Windows failure to start, Repair fails, cmd can only see X drive

Hi all! Looking to find out if my drive is mostly dead or all dead.

-Computer rebooted suddenly on its own (not during an update or install of a program). Has rebooted in the past due to minor bumps to the tower, but boot went normally those times. This time I wasn't even in the room, so no bump, no activity. If any error message showed up I missed it.

-At reboot drive was unrecognized, message on screen said to 'insert media' to boot.

-Restart after that lets drive be initially recognized - can see in BIOS, when exit BIOS goes to "windows failed to start" screen. No error code/reason is shown on this screen. Options are to start normally or do startup repair.

-If I start normally, goes to begin startup, get a very quick BSOD (can't read any of it), and it automatically reboots. In this cycle the drive remains recognized, same process as above.

-If I go to startup repair, somewhere in its looking around, something goes wrong. The red light on the back of the drive comes on which I gather is bad news for this drive. Startup repair reports it can't fix the prob. The log says it is a registry problem. After the failure I get the option to open a dos window. Here I can see that I am in the X drive, which I guess is a minimal repair OS hidden on my hard drive? So loading that much obviously had worked earlier. However, at this point dispart list disk yields nothing at all, and diskpart list volume shows only my dvd ROM. My hard drive doesn't show up at all. If I attach my data slave drive for this whole shebang, that DOES show up and I can navigate around it, for what that's worth.

Anyway, I've seen a lot of info and it's starting to run together, but given that by the time I get to a command prompt my drive has (apparently) stopped talking entirely, is there any way to decide what is wrong and actually fix it?? I've seen registry copy solutions, and some master boot record instructions, but I wanted to post my specifics because those require the drive to keep communicating right?

Since it does get recognized and talk to the comp at first I can't let go of the idea that mayyybe there's a way to find out what got corrupted and fix it!

Explanations/advice welcome. Thanks for any info!

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure

hi, thanks for your reply. my manufacturer (OCZ) is not listed for either of these. one site says for newer HDs with windows 7 i should use the seagate tools - does it make a difference that this is a solid state drive? will it actually work for this case?

Might be the master boot record.

I assume you are getting to the repair feature by having the Windows Disk in the drive(which atleat tells me your BIOS is seeing something). Intead of choosing repair choose command prompt. From there type C:\ or D:\ and then DIR. This will list the contents of the drive you are on. If you are not able to find any of those drives you may have a corrupt or bad hard drive.

Do you have access to any othere bootable OSs?

ThermoDust said:

Might be the master boot record.

I assume you are getting to the repair feature by having the Windows Disk in the drive(which atleat tells me your BIOS is seeing something). Intead of choosing repair choose command prompt. From there type C:\ or D:\ and then DIR. This will list the contents of the drive you are on. If you are not able to find any of those drives you may have a corrupt or bad hard drive.

Do you have access to any othere bootable OSs?

i do have a thumbdrive bootable OS installer, but that's the thing, my original message is what happens with NO bootable media involved.

that X drive is loaded from my "broken" hard drive before it loses its mind (it's only when i actually enter the startup repair mode from the menu that the red light comes on at the back of the drive). that's how I know it's not DEADdeaddead, the bad drive can talk to the motherboard at first it seems. By the time i can actually get to a dos prompt, however, only the X drive is available (i guess it is loaded completely into memory up front?) - the rest of the drive has stopped talking to the comp altogether. That's because I have to go through the repair utility before I have a dos prompt option, as far as i know.

FWIW, I put in my bootable windows install OS thumbdrive - the only options listed when this runs are to "install" an OS or to repair a current one. Running this repair, as before, causes the red light on the back of the drive, and this time all I see from a dos prompt afterwards is the X drive and the thumbdrive (as F: ).

Is there any way to get to a DOS prompt up front without going through the startup repair? This "system recovery options" menu where I can choose from command prompt, memory diagnostic, image recovery, system restore, and startup repair -- that menu does not show up to me until AFTER i run the startup repair once, and going thru the repair makes the drive stop being seen. The drive has to remain visible for navigation by the time I get to a dos prompt if I'm going to do any MBR or registry fix, I assume

To clarify (I'm not too familiar with all terms) if by bootable OS you mean an OS that actually runs totally from removable media without being installed, in a normal situation, no I don't have that. Only the X drive repair OS that windows seems to load from my thumbdrive or my bad hard drive up front, which just then looks for my hard drive's full installed OS.

Hope all that makes sense. Thank you for reading!

Sorry, missed a few parts of your first post. But, the red light... is that the case red light for hard drive activity indicator, motherboard, or on the hard drive it self?

Also, have you checked OCZ for any firmware updates for the drive? Motherboard for BIOS updates?

^granted if not don't install any updates just yet.

ThermoDust said:

Sorry, missed a few parts of your first post. But, the red light... is that the case red light for hard drive activity indicator, motherboard, or on the hard drive it self?

that's the light on the back of the hard drive itself (my tower's open)

ThermoDust said:

Also, have you checked OCZ for any firmware updates for the drive? Motherboard for BIOS updates?

^granted if not don't install any updates just yet.

with things as they are i don't know how to check my current version or get a newversion onto my drive - my post at OCZ forums is unanswered as of now..

What is the model # of the hard drive and Serial #? Also, you may want to try and move the SATA cable into another slot on the motherboard.

ThermoDust said:

What is the model # of the hard drive and Serial #? Also, you may want to try and move the SATA cable into another slot on the motherboard.

Hey the model is OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD). What's the serial number for? Where is it?

I can move it to another slot to try, but the slot must be working right, since the drive can get going, talk to the BIOS, and load its "in case of failure" OS into memory?