Windows won't boot, stuck on blue logo black screen

[Alex Bessinger]

Well, here's my issue.
I just put a new HDD in this computer, and it was working perfectly fine for the past week or so until yesterday. If I shut the computer down, when I come back to restart it, it hangs up on the motherboard logo screen for probably about 3-5 min, then proceeds normally until it gets to the windows screen, then I get a black screen with the blue windows logo (no spinning dots). After that it just hangs up and won't proceed any further.
Yesterday when it happened I shut the computer down and turned off the for a few seconds, then tried again, and it went to windows auto repair, and suggested a restart, then it booted up just fine...
Anybody got any suggestions? Could this be a hardware issue? I got this computer used, and burned up two used hard drives (don't know how old either of them really were) in 2 weeks, maybe a coincidence, maybe that's related to this?
This is my computer I use for work, so I really need to get it fixed...
Thanks,
Alex

 

[Trouble]

I got this computer used

burned up two used hard drives

just put a new HDD in this computer

OK.... let's begin with a question "it's a used computer".
Do you know why it's a used computer? Do you know the history of the computer? Why the original owner got rid of it?

You're on your third hard drive.
Why? What were the symptoms for this "new" hard drive's predecessors? Did the computer exhibit similar symptoms with the other two hard drives?

With those questions in mind, I think I would first reduce the computer components to the bare minimums.
A single USB wired mouse, a single USB wired keyboard (depending on its' age a PS2 wired keyboard and mouse would be acceptable if not preferrable) and a single monitor.
Then I would make sure there were absolutely no other peripheral devices attached and I would probably reduce the installed RAM modules to a single stick of memory, while checking and confirming that the single hard disk was properly attached to the appropriate motherboard connector (assuming SATA, that would be SATA port 0) and that I was using a known good or new SATA cable for that connection.

I would probably also experiment by using a Linux Live distro on DVD or USB thumb drive and see if the computer booted and ran reliably from that.
https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=228 (64 bit version)
OR
https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=227 (32 bit version)
Grab the ISO burn it to a DVD or USB ThumbDrive and boot and run the computer from that.
Don't install it, just run the live environment for a while and see how it does.

Without knowing more about the details of the issues you're having or for that matter any detailed specifics about the computer itself, we can only guess.
The fact that it seems to be holding on the POST screen, might suggest that it is having issues enumerating hardware devices and handing off the bootstrap process to the appropriate device hosting the boot manager.