A Hard Disc Error is Preventing Windows from Starting - update

tesuhoha

Fightsback wrote: »

Don't spend your way of this yet, check to see if there are a set of recovery disk with the laptop first.

I have already checked that. No discs were sent when the laptop was bought. All the paperwork is in my daughter's chest of drawers and she said she couldn't remember being sent a disc but if she had it would be there with all the leaflets etc.

NiftyDigits

You need to decide on a course of action, before spending.

Changing the HDD is not a terrible idea. Prices from around £35.

Then it's usually just a matter of swapping the drives over and installing the OS.

If there is important data on the old HDD, one can place it into an external HDD casing, costing less than £5. This should turn it into an external USB drive. Once the laptop is up and running, she can plug it in in order to retrieve her old data, if it is at all possible.

The other choice is to try to use a 'Boot disc' to try to repair and recover data on the HDD. They may or not work. In addition, the HDD may go on to work for ages or die suddenly.

The £7.99 disc will not reinstall Windows. You'll need another disc for that...which is in your Inbox.

tesuhoha

NiftyDigits wrote: »

You need to decide on a course of action, before spending.

Changing the HDD is not a terrible idea. Prices from around £35.

Then it's usually just a matter of swapping the drives over and installing the OS.

If there is important data on the old HDD, one can place it into an external HDD casing, costing less than £5. This should turn it into an external USB drive. Once the laptop is up and running, she can plug it in in order to retrieve her old data, if it is at all possible.

The other choice is to try to use a 'Boot disc' to try to repair and recover data on the HDD. They may or not work. In addition, the HDD may go on to work for ages or die suddenly.

The £7.99 disc will not reinstall Windows. You'll need another disc for that...which is in your Inbox.

Thank you, that is very helpful.

tesuhoha

My daughter brought her laptop home with her this weekend. We tried the recovery disc that I downloaded from Windows but no luck. The instructions just kept going round in circles without going anywhere.

Then we tried the recovery discs that I bought from Amazon. They worked like magic. Windows 7 is back to normal and all of her data has been saved so I am really pleased.

windowslasvegas369

NiftyDigits wrote: »

You need to decide on a course of action, before spending.

Changing the HDD is not a terrible idea. Prices from around £35.

Then it's usually just a matter of swapping the drives over and installing the OS.

If there is important data on the old HDD, one can place it into an external HDD casing, costing less than £5. This should turn it into an external USB drive. Once the laptop is up and running, she can plug it in in order to retrieve her old data, if it is at all possible.

The other choice is to try to use a 'Boot disc' to try to repair and recover data on the HDD. They may or not work. In addition, the HDD may go on to work for ages or die suddenly.

The £7.99 disc will not reinstall Windows. You'll need another disc for that...which is in your Inbox.

Thank you very much, thats exactly the kind of help and advice im looking for.

Fightsback

tesuhoha wrote: »

My daughter brought her laptop home with her this weekend. We tried the recovery disc that I downloaded from Windows but no luck. The instructions just kept going round in circles without going anywhere.

Then we tried the recovery discs that I bought from Amazon. They worked like magic. Windows 7 is back to normal and all of her data has been saved so I am really pleased.

Glad to hear you have that sorted however it may happen again as this could be the first sign that the hard drive is starting to show failure problems. At the very least make a backup image of the hard drive. If the hard drive has had bad sectors, there may be a pending sector reallocation.

It worthwhile trying this program to see if this is the case:

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Make sure you download the no ads version:

Portable
w/o Ads
(zip)

Extract the files from the zip and run.

tesuhoha

Fightsback wrote: »

Glad to hear you have that sorted however it may happen again as this could be the first sign that the hard drive is starting to show failure problems. At the very least make a backup image of the hard drive. If the hard drive has had bad sectors, there may be a pending sector reallocation.

It worthwhile trying this program to see if this is the case:

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Make sure you download the no ads version:

Portable
w/o Ads
(zip)

Extract the files from the zip and run.

Thank you. We might try and do that when she next brings her laptop home. Its not very easy doing things from a distance. We have told her to save her data on a usb.

bsod

and when the "usb" fails or goes missing?

grumpycrab

bsod wrote: »

and when the "usb" fails or goes missing?

Chances of both failing at the same time? (assuming the "usb" is used regularly :-)

bsod

If you tell a student (or anyone) to save their data to usb, the most common outcome would be they save their data to a usb flash drive, meaning one and only one easily lost or stolen or corrupted copy. As many students have found, strangely on the last day before their thesis is due to be handed in, that is very risky.

And, as the op has already alluded to, this hard disk is to say the least, iffy, so even if there are two copies, the hard disk version is suspect.