Laptop boot failure

[Joe Diesel]

Here's what I got. I leave my laptop on most times. Went for lunch came home and it was loading slow and windows explorer was froze completely could not get to task manager so I hard restart and now it won't load anything.

warning I'm not the best at taking things apart and putting them back together so please understand if I have to shoot you a message for a simpler explanation.

It keeps showing up with the loading circle then blue screen "theres an issue" message and before I can even read a line of the screen it restarts and repeats. I can't get to f2 or f10. I took the back off that covers the hard drive and ram. I swapped the ram and nothing.

When I unplugged the hard drive I was able to get the bios? Options by hitting f2 or f10. I did a memory check all clear. Plugged hard drive back in and and restart and I'm back to not being able to do anything.

 

[Reyaz123]

Sounds like your boot files may be corrupted. Change the bios order to cd as the first priority and put in your windows 8 installation or recovery disc.

Boot from the disk, Click repair your computer while in the setup. Open a command prompt and type these in

Bootrec /fixmbr
Bootrec /fixboot
Bootrec /rebuildbcd

Take out your disc, change the boot priority back to hard drive first, reboot and see if this fixes it.

 

[Joe Diesel]

I'm not sure how to change the boot order. I saw the order listed but when I selected there was no option given to change anything

 

[Reyaz123]

You mean the options are greyed out? If they aren't and you want to change the order, go to the boot tab in the bios, go down to the boot options listed, and press the - and + keys to switch them

 

[Joe Diesel]

Ok so in order to get to the boot menu I have to disconnect the hard drive. So I was able to do that and switched the boot order it fired up the recovery disk but when I enter rebuild bdc it doesn't find anything with Windows obviously so I had to reconnect the hard drive. When I did this and restarted its returned to the loading screen and after about 2 minutes of that I now have a black screen but no activity.

 

[Reyaz123]

Ok so in order to get to the boot menu I have to disconnect the hard drive. So I was able to do that and switched the boot order it fired up the recovery disk but when I enter rebuild bdc it doesn't find anything with Windows obviously so I had to reconnect the hard drive. When I did this and restarted its returned to the loading screen and after about 2 minutes of that I now have a black screen but no activity.

The loading screen for windows is at least showing now?

 

[Joe Diesel]

Yes. There is "Uefi boot order "which I'm able to adjust but below is the "Legacy boot order" which is greyed and I'm unable to change. The top of the greyed out boot order is notebook hard drive.

 

[Joe Diesel]

Ok I'm able to adjust it not there is an option called legacy support I was able to change

 

[Reyaz123]

Did you try booting from the windows disc with the priority at #1 and the hard drive #2 (hard drive is connected to the pc) and using the commands in cmd?

 

[Joe Diesel]

For some reason it's not booting the windows repair again.

 

[Reyaz123]

How long have you had this laptop? It sounds as if the hard drive is failing.

A sure sign that it is failing is when windows is booted up, you hear spinning noises or tapping noises in your hard drive

http://www.pcmech.com/article/hard-drive-failure-warnings-and-solutions/

Edit: There is still hope it isn't failing. You can try every other bios setting, like disabling fast boot and/or secure boot, enabling achi mode, launch csm

 

[Joe Diesel]

About 3 years. It's been incredibly reliable to this point. I don't hear anything out of the ordinary from the hard drive. I just can't figure out how to get the disk to boot again im just playing with the boot order as I have a recovery usb and cd in the cd drive so I'm not too sure which it ran off of but I do know I haven't seen it work since I plugged the hd in.

 

[Reyaz123]

There is a great chance it will be able to boot up if the hard drive is detected, because recovery tools and commands could be run from the windows cd/usb to fix your boot files on that hard drive.

If you have other sata ports, try those ones because one of them probably got damaged.

 

[Joe Diesel]

Ok so I removed the hard drive and without changing anything the recovery disk fired up. So whenever I plug in the hard drive the boot options are not following the order it's skipping to the hard drive.

Also I'm not sure if it has more sata ports? I'm in over my head lol

 

[Reyaz123]

Ok so I removed the hard drive and without changing anything the recovery disk fired up. So whenever I plug in the hard drive the boot options are not following the order it's skipping to the hard drive.

Also I'm not sure if it has more sata ports? I'm in over my head lol

Oh, sorry for the confusion, getting carried away here. If the usb and the hard drive are connected, the BIOS shows them as boot option? I think using a usb with the OS recovery on it is unreliable. If you can somehow get a hold of a cd to burn the recovery disc onto, it may solve the problem

 

[Joe Diesel]

Ok I'll do that now. The recovery is working off the usb. I wasn't sure before but now I know so I'll fire up my old pc and switch it to a cd

 

[Reyaz123]

Ok I'll do that now. The recovery is working off the usb. I wasn't sure before but now I know so I'll fire up my old pc and switch it to a cd

Oh, you have another pc in your house? Move the hard drive to there and connect it as a secondary hard drive, if the drive is detected in disk management, it proves it is not failing you.

 

[Joe Diesel]

I have a couple old desktops. Hd doesn't connect to the first one.

 

[Reyaz123]

I have a couple old desktops. Hd doesn't connect to the first one.

Not good. Try it in the other desktop and if it fails to detect it while in windows, its time for a new drive

Your only option now before buying another hard drive is try burning the windows recovery cd, setting the cd as the first boot option with the hard drive as the second option, and hope that you can access the repair settings

 

[Joe Diesel]

Apologies I mean it's pretty old so it doesn't have the same adapters

 

[Reyaz123]

Apologies I mean it's pretty old so it doesn't have the same adapters

Alright, read the updated post.

 

[Joe Diesel]

I made another recovery cd but It will not read anything when the hard drive is in. I just want to thank you for your help it means a lot. My family pictures mean the most and sadly I don't think I'll get them back. I'm going to try a few things in the morning but as of now I'm falling asleep. Again thank you for your efforts I'm indebted and will pay it forward when I can.

 

[Reyaz123]

Hey, no worries! I know a few programs that could give you a shot at recovering your files from your old hard drive once you get a new one. Keep the old hard drive. Shoot me a pm and I'll be happy assist you.

Regards,
-Reyaz

 

[Joe Diesel]

Ok I got a new hard drive. I thought I could reinstall Windows from a recovery disk but I guess I was wrong? When I go to reset your pic I a get "a required drive partition is missing" if I got to refresh it says "the drive is locked. Unlock the drive and try again

 

[Reyaz123]

Ok I got a new hard drive. I thought I could reinstall Windows from a recovery disk but I guess I was wrong? When I go to reset your pic I a get "a required drive partition is missing" if I got to refresh it says "the drive is locked. Unlock the drive and try again

"A required drive partition is missing"

I believe it is saying this because on your old hard drive, it has the required boot files saved on its partition (usually 100MB) in size. It requires to have this in order to "unlock the drive". But since you are using a new drive, it won't detect it.

(Did you try doing a clean install?)