Non-booting (looping?) Vista Laptop

[vulcan1]

Ok, I'll try to be as thorough as possible for this one. I've looked over some of the posts in related issues, but seem to lack some aspects of what I am dealing with. I'll post the issue and keep looking while I wait for a response...

I'm working on a Vista laptop. No updates/new installs/whatever done and it worked fine for the 3 days I had no internet access (so no web/e-mail viruses). Here is the progression after that point:

-Powered up like normal, and system hung at black screen after initial part of boot-up sequence.
-Manually powered down with power button, rebooted, and was taken to system recovery. I did a restore to last point and rebooted.
-System will get to password screen after 30 mins of working. When I input my password, it would process (HDD was working the whole time) but eventually stay at a black screen and eventually the HDD would also stop, with no resolution.
-Everytime I boot up now, the Lenovo system repair comes up and asks what to repair. The only option is Vista boot but doesn't do anything.
-I got a Vista install disk, thinking I would try a repair. When I put it in, it DOES recognize the disk and try to boot from the disk (shows all drivers loading and gets to the microsoft windows back-and-forth progression bar), but eventually just hangs at a black screen.

--In tyring to do my due diligence, I have read a ton of posts that seem to have similar issues, but with a wide variety of fixes. A long one that gave some ideas was here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistasetup/thread/e97484e1-1a7e-4518-a1b1-f602bef5f5c7

Help!

My computer:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61 6444 R7U
Running Vista Business edition

 

[vulcan1]

Ok, here's an update...

I finally got it to boot start booting up into safe mode with command prompt...but it hung at loading crcdisk.sys then gave me a bsod that told me I had an "unmountable boot volume"... I tried to pause the screen to see the rest of it, but apparrently it doesn't respond to the pause anymore.

I have read bits here and there mentioning the crcdisk.sys issue as well. Does this help clarify the issue for anyone? Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

Thanks!

 

[vulcan1]

The latest...

I've tried a boot disk and was able to get into my HD just fine, so it appears to be mostly a Vista issue.

--I've read a couple posts telling people to take their memory down to 2 Gig or less until Vista could be repaired...tried it and no effect.

--I've also tried reseating the HD, but with no effect.

--Next I'm going to try using the XP install disk (yes, XP, not Vista) to see if I can use it to get far enough to use the Vista repair. I'll post what happens for future generations of frustrated Vista owners.

PLEASE, any ideas or help would be great!!!

 

[vulcan1]

Well, I'm a little disappointed that I'm the only one who troubleshooted or responded to my dilemna, but such is life...

For those who come after me, here is the final prognosis...

--The XP repair disk WAS miraculously able to boot, but didn't help at all in restoring anything and basically rejected the idea that it could help.

--After running a few tests with a couple diagnostic programs (from super boot disk and others), it was shown that the hard drive had a bad sector within Vista's hidden partition...resulting in a HD that CAN be accessed from non-Windows programs, but canNOT boot up... Lenovo is sending me a new disk, and I am using the a converter to use the disk as an external HD until I can get the rest of my files off that I want to keep.

Not at all the resolution I would have wanted, but I hope this helps someone!

(Incidently, DiskDigger, a FREE download from PCWorld.com, was IMMENSELY helpful in recovering a ton of info from my HD).

 

[mentormatt8]

I was going to guess problems with the hard disk and you confirmed. Have you replacd the HD yet? The case you have resembles my troubles two days back which I resolved with shear patience and rebooting several times. It seems like the hard disk healed itself. More details, read on. http://annoyances-resolved.blogspot.com/2009/09/laptop-wont-boot-and-shows-blank-screen.html

 

[Zoron]

Had I seen your post, I would have advised that as soon as you see "Unmountable boot volume" that usually means hard drive failure. Not necessarily total failure... but definately enough to cause problems.