Startup Error Please Help Immediately :(

Eyecu · 23 Sep 2011

I know this is an old topic but I find it interesting that the exact same thing has happened to my sons Sony Vaio laptop that is only like 10 months old. Windows partition shows 0mb and not operating system, startup repair doesnt work because as far as it can tell there is no Operating System install...I am going to try some of the suggestions in this forum to see if i can recover the files....I hope I can and then i may get it sent in for a warranty repair just incase it is a faulty hard drive. But for some reason I don`t think it is.

Eyecu · 23 Sep 2011

Ya I`m going to attempt all of the steps that`s been suggested. I want to try and recover my sons file before sending it in for repair as I know I wont get the old drive back afterwords...I`ve already tried the recovery partition setting but like everything else it just hangs at the blue welcome screen for hours. Hopefully 1 of the suggestions here work as trying to download all his content again is going to kill my bandwidth(damn canadian isp capping).

gregrocker · 23 Sep 2011

Are you trying repairs from the DVD Repair console or Repair CD? If so and no installation is found when you boot in, access the Tools option open a Command line and type bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /fixboot to try to force it to find Win7 and even if it doesn´t. run Startup Repair from the tools list anyway a few times.

If Startup Repair won't find anything to fix after repeated attempts try copying out the files this way: Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

If it finds and copies the files for you then the installation may be reparable with a few more attempts. Post back results.

If not test the HD using makerś extended CD scan as sometimes they are reparable using that and Disk check.

If this fails, run Factory Recovery from its partition or the disks which you made or order from tech support, or find a Win7 installation disk for your version to clean reinstall with the product Key on COA sticker following the steps in my signature picture below.