am trying to describe.

Not necessary corrupted file, it can also means that file location is bad and it's missing.

Try to rebuild boot menu (again, Macrium is great for this, and also make whole system image - you may need it).

jester4519 · 30 Oct 2018

DreadLord said:

Check the event viewer for the times it does this, will likely give you a better idea.

I had the boot issue again this AM. There was nothing in the event viewer for the time that it happened. The first entry wasn't until I was able to finally get it to boot about 20 minutes later. Also, nothing in reliability history this time at all. I'm starting to wonder if it is a hardware issue.