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I am a proud one year owner of an Ideapad u510 ultrabook. The ideapad came with Win 8 preinstalled on it. The machine ran fine with the Pro upgrade and then the 8.1 upgrade couple of months ago. I didn't have any problems with it at all until last week. Just last week it has had a problem with booting into windows (right now it is stuck at the Lenovo splash screen - obvs I am writing this on a different computer - but yeah it has been stuck at the splash screen for 10 minutes). I have a clean system image of the ultrabook and a backup of the data on the machine so when this problem began I did a win 8 system image restore to the working image and restored the data. The computer ran great after the restore. I turned the computer off. The next day, I turned it on and it wouldn't boot into windows. It was stuck at the Lenovo splash screen for about 10 minutes then the blue Windows sad face screen appeared with a message that something bad happened, restarted, then attempted an "automatic system repair" which didn't work so the Win 8 help menu/recovery console appeared asking me if I wanted to continue booting or do troubleshooting. This time I used the Lenovo OneKey recovery to the working image I had before which successfully ran and I was able to do my work then I turned it off. Next day I get the same problems with booting into Windows (the same exact things happened). So, I thought maybe the hard drive is failing. I had a spare working hdd. I put that in, did the Lenovo OneKey recovery image restore to the new hdd. I then rebooted only to be greeted with the same problem! (10 minutes at Lenovo splash screen, restarts on own, attempts automatic repair, goes to win8 recovery console). So, I don't think the problem is with the hard drive.

Now, the original hard drive is in it. I then go back to factory defaults (the handy side button on the IdeaPad) and it was working fine, i.e., I was able to install all of the Windows 8 updates between the factory release of the u510 to today, the machine has restarted a few times successfully (installing updates) but when I powered it off then turned it back on it has been stuck at the lenovo splash screen for now 15 minutes.

Suggestions? I don't think it's a Windows problem. I'm leaning toward hardware. I've ruled out the hard drive. Is it RAM? A mobo component? A problem with UEFI?

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I work for Lenovo as a repair tech, repairing customer returns and leased computers,getting them ready to be reimaged and sold as refurbished units.

I am thinking hardware or driver issue. Your problem is happening really low in the boot order and so I am thinking antivirus program or graphics problem to start with and then we'll want to look at Intel Rapid Start and maybe your SSD card. The U510 comes with a 24 or 32 GB SSD that is used for storing what was in your ram when you closed down. I could be way off here but lets try a boot log. You can see the instructions for doing so here:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/startup-settings-boot-menu-in-windows-8/

The boot log will be stored as c:\windows\ntbtlog.txt Recovering the log may get a little tricky as if your computer crashes as we want it to do. When you reinstall you will wipe the log out. Try doing a refresh in the advanced boot options and not a full reinstall.

Don't install an antivirus program and be sure to uninstall any you have loaded. You may want to google for a special uninstaller for the AV you do have installed. AV's install really low in the boot order to try and load before any viruses can. Try one of these: :)

http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?page=content&id=SOLN146

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