Will Not Boot - Bad Pool Header

Thanks for all that you have done to help. I have been working much of the day on this, trying to prepare what I need on flash drive to do the clean reinstall. To be honest, I am really not sure if I am doing this correctly. I wonder if I am over my head -- I mean REALLY over my head now. Is there anything I could really screw up if I don't do it correctly? Is it best to get a professional to do this job?

BJ

Your response is encouraging. However, unfortunately for me, the process is not turning out to be very straightforward. Frustrations are rising in the house. My husband has threatened to take a shotgun to his laptop. Thankfully, he went fishing instead. :)

I was preparing a bootable flash drive using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. All seemed to be going fine and Step 4 of 4 was completed. However, it included the message:

Files copied successfully. However, we were unable to run bootsect to make the USB device bootable. If you need assistance with bootsect, please click on the “Online Help” link above for more information.

So, I went to the online help and it said:
When creating a bootable USB device, I am getting an error about bootsect
To make the USB device bootable, you need to run a tool named bootsect.exe. In some cases, this tool needs to be downloaded from your Microsoft Store account. This may happen if you're trying to create a 64-bit bootable USB device from a 32-bit version of Windows. To download bootsect:

1. Login to your Microsoft Store account to view your purchase history
2. Look for your Windows 7 purchase.
3. Next to Windows 7, there is an "Additional download options" drop-down menu.
4. In the drop-down menu, select "32-bit ISO."
5. Right-click the link, and then save the bootsect.exe file to the location where you installed the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (e.g. C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Apps\Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool).
6. Once the file has been saved, go back to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool to create your bootable USB device.

However, this does not seem to apply to my situation. First, we did not purchase Windows 7 directly from the store. So, we have no purchase history. And it seems that this solution is for a 32 bit ISO when we have a 64 bit ISO.

I tried the flash drive in the laptop to see what would happen anyway, but it is not bootable and I run through the same old error loop that we have been dealing with all along.

Any thoughts on how to successfully get a bootable flash drive so I can get this process going before my husband returns from fishing? :)

Thanks again!

BJ

Thanks for your message. He's frustrated at not having his laptop working but we are both grateful for your help. All is fine here. We took the dogs and all went fishing together today to get a break. I am ready to jump back in and give it a try.

So, where I left off yesterday was I had tried to create a bootable flash drive. I successfully downloaded Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 U (media refresh), X17-58997.iso from the link in Step 1 of the Clean Reinstall web site to my laptop.
I used the Windows 7 USB-DVD Download Tool to burn the X17-58997 file to a 4GB flash drive. In that process, I got to Step 4 of 4 which completed except that I had a message,
Files copied successfully. However, we were unable to run bootsect to make the USB device bootable. If you need assistance with bootsect, please click on the “Online Help” link above for more information.

The information in the Online Help seems to refer to a 32-bit ISO when we are dealing with a 64-bit ISO. So, I am a bit confused as to why I have this bootsect problem. I did try the flash drive in my husband's computer to see if it would work and it didn't. Oh, well....

Any suggestions about how to solve the bootsect problem so that I can make a bootable flash drive for a successful reinstall?

Thanks again!

BJ


Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 U (media refresh)

Thanks for your response. Just letting you know I received it, am still active here, but am trying to get some time on my laptop which is now shared. I am up for the challenge and should get to testing the HDD within a day or two.

I'm back. I am working on the process for testing the HDD as you detailed previously. This is what I have done so far and am now stuck:

* I started by attempting to create a bootable flash drive by using YUMI- USB Multiboot Creator (YUMI-1.9.9.6B.exe) and SeaTools for DOS. Using YUMI, on step 2 (Select a Distribution from the list to put on your USB), I didn't know which option to choose since SeaTools was not on the list. Step 3 says to browse and select the ISO in Step 3 to be the same as that selected in Step 2. So, Under the heading ‘unlisted bootable USOs’ , I selected ‘Try Unlisted ISO (via SYSLINUX)’ and then went to Step 3 to browse and select SeaToolsDOS223ALL that I had previously downloaded onto my desktop.

I clicked on the Create button and received this error message:

Yumi couldn’t find a configuration file
Please report ‘SeaToolsDOS223ALL.ISO’ not supported!
YUMI will now remove this entry.

I clicked OK.
The process finished.

Is there another way to create a bootable USB other than using YUMI or is there a better selection I can make on Step 2 of YUMI to make this work?

Another question: In SATA mode, is IDE the same as AHA (as opposed to the ACHI option)?

Thanks again! BJ