I have a case of an HP8730W laptop running Win 7 Pro that will not start windows unless its docked. Once undocked it hangs at the "starting windows" screen. Of course HP looked at it and says its a Windows problem. A real head scratcher for me. I even have had no luck finding similar complaints on the web. I'm all ears.

Visit HP Support & Drivers to download and install the latest BIOS update for your specific HP laptop model. Also, make sure the battery is fully charged.Carey Frisch

Yep, did all of that. Still no go. And the thing of it is I hadn't taken it out of the dock for several weeks so trying to pin it to something that may have caused this is even more difficult.

You may find some troubleshotting ideas offered in this thread: Windows 7 hangs after wakeCarey Frisch