Hard Shut down Drive no longer boots

[DiegoD]

A friend of mine just contacted me asking for help with his PC. He said he was gaming as usual when his puppy, playing by his feet, shut the pc off. I asked to make sure the Pc wasn't knocked over or hit nad he said his dog just hit the power button.

The pc shutdown in the middle of his game and he rebooted successfully but a few programs didn't work so he watched a video which told him to go into command prompt and reset things to default. At that moment I knew it wasn't good. Now the PC won't boot to windows it stays at a blue screen asking for a recovery disk. I haven't got the chance to go over and perform the recovery yet, I've done it many times on windows 8 and 7, but I just wanted to know if there could be any other issues than the corrupted drive. I can't think of any issues that could arrive from a hard shut down on a pc his components are fine, the pc posts without the drive plugged in (I had him check), but is it possible that they aren't? The answer I'm expecting is no and that a recovery/ wipe and reload of windows will fix his issue or could it be something else?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, DiegoD!

Unfortunately, a hard shutdown definitely could damage a hardware or corrupt the OS. For example, when you're shutting down the system properly, Windows closes all the programs, locks the paging file and records all the information needed for the next startup. It also disconnects the power in a certain order for the hardware, so that there is no stress imposed on the components during the shutdown.

A hard shutdown, on the other hand, doesn't allow any of these procedures to be executed properly. If the hard drive is writing/reading data and it's interrupted, this leaves room for data corruption or in some cases completely damages the HDD.
I'd recommend you to try re-installing Windows and see how the drive would perform. However, once you have it up and running again, make sure you run an HDD diagnostic test on the drive using its manufacturer's brand-specific tool. This utility will help you determine the health and SMART status of the drive, and might as well give you some peace of mind. You should be able to find it on their official website, but in case there isn't any check this thread for some good third-party suggestions: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Good luck! Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD