Automatic Repair/Recovery Disc Problem

[MrVigilante]

Hello,

I have came across this particular problem recently and am in need of professional help.

About a week ago, I started up my ASUS X55U-EH11 15.6-Inch Laptop and was greeted with the Automatic repair loop. After searching for a solution until my face turned blue, I ordered a Windows 8 Recovery Disc in hopes that it will work. However, that was not the case. I set the boot option to the disc drive and upon boot I get a 'loading files', black screen, then small blue boxes on the top of the screen as if something was loading. Then halfway through, I get another black screen. Then the computer turns itself off.

I have a bunch of files on my computer that I simply can not lose. I'm trying very hard to avoid wiping out the system. I just want to recover everything and return to normal. Win8 Experts...please help me.

Thank you,
Glenn

 

[The_Prophecy]

Awesome! Glad to hear it worked. If you are looking to wipe the drive so that recovery is no longer possible, a favorite tool of mine is DBAN.

If you aren't quite that paranoid (if the drive is going to be leaving your hands via RMA or any other method except to be shredded, I would be paranoid), a simple format of the drive in Windows will do.

 

[MrVigilante]

Okay, now DBAN...does this restore it to factory settings?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Essentially, yes. Although there are technically no factory settings to set per se... the drive is simply wiped out with DBAN by overwriting every sector with random data multiple times.

 

[MrVigilante]

I'm now getting a "Reboot and select proper boot device" on this

 

[The_Prophecy]

Double check the BIOS settings and make sure it is trying to boot from the right drive. Sometimes if the system tries to boot from one drive that has no OS, it fail and stop, instead of trying all of the other detected drives in the system.

 

[MrVigilante]

Nope. I'm just an idiot. I burned the ISO image wrong! I got to the blue boot menu now

 

[The_Prophecy]

Ahh, that would be a problem . ISO files must be burned so that they are applied to the CD or DVD as an image, rather than simply copying the ISO file to the disk.

 

[MrVigilante]

Yeah, it's been a while since I burned an ISO file.
Everything seems to be going well right now. Does it usually take well over 24 hours for this to complete?

 

[The_Prophecy]

It depends on the size of the hard drive. DBAN should be able to fully utilize the interface speed of the controller the drive is connected to, or whatever the drive is capable of (whichever is slower).

 

[MrVigilante]

DBAN failed. It starts up to BiOS immedietly

 

[The_Prophecy]

You could always set it up on a USB flash drive, or if you're really stuck, a floppy disk.