Unable to Boot After Power Loss

Hi,

My Windows 7 laptop recently suffered a power loss during shutdown (I've been running it without the battery since the battery could only provide about 10 minutes of power anyway). Upon turning on the laptop the next day, the computer automatically entered Windows Vista system recovery mode, and restarting the computer again didn't help. The laptop was running Windows 7 Pro, upgraded from an OEM installation of Windows Vista Ultimate.

I proceeded with startup repair, but the repair utility wasn't able to recognize any operating systems on my disk. Proceeding with the repair anyway, startup repair reports that the problem could not be automatically repaired. After that, I've tried the following:

1. Run chkdsk /f from the command prompt under the System Recovery Options window.
   1. After claiming that a few sectors were unreadable, chkdsk reports that it encountered an unexpected error
2. Connect the laptop harddrive to another computer as a secondary drive and run chkdsk /f
   1. chkdsk identifies the supposedly unreadable sectors and proceeds to stage 2 and sometimes stage 3, but eventually encounters an unexpected error nonetheless
   2. While attempting to repair the affected sectors, chkdsk reports that there is insufficient space to recover the lost data
   3. The data partition on the harddrive appears to be readable in explorer, but the former system partition appears to be unreadable.
3. Put the harddrive back into the laptop and perform startup repair from Windows 7 installation disk
   1. Startup repair is still unable to recognize the operating system on the harddrive.
   2. From here, I've also tried using diskpart to set the partition with the Windows installation as "active". After doing so, startup repair is still unable to recognize the OS on the disk, and still complains that the problem could not be repaired automatically.
   3. After completing the above and restarting the computer, I found that I can't even enter the system recovery options window anymore.
4. Connect the laptop harddrive to another computer and try to read the harddrive from Ubuntu.
   1. All files appear to be accessible and there is no evidence of damage to the drive. Even the free space remaining in the drive appears to be what it was before the crash.

This last step seems to suggest that the drive is physically intact, but for some reason, no implementation of Windows is able to read the data.

At this point, I am out of ideas. I am really hoping to avoid having to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows, unless I can also back up all the 5 years worth of applications also installed on the computer, some of which I no longer have the keys for.

I would really appreciate any suggestions on what to do from here.

Thanks!

Try pulling out the CMOS battery for 2 minutes then reinstall. That might get you going.

Put disk in working system and post screenshot of "disk management". Explain which disk it is in the output. Or describe EXACTLY which partitions are on disk (PRIMARY/LOGICAL, ACTIVE, filesystem type (for example NTFS) and label)

Hi Kaktussoft, please find the screenshot attached. The disk in question is labeled as Disk2. The two disks K: and I: are usually labeled ACER and DATA, but for some reason can no longer be seen in Windows. chkdsk seems to recognize them though.

Also, with this disk plugged in to the working computer, explorer becomes very slow to use. I had to kill the process to post this screenshot.

Thanks.

I and K: capacity=freespace and no label. Reason: filesystem is not NTFS. At least it doesn't know it's NTFS. In http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/783-elevated-command-prompt.html


post output

Hi Kaktussoft, sorry for the delay. With the affected harddisk plugged into the working computer, the working computer slows to a crawl, and it seems to be getting worse. This is making it difficult to work with the disk, and I haven't been able to run diskpart yet today. Any way we could address this first?

Also, every time I boot with that harddisk plugged in, the computer always attempts to run chkdsk. Right now, it's taking forever to even reach the chkdsk screen.

Thanks.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/682-command-prompt-startup.html

Now do

After that do #5 but use the correct drive letters!
I want to know the status/settings of the partitions. Maybe I can repair/recover it(?)
I think disk is dying. Make backup asap, which is close to impossible now

Hi Kaktussoft, I wasn't able to run diskpart even from the Windows 7 installer environment. I ran Partition Wizard on the disk afterward and found that there were a lot of damaged sectors, and Ubuntu was also no longer able to access some of the files on the disk. I think there's good reason to believe that the disk is physically damaged, so I decided to format the disk and try to reinstall Windows.

I'm just confused as to how losing power duing shutdown can cause physical damage to the disk?

Anyway, thanks for your help!

Griffon26 said:

Hi Kaktussoft, I wasn't able to run diskpart even from the Windows 7 installer environment. I ran Partition Wizard on the disk afterward and found that there were a lot of damaged sectors, and Ubuntu was also no longer able to access some of the files on the disk. I think there's good reason to believe that the disk is physically damaged, so I decided to format the disk and try to reinstall Windows.

I'm just confused as to how losing power duing shutdown can cause physical damage to the disk?

Anyway, thanks for your help!

Click to expand...

Why couldn't you run diskpart? Give error message or explain what happened.

Did you reformat already... so all is gone? Use seatools for seagate disks, or datalifguard for western digital disks. Test the disk, I think it's dying. A format doesn't fix that!