Big probs with W7 laptop - can't boot

_Andy_

Hi guys

After some urgent advice

My Lenovo W7 laptop started playing up earlier - crashing when I'd boot up and try do do anything etc.

Attempted to uninstall recent stuff (Texter, RescueTime).

Still had probs - went to boot in safe mood, no joy. Tried to boot as normal, keeps looping around the boot sequence (flashes up a bluescreen for a nano second). Tried start up repair which has had no impact.

Any ideas?

cheers

_Andy_

ETA: StartUp repair goes through and says 'startup repair cannot repair this computer automatically'

'Problem signature' shows StartUpRepairOffline problem event name

NiftyDigits

Use the Try Ubuntu function of Ubuntu as a Live CD to back up your important data to an external source and to check that it isn't a hardware problem....then run a destructive Factory Restore. Otherwise you could spend days...

_Andy_

Thanks - did that last night on USB. Prob is I can't seem to find any files there, it's almost like no programs are installed and no files are there, yet it seems to think at least 100gig of the HD is used. Starting to panic now!

NiftyDigits

_Andy_ wrote: »

Thanks - did that last night on USB. Prob is I can't seem to find any files there, it's almost like no programs are installed and no files are there, yet it seems to think at least 100gig of the HD is used. Starting to panic now!

Perhaps they have been hidden. Try the -o unhide switch. Example for a CD drive might be sudo mount /media/cdrom0/ -o unhide

But you are 'mounting' your HDD, so look for the suitable path for a HDD online.

Don't use Linux, so can't help you much more than that.

Another possibility is to take the HDD out and put it in a cheap caddy. Then use another Windows PC to retrieve the files. Then you can put it back and run a Factory Restore.


Have you tried the Kaspersky Rescue CD?
Have you Disabled the Automatic Restart so that you can take note of the Blue Screen error codes?

PZH

_Andy_ wrote: »

Hi guys

After some urgent advice

My Lenovo W7 laptop started playing up earlier - crashing when I'd boot up and try do do anything etc.

Attempted to uninstall recent stuff (Texter, RescueTime).

Still had probs - went to boot in safe mood, no joy. Tried to boot as normal, keeps looping around the boot sequence (flashes up a bluescreen for a nano second). Tried start up repair which has had no impact.

Any ideas?

cheers

My brother had a very similar issue a while ago. It turned out that the BIOS had reset itself (was looking for an IDE drive rather than a SATA) and could not see the partition that the main Win 7 files were on.

What was really confusing was that the boot files were in a different partition (on the same drive?) and therefore the machine would start to boot but then stop because it could find the rest of the files.

Once he set the BIOS to point to the correct port, it booted fine.

Just a thought....

(of course, it could always be a corrupt/failing hard drive ?)

_Andy_

Thanks guys.

Well earlier I managed to get booted using 'last known good installation' or whatever it's called.

Then Windows starting freezing again. Happened a couple of times. Tried updating Windows but froze.
Seems to freeze up but I can move mouse.

Problem is now, I can't boot at all, even in safe mode, as keeps going back to system recovery options every time which doesn't fix it and when I restart does the same.

Have now disabled auto-restart so I can write down BS stuff but now not getting that either!

Managed to grab some of my more important work files onto USB earlier when I did boot up. There isn't a ton of files on there but more worried about software, all the configuration etc.

Guess last option would be to put W7 ISO onto USB and try to reinstall but a) dont want to lose my software/files and b)dont know which version of W7 it is.,

aggh!

thanks again

_Andy_

ETA: tried Kapersky it didn't find any viruses

waddler_8

phoodless wrote: »

What was really confusing was that the boot files were in a different partition....

System Reserved partition.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg441289.aspx

_Andy_

OK given that I can't boot either normally or into safe mode, and that it's doing the 'loop' as above, aside from using a W7 disc to basically reinstall (got one on order for tomorrow), anything else I can try?

cheers

NiftyDigits

_Andy_ wrote: »

OK given that I can't boot either normally or into safe mode, and that it's doing the 'loop' as above, aside from using a W7 disc to basically reinstall (got one on order for tomorrow), anything else I can try?

cheers

No need to order a disc, you can download it yourself. The version of Windows is on the COA on the underside of the laptop, but that is fairly unimportant as you don't need that key to reinstall the OS.

What is the full model number?