Cannot Boot --- any suggestions


  1. northstar7
    Posts : 3
    Windows 7
       New #1

    Cannot Boot --- any suggestions


    I'm running Windows 7 Pro on a laptop.

    My old motherboard was failing and crashing intermittently and at the same time I got prompts to run chkdisk several times when I tried to boot.

    After a while I could not boot from the drive, so I replaced it with a blank drive and installed the latest system image I had. This worked until the motherboard left for printed circuit heaven.

    Now I have a new motherboard. The laptop runs fine from the replacement drive. But it would not boot from the original drive, even after running chkdisk on it while it was connected as a USB.

    Windows repair cannot fix it. I tried running bootrec.exe with /fixmbr, /fixboot and /rebuildbcd (each separately). But it still won't boot and System Repair can't fix it.

    The only system image I have is about a month old and I'd love to get my recent work back. Anyone have a similar situation and a way to recover?

    Thanks
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  3. fishnbanjo
    Posts : 1,035
    Vista 64 Ultimate, Windows 7 64 Ultimate, Ubuntu 9.10
       New #2

    I'd say the image might have been compromised when your mobo fried and possibly thrashed the MBR. Get yourself an external USB drive enclosure and you should be able to access your drive which will allow you to retrieve your work and other files. Once this is completed and your new drive is up to speed you might want to format the old drive and perhaps clone your drive images.
    Last edited by fishnbanjo; 10 Apr 2010 at 17:31.
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  4. northstar7
    Posts : 3
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Thanks for the information. I had an idea it could be something like that.

    If the MBR is corrupted, why wouldn't bootrec.exe /fixmbr work? Could the MBR from the restored disk be used to replace the corrupted one?
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  6. fishnbanjo
    Posts : 1,035
    Vista 64 Ultimate, Windows 7 64 Ultimate, Ubuntu 9.10
       New #4

    If it was caused by mechanics, i.e. the heads touched the film it would be more than the MBR and reformatting would have the driver reallocate the space as most drives have a lot more than they report and once reformatted and either reinstalling the OS or cloning it with Acronis or another Clone Software you would probably boot with it w/o issue.
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  7. northstar7
    Posts : 3
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    Some progress, but stuck again


    I followed some instructions on EasyBCD and got the boot procedure up to the point where I could replace about 10 driver files.

    Now the boot process hangs at missing or corrupted NLS files. I followed a post on that problem, which suggested replacing the NLS and font files, which I did. They also recommended running sfc /scannow.

    The problem is that sfc won't run because it always sees a pending boot repair. This occurs because the only way I can get to a command prompt is through the repair disk and that sets up a boot repair before you get to the command prompt.

    Anyone have any ideas how to run sfc if you can't boot into Windows?

    Thanks
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