startup repair loop, root cause: no hard drive detected

[PFCelliott]

My pc is a stock Asus G53SX-A1, no hardware changes. Yet it says the reason I got a blue screen was due to hardware changes. My computer froze and rebooted during a video game. So I have been experiencing the classic startup repair loop and I tried everything I could find on google without progress. When I try to the option to fix the problem automatically it says it wasn't able to help and tells me the root cause is because there is no hard drive detected, and that if a hard drive is installed it is not responding. I can't detect in command prompt, but somehow I can see contents of it through BIOS so its really odd. When I tried to reinstall windows it says it can't find a hard drive to install on and I need to insert a drivers disk so I can set up the hard drive to continue. So I put in my Asus drivers disk and yet it tells me there's no drivers detected. I looked at the Asus website and all the downloads they have available are the same as on that same drivers disk it said it couldn't find drivers on. So right now my main problem is my pc doesn't detect that I have a hard drive at all even though I do, the same one the pc came with. This laptop has worked fine for almost a year and this issue just came out of nowhere, so any ideas as to why my HD would suddenly disappear in my computers eyes? I even moved the HD to the secondary slot to see if maybe the primary slot had gone bad since I had an issue once with my desktop that was fixed by moving my RAM stick to a different slot so I figured I would try, I will try anything at this point. Thanks for reading.

 

[cytherian]

What must have happened when your computer locked up is that the OS lost the ability to write to the hard drive while in the middle of writing to it, which compromised the safety protocols and damaged the MBR or other system file that has compromised the operating system.

You have access to a working computer in order to make this post. I would attach your Asus G53SX-A1 hard drive to this one as a secondary device and run some disk utilities on it. Try a chkdsk repair or better yet, use a feature rich 3rd party diagnostic tool.

 

[PFCelliott]

Posted this via Android, but I do have a working desktop, how would I connect a laptop HD to a desktop? I'm traditionally a desktop user so I'm unaware of laptop hardware abilities if this is possible.

 

[Injust]

Well, do you have anything on your hard drive that you need?
Maybe you might recover the stuff by connecting it to another computer, and then DBAN it?
I don't know, I'm not an expert here, just making suggestions.

 

[PFCelliott]

I do have personal stuff like photos and such but at this point I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get my computer working again. What do I have to do for it to allow me to reinstall windows? I can access the hd from my desktop through command prompt, just need to know where to go from there. Do I format, clean, idk. Just want to reset it so I can reinstall windows

 

[Injust]

Can you boot from another device? E.g. a Windows repair disc/USB?
If you can, use Command Prompt and use the command

dir [drive letter]:\

 

[PFCelliott]

No I can't

 

[gregrocker]

Is the HD detected in BIOS setup under storage drives? Google the serial given there to see what make HD you have.

Boot into System Recovery Options to run Startup Repair repeatedly to report back what it reports.

If it fails then you'll need the disk or flash stick installer provided in Step 5 of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start to do the repairs and possibly others given there depending upon what Startup Repair finds.

How to Boot your Computer from a Bootable CD or DVD
90% of failures to boot a disk are user error. Are you prompted to "Press any key to boot disk?"

 

[mjf]

No I can't

I don't doubt you but this is odd.
You have a DVD drive plus a couple of USB2 ports?
Can't you go into the BIOS and set either of these as the boot device?

 

[PFCelliott]

Here's where I'm at: initially, the HD showed in BIOS but not when I tried to reinstall windows. So I went into command prompt diskpart and found the disk there, I read on other threads similar to mine to do "clean" and then create a new partition so I cleaned it and after that it came up when reinstalling windows and said disk 0 unallocated space, when I tried to proceed it said it couldn't install on the drive, so I hit "new" and after waiting a while an error message said it was not able to create a new partition on the selected unallocated space. When I try to manually create a new partition in diskpart I get error messages, same for volumes. Sometimes the drive doesn't even show up at all, but when it does I can't do anything with it other than "detail disk" and see that its free space with no volumes. I tried resetting BIOS because in one of the error messages it said to make sure the drivers controller was enabled and it shows fine in BIOS. I get nothing but error messages when attempting to create new partitions, volumes, or convert it. When I connect the drive to my desktop and attempt these things it says the action is not allowed on this version of windows even though it is the exact same version of windows 7. Totally lost now.

 

[gregrocker]

Check in BIOS setup if you have an EFI Boot disk in the Boot Priority Order. If so you have EFI BIOs which requires special steps to install to a GPT Disk: UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums

If you want to install normally to MBR disk then remove the EFI Boot disk from boot order, enable any Legacy BIOS setting, clean HD again to remove GPT formatting, try install again.

If that fails, try formatting an Active partition from Step 2.2 here: SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

If the HD does in fact disappear from any of these operations then test it using HD Diagnostic extended CD scan, followed by Disk Check from installer Command Line on full disk partition you create from step 2.2 above.

 

[PFCelliott]

So using the UEFI to boot seemed promising at first following that tutorial, two things happened though. Following the step to clean all in diskpart, whilst cleaning it suddenly said error device not connected. Then I could no longer see my HD even though it was showing seconds before. After that I restarted to see if it still showed in BIOS and it didn't so I restarted again and it showed up so then I began the windows setup and it showed the disk as all unallocated space no partitions, so like the tutorial said I clicked "new" and it seemed to be working at first, then all the sudden it stopped in the middle of what it was doing and of course showed that there was no hard drive detected. So it seems as though my HD is a ghost, coming and going as it pleases and randomly disappearing without cause. **** me right? Oh and now that I restarted after that last disappearance, I can't even start the setup again. It just sits at a black screen after the starting windows screen displays, the cd drive ceases activity and it just does nothing now every time I restart it, I can set BIOS back to defaults all I want now and it doesn't help. Do I just have a screwed HD? Nothing I do helps, and it seems the things I've tried have showed good results for others so idk what I'm doing wrong.

 

[gregrocker]

Do you have an EFI BIOS? I told you how to check but you didn't reply for sure.

I also told you how to test your HD which appears indicated if WIn7 install causes that behavior when tried by both methods given.

 

[PFCelliott]

Right but I can't perform those checks without first passing this black screen bs. Guess ill have to take out the HD for the third time and connect it to my desktop once more to do these checks. Thanks for your help so far, ill reply when I muster up the motivation to crack this ****er open again.

 

[gregrocker]

The tests are all done from boot disks.

 

[PFCelliott]

Another note, I was able to create a partition earlier following the "optimize for windows installation" steps and again got an error message during setup that said it was unable to create partition. And idk if its an EFI BIOS or not how do I tell? When I tried to delete an EFI boot option it just said select one to delete nothing else, and wouldn't let me select anything.

 

[gregrocker]

In my first post I said to check if there is an EFI boot disk in BIOS boot order, that this means you have an EFI BIOS.

If you cannot install in EFI mode using the tutorial provided, then remove the EFI Boot disk from BIOS boot order by moving the DVD drive first to boot, followed by HDD.

You may also need to look for another setting in BIOS setup for Legacy BIOS to enable to complete this process. Then Save settings changes and Exit BIOS.

Now you need to run Diskpart Clean command again to assure you have not formatted HD as a GPT disk.

 

[mjf]

I do have personal stuff like photos and such but at this point I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get my computer working again.

Why did you do a clean? You should have been able to rescue your files.
If it had a recovery partition it's gone.
If you were supplied with Windows install discs or made recovery discs then that would be an option.