Win 7 Won't Boot Drive Ltrs Changed

Greetings Forumerions!

I'm aware that variations of this problem have been discussed before; however, I thought I would be safe and initiate a new thread specific to my exact problems.

First the computer in question is:

Lenovo Laptop Z565 with Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

The last couple months the 'puter has been getting glitchy; it began by going into (auto) repair periodically, stating Windows didn't start. When this happened--it was always able to repair itself ... Until it didn't.
After failed attempts to "repair" the computer using the repair option I finally ran chkdsk. That seemed to have fixed the problem; however, I soon learned it was only temporary.

Once again, Windows wouldn't load, so I repeated my previous steps all in vein. Not giving up during one of the repair attempts I noticed that the "c:" partition was swapped with "e:" . In opening notepad I could see that all my files were now in "e:" and "c:" was empty.

Any input, guidance, advice would be greatly appreciated. I will add that (like most) I have data I can't lose and is not backed up (I know).

Cheers,
Frank

Mornin' Ranger,

Ranger4 said:

Frank W, welcome to the Forum.
It seems that your Hard Drive may have failed. Do you have a Windows 7 DVD so you can install Windows to new a Hard Drive. Of course you will have to remove the old one, but treat it carefully. Then you could buy or borrow a HDD caddy so you can load your old drive into & then see if you can recover your files from it via a USB connection.

In checking the volumes via diskpart, they all come back as "healthy." That said, installing a new dard drive is inevitable in the future. I'm hoping I can get this drive up and running and either copy the files to an external drive (I have a new one ready to go) and or make an image of the existing drive (after it is corrected).

I don't have a Win 7 DVD. If all else fails and I have to install a new hard drive (sooner then I'd like), wouldn't a USB/hard drive adaptor work (without a caddy)?

Appreciate the input.

Cheers,
Frank

Ranger,

Ranger4 said:

Frank, do you have another computer so you can download SIW2's web link?.

If you don't, can you borrow a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit DVD & run that & try a Start Up Repair, as it seems your problem may be due to a corrupted MBR. You information shows you are using Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, so if you can borrow a DVD it must match that.

I have 3 other computers in the office in various states of array; however, I can use a neighbor's computer if need be. That said, I have been able to get to the repair environment (RE) and also (to my credit) made a repair disk; none of the "auto prcesses" have worked (and I think it was during one of those attempts when the drive letters got swapped), so as of late I have gone to the command prompt. With all that in mind would a Win 7 disc (complete) make any difference?

I do have a 1 TB external drive and my thoughts were to copy over files via the command prompt before attempting to revive the HD. Doing this--on my own--is out of my wheel-house. Of course that's the reason I'm here.

Frank