Can't format hard drive.

Rev

Wondering if anyone has any advice. Does my HDD need replacing?

My PC is ancient in technology terms but I only use it for browsing and iTunes so it does me fine. Working fine a few days ago. Put it on tonight and Windows 10 said it was diagnosing a problem then give me a few different error messages all which asked me to restart. Then it decided it was repairing the disk and kept restarting and repeating.

After two hours of this I decided to just reinstall Windows. I have everything backed up.

Now I can't install Windows. I get as far as selecting which hard drive I would like to install Windows on, deleted the drive and then selected format and now I get the following error message

Failed to format the selected partition. Error 0x80070057

And that's where I am now. Obviously I've deleted the Windows installation I had on there so can't try to repair that (I did try all the repair options but it just kept going back to the loop of repairing the disc).

The drive is still recognised in the bios. I created a ubuntu live USB and it did read and allow me to access the drive before I tried to format it. Now the Ubuntu live doesn't show the drive ( I assume because it's not formatted).

Is the drive shot?

Thanks.

Rev

Managed to get the HDD formatted using the Ubuntu live USB and Windows seemed to install okay but when it restarted I got a Windows boot manager error.




Repairing Windows just takes me around in circles.

Rev

And now we're back to being unable to format the drive.

Does it look like the drive has gone or something else?

Parva

Try this :- http://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukbsdt1/SLN132839/EN?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1

Parva

Or this :- http://pcsupport.about.com/od/errorh/a/hal-dll-missing-windows-7-vista.htm

paddyrg

Frankly if it's an old system and the HDD isn't playing the game, may be just easier to get a replacement cheapie. By the time you've chased down the fault, if you costed your time, you'd have been better off by doing that anyway!

taxi97w

If you've got a Dell, have a look at this link to run a pre-boot diagnostics test to find exactly what the prob. is.

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/266787

Rev

Parva wrote: »

Try this :- http://www.dell.com/support/article/uk/en/ukbsdt1/SLN132839/EN?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1

Parva wrote: »

Or this :- http://pcsupport.about.com/od/errorh/a/hal-dll-missing-windows-7-vista.htm

Thanks, I can't try any of those because there's no operating system on the drive now. I wiped it with the ubuntu and can't get Windows to install.

Rev

paddyrg wrote: »

Frankly if it's an old system and the HDD isn't playing the game, may be just easier to get a replacement cheapie. By the time you've chased down the fault, if you costed your time, you'd have been better off by doing that anyway!

I'm not sure how much it would cost to buy new. I've always built my own PC's and always updated the components regularly etc but circumstances change and I've not had the cash to update anything in a few years. And I've no idea what's what anymore as I've not kept up (it's depressing knowing there's all this new stuff I can't afford to buy haha!) with the newer stuff that's been released.

I'll find the specs and see if it's worth finding the fault and replacing or just ditching it. But I can't afford to buy a new PC right now.

Rev

taxi97w wrote: »

If you've got a Dell, have a look at this link to run a pre-boot diagnostics test to find exactly what the prob. is.

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/266787

Not a dell sadly!

paddyrg

£350-odd got me an i5-based fanless system with 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD. It's wonderful!

That said, I was thinking you could just replace the hard drive for now