Computer won't boot

[ryanisawesome55]

Hello,
Tonight i had some trouble with one of my computers.
It is a Dell Optiplex GX620, which is an old computer we used to have and i recently transferred all the files to our newer PC.
So i was trying to install Ubuntu 16.04, and before that i decided to try it out on the flash drive before installing.
After i was done, i tried rebooting, removing the flash drive, and i was at the splash screen.The splash screen finished, and after some seconds the splash screen continued again. It was a loop.
Note that the computer before had Windows 7, and before trying it i tried installing it alongside Windows 7 but i got an error.
I also got some hard disk read errors when i tried Ubuntu off my flash drive, so that might be the case.
I also tried going to the boot menu but the hard drive was already in the first row.
I also forgot my Chrome bookmarks on my old PC so i want a way to recover the data from the hard drive.
Any help appreciated.

EDIT: Before answering, no, the hard drive didn't fail. The hard drive was in two partitions, and only one of them failed to open. The C: partition. That's where all my program files and appdata are, so i wanna recover all my bookmarks from my browsers. After i do that i'm safe to install Ubuntu and wipe everything. (i knew i should have created a family account on Google Chrome where we could keep everything)
On the other hand, yes, i had an account on Firefox, but some weird bug made the bookmarks unsyncable, so i immediately need to have access to the hard drive.

 

[LukeFatwalker]

If you can't boot into Windows then your Boot Manager is likely corrupted. Running Startup Repair will fix this.

Definitely recommend if you're going to use this machine that you back up your data with a disk imager (i.e. Acronis True Image) or a snapshot tool (RollBack Rx)

 

[ryanisawesome55]

Running Startup Repair will fix this.

How am i supposed to boot up into Startup Manager, if i can't access the drive?
(Now i'll try and run chkdsk on a Windows XP live CD i recently made, let's hope it fixes it and recovers the files)

 

[hang-the-9]

Running Startup Repair will fix this.

How am i supposed to boot up into Startup Manager, if i can't access the drive?
(Now i'll try and run chkdsk on a Windows XP live CD i recently made, let's hope it fixes it and recovers the files)

On a drive with errors, checkdisk can actually make things worse as it tries to move files around to usable areas, but with a bad disk, it can fail, causing more file corruption.

Use a Linux Live disk, boot off that, if you can't read the disk that way to get any files out, you would need to use stronger methods like ddrescue from https://www.system-rescue-cd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage and try to use that to copy the files to a second disk.

 

[ryanisawesome55]

Running Startup Repair will fix this.

How am i supposed to boot up into Startup Manager, if i can't access the drive?
(Now i'll try and run chkdsk on a Windows XP live CD i recently made, let's hope it fixes it and recovers the files)

On a drive with errors, checkdisk can actually make things worse as it tries to move files around to usable areas, but with a bad disk, it can fail, causing more file corruption.

Use a Linux Live disk, boot off that, if you can't read the disk that way to get any files out, you would need to use stronger methods like ddrescue from https://www.system-rescue-cd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage and try to use that to copy the files to a second disk.

Thanks! I'll try that. SystemRescueCD is currently downloading right now. Wish me luck!

I'll tell you if i had any problems.

 

[hang-the-9]

Just to warn you, that file copy to a second drive will take a long time. On some drives I have seen it run a week before finishing, it copies by sector, and any sector with issues it tries several times.

 

[ryanisawesome55]

Okay, i gave up. I didn't know the commands of ddrescue, so i finally became a real man and wiped the HDD, then installed Ubuntu.