Windows 8 stuck at loading screen when booting - black screen when repairing

My Windows 8 installation is currently refusing to boot up correctly. It appears to be stuck on the screen with the Windows logo and spinning circle. The circle continues to spin but does not do anything - even after waiting for hours.

After rebooting multiple times, it tries to perform an automatic repair. This eventually displays a black screen with a movable mouse cursor in a low resolution, but nothing else appears, again after waiting for multiple hours.

I have tried hitting F8 to try to get into Safe mode, but it tries to do the automatic repair and I never get any option to boot into safe mode. I have tried Shift-F8 as well with no result.

I have also tried booting from the installation disc. This gets me to the point where I can select "Repair your computer", but this ends up with a blue screen with movable mouse cursor as above.

As a result, I cannot boot into Windows at all, and I cannot currently perform a refresh/reset.

I've run a memory test overnight, but there doesn't appear to be any errors.

Windows is installed on an SSD and I have two other hard disks attached. System is a Core 2 Duo in an Asus motherboard (will add model when I remember it) with 8G of RAM, Geforce 460. It's possible that there was an update installed before I rebooted, but since it happens automatically, I'm not sure.

I would prefer not to have to reinstall Windows. Are they any further steps to take to diagnose/fix this issue?

Solution 1:

I had this exact problem -- stuck on loading screen, would get to repair screen after a few reboots but wouldn't repair (just a mouse cursor), F8 wouldn't load safe mode, etc. The issue is almost certainly a SSD hard drive issue for me

Unplugging the USB peripherals did not work for me.

Inserting the Windows disk, booting the install and going to 'Repair' did not work for me.

Here's what DID work for me:

I removed the hard drive from the computer and used a 'hard-drive to USB' converter (costs about $10 on Amazon) to connect the hard drive to another computer. When it connected to my other computer, Windows detected errors on the drive and asked to fix it. I clicked accept and it took about 5 minutes to scan the drive and fix errors.

After that, I backed all my files from the broken computer's hard drive onto my working computer.

I reconnected the hard drive into my (previously broken) computer and it booted right up!

Solution 2:

The solution in this case was to unplug all of the USB peripherals from the PC, disconnect the power source for 10 seconds or so, then reconnect and start the PC. The automatic repair process then got through to the system restore screen. At this point I plugged the USB mouse and keyboard back in and started the system restore process. I was subsequently able to boot into Windows.

I'm not sure what the original cause was (and this is beyond the scope of the question). So, in this case, the answer is to disconnect all USB cables and restart.

Solution 3:

When you first see the spinning circle do an Control-Esc key combo to do a bypass boot. Then you can further analyze your issue from a running PC.