Please help me - Windows not loading

KiKi

closed wrote: »

you cant reinstall windows without a hdd in, that where windows goes.

Oh.
The shame.

you probably need to either alter the boot order in the bios, or hold down a key at boot, sometimes F12 to select boot from cd/dvd before hd.

Will try that later, and yes, will just swap if I can. If not, Amazon is my friend!

Thank you again, you've been a big help.
KiKi

closed

it probably is sata as it's fairly new, but double check it is sata by googling the disk model number, some pata disks in laptops come with a push fit adapter, which can end up making them look similar to sata connectors.

I'd get your data off before using the restore disk.

KiKi

Thanks - it does say Serial ATA on the back so I'll go with that for now.

KiKi

Hello again,

Asking politely for help one last time (I hope!). I have removed the HDD from my laptop and put it into an enclosure and USBd it to my netbook.

On my laptop I had two hard drive 'areas', of different sizes, listed separately under 'Computer', and I had named them both: 'Kiki' and 'Videos'. I used one for storing videos and the other for all the usual stuff.

Now I've linked the HDD up to my netbook, there are two drives listed. One is 'F: Videos', with all my videos that I can access. The other is 'E: Local disk'. When I click on 'properties' it has 0 used space and 0 free space. When I click on 'error check' it says that Windows can't access the drive to check for errors.

I cannot access E:. It firstly says that it needs to be formatted before use - which obviously I haven't done, as I *assume* it has all my data on it, and I assume that formatting it will wipe that data. When I say 'no' to formatting, it whirs some more then says:

"E:\ is not accessible. Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)"

Please help! Is this the section that *should* have my data? Or could this still be on the laptop somewhere? Is it possible there's another HDD in my laptop (I've looked, I can't see one on the base to take out)?

I ask because my laptop did have two separate drives listed under 'Computer', but I don't know if that means two actual drives, or one split into two. In addition, when I try to run Windows on my laptop (which I now understand is kept on the HDD), it gets stuck on one of the commands and won't go any further, so could it have corrupted this E: bit?

Lastly, when I try and re-install Windows on my laptop from a CD (I haven't done it yet), it did go all the way through to installation despite the HDD not being in the laptop, so *could* it be that there's another HDD in there somewhere?

I desperately hope I haven't lost all my data - the videos I care very little about, I wouldn't have minded losing that drive!

Thank you so much again to anyone who can help.
KiKi

debitcardmayhem

Ok look for my computer in the start list (press the windows key), then right click on that and select manage. Click on storage , and disk management you should see Disk 0 (your netbooks hard drive and Disk 1 which should be you lappy in the caddy, what does it say on the Disk 1 line

KiKi

Thanks DCM.

Disk 1 Basic 232.89 GB Online

Section a: 1.46 GB Healthy (Recovery Partition)
Section b: ( E: ) 116.44 GB RAW Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)
Section c: Videos ( F: ) 114.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)

debitcardmayhem

Hi again, I would assume that the "E" disk is your laptop's Windows disk. If you right click on the "disk" and select properties , and then select tools, then check for errors what happens ? (unselect the boxes for fix errors for now)

KiKi

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

Hi again, I would assume that the "E" disk is your laptop's Windows disk. If you right click on the "disk" and select properties , and then select tools, then check for errors what happens ? (unselect the boxes for fix errors for now)

As above - I can't do that as it says it can't access it.

danthemoneysavingman

if it is E:, coming up as RAW is bad news, I'd be surprised if you can get data back from it yourself (I'd also be happy to be surprised!)

I've tried tools like Power Data Recovery to no avail, but hope you fare better...

KiKi

danthemoneysavingman wrote: »

if it is E:, coming up as RAW is bad news, I'd be surprised if you can get data back from it yourself (I'd also be happy to be surprised!)

I've tried tools like Power Data Recovery to no avail, but hope you fare better...

I have no idea what RAW means...!

All I did was switch off my laptop. *sigh*