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

[CGgoose]

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!

 

[theog]

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

 

[CGgoose]

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?

 

[ThermoDust]

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?

 

[CGgoose]

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!

 

[ThermoDust]

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?

 

[ThermoDust]

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.

 

[CGgoose]

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)

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..

 

[ThermoDust]

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.

 

[CGgoose]

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?

 

[gregrocker]

Boot into BIOS setup to see if HD is detected and set to boot first (after disk drive).

If so then work through these steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start
starting with the HD test - use SeaTools for DOS | Seagate extended CD scan.

 

[CGgoose]

Boot into BIOS setup to see if HD is detected and set to boot first (after disk drive).

If so then work through these steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start
starting with the HD test - use SeaTools for DOS | Seagate extended CD scan.

hi, thank you - all the info at the seatools site seems to start with installing the software which of course i can't do -- what should i be copying to external media and i assume i have to make it a bootable thing on its own?

the bios does detect the HD, and it will boot the HD first after removable media.
if i go into the startuprepair though (which breaks the communication to the drive somehow) and let startuprepair reboot, then the bios won't recognize the drive. then i restart again and it will recognize it.

 

[gregrocker]

SeaTools for DOS | Seagate
burn to CD with Windows Image Burner or ImgBurn, boot to run Extended test.

If you know your HD make, use it's own diagnostics CD download.

 

[CGgoose]

SeaTools for DOS | Seagate burn to CD with Windows Image Burner or ImgBurn, boot to run Extended test. If you know your HD make, use it's own diagnostics CD download.

Working thru it! So far:

SeaTools -----
Detects device, SMART is supported, enabled, and has not been tripped. DST supported. Logging feature set is supported. POH 3900 Results: Short DST Passed, Long Test Passed

Windows defender----
Windows defender offline cannot be started - unable to detect a windows drive. This could be due to missing drivers, an encrypted drive, or a corrupted windows installation. (This drive has hardware encryption out of the box as I understand it, if that could be the reason.)

Startup repair---
I've already written above what goes on with startup repair, but I did it again here to make sure I had 3x in a row. No change in behavior.

BootRec---
Yay shift+F10! I got to a dos prompt without going THROUGH startup repair, which I hadn't been able to do! I can see my HD and navigate around in it. I used the commands
Bootrec.exe
bcdedit /export D:\BCD_Backup
and got the "successful" message. BUT, when I go to D there is the BCD_Backup file but no Boot folder to use the command
cd Boot

There is a D:/Windows/Boot folder, but because I don't want to screw anything up I want to make sure that's what I want? Should the previous command have made a boot folder at the root of the drive?? Thank you!

 

[gregrocker]

The drives may have different letters in WinRE. Just complete the Commands. Then try Startup Repair again as it may now work.

If you cannot boot into Safe Mode to run Malwarebytes scan, run one of the other Bootable AV's like BitDefender.

 

[CGgoose]

The drives may have different letters in WinRE. Just complete the Commands. Then try Startup Repair again as it may now work.

If you cannot boot into Safe Mode to run Malwarebytes scan, run one of the other Bootable AV's like BitDefender.

Hey, it wasn't that the drive letter was different that threw me, it was that the Boot folder that was shown is supposed to be at the root of the drive, but I don't have a Boot folder there. I have one in the Windows folder. Is that the one I am supposed to use?
(the command list at the link you gave me are as below)

• bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
• c:
• cd boot
• attrib bcd -s -h -r
• ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
• bootrec /RebuildBcd

If i do this exactly (using D: vs C) then it fails because I have no folder that is D:\Boot.


As I posted above, the bootable windows defender cannot run. It failed to find the drive.

 

[gregrocker]

Again, run one of the other bootable AV's as it may not repair if its' infected. You can also rescue your files with several.

Startup Repair may work then after confirming the Active partition.

Then skip the bcd backup and run the rebuild command, and

bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr

 

[CGgoose]

I ran the bootable bit defender - it gave me the 'successful' result but it only scanned 42 files --> it did not scan my hard drive. After that I opened GParted in the little OS bit defender loads - it says "failed to mount 119G Volume - the enclosing drive for the volume is locked".

Kaspersky's rescue CD is reporting my drive is in hibernate mode and that mounting the file system may damage it.

So my quick question now is should I try the bootrecord fix first to see if that helps (can it hurt, if I haven't cleared a potential infection?) or should I let kaspersky try its thing? I will go ahead and load the next bootable AV in line in the meantime. Thanks!

 

[gregrocker]

How old is the OCZ SSD drive? If less than a year contact their tech support for help running their own Diagnostics on the drive to get a possible RMA. If not study the Support webpage for your model closely for diagnostics, firmware, reported problems. This may be a known condition. I don't trust the Seatools results with that behavior from the various repair disks.

 

[CGgoose]

How old is the OCZ SSD drive? If less than a year contact their tech support for help running their own Diagnostics on the drive to get a possible RMA. If not study the Support webpage for your model closely for diagnostics, firmware, reported problems. This may be a known condition. I don't trust the Seatools results with that behavior from the various repair disks.

Ughs. I will look again for their own diagnostics and I bumped my thread at the OCZ forums too.

For what it's worth, the AVG bootable av can see the drive and scanned it and found no infections.

BUT it also has a registry utility (which is what startuprepair found as my root cause). When I open that utility I get this message:
----------------------------------
reged -l "/mnt/sda1/Boot/BCD"
"/mnt/sdda2/Users/Default/NTUSER.DAT"
"/mnt/sda2/Users/myusername/ntuser.dat"
"mnt/sda2/users/myotherusername/NTUSER.DAT"
"HKEY_..."
"\"
" > "
"/opt/avg/arl/reged.out":
Could not read file, got 8192 bytes while expecting 28672 Unable to open/read hive /mnt/sda1/Boot/BCD, exiting..
-----------------------------------

Going into a DOS prompt and looking in my system32/config folder, my SECURITY file is 28,672 bytes... not sure what is stopping it from reading that. All but one of my RegBack folder's files are the same size and have the same timestamp (close to the failure time I think). The SYSTEM file in my config folder has a more recent timestamp of 2 days ago... not sure what changed that.

Not sure if it would help since my RegBack files are the same size and date as my config folder files for the most part, but I can try these instructions to manually replace the files here?
How to Restore Registry Hives on Windows 7 | Captain Debugger

Thanks for all of your help! Hopefully OCZ can give me more info if I can't fix it - I keep going at it bc I feel I must be missing just that ONE thing more... prob should give up though...