Dead hard drive (or not) - help with recovery options please


  1. Posts : 2
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #1

    Dead hard drive (or not) - help with recovery options please


    One of our kids' laptops stopped booting a couple of days ago. I have confirmed there is nothing wrong with the laptop itself; it's a hard drive issue.

    To narrow this down I have:
    1. Placed the offending hard drive in an external drive enclosure attached to another computer. The other computer can access the entire drive with no issues.
    2. Attempted to use the rescue disc to repair the windows installation. The rescue operation indicated there was something wrong with the startup settings, but couldn't write the changes.
    3. Again with the rescue disc, ran the startup repair sequence. I should mention that the Windows installation could not be detected automatically by the rescue disc. Anyway, the diagnostic & repair details, for the "Disk Failure diagnostics" indicate a Bad Hard Disk
    4. While in the recovery console, I opened up a command prompt and went to D:\ which is the offending disk path. I'm able to run a directory listing on, and navigate around within the drive that is supposed to be "bad".


    With these outcomes, I'm completely confused by the fact that the drive appears to be able to be accessed, yet no OS installation is able to be found by the recovery routine. I've checked the recycle bin to see if someone accidentally erased critical files but the recycle bin is empty.

    What do you find folks think is going on with this situation?
    TIA!
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 11,269
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
       #2

    Sounds like the file system contains corruption or you have bad sectors on the drive. Recommend navigating to the drive again in command prompt. Type the following.
    chkdsk /r D:
    Run the disk check multiple times if it says it fixed any file system errors. Run it until it says it found no problems with the disk.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 2
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Well it's fixed! I ran chkdsk /r and that found a bad sector on a font. Then ran chkdsk /F and that came up clean. I then ran the recovery console and it found something goofy with the hard drive startup sequence. I ran that sequence again after a boot/bcd issue cropped up and holy smokes it's all good again!

    Not sure why that all happened but I'm happier than a pig in slop that it's fixed - thanks!
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 11,269
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
       #4

    Glad you are able to start into Windows again. :)
      My Computer


 

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