Absolute Disaster

[TrainTrackHack]

Overall, I am between a rock and a hard place. I guess my options are
1) Buy a new hard drive, get someone (my uncle) to install it.
2) Bring the whole comp to a comp repair place.
3) Buy a brand new computer.

...is the cpeapest option. Repair places charge for labour, and usually they charge a lot for it, and you never know what they actually do... and brand new rig just because of a dead HD sounds quite ridiculous. HDs are cheap nowadays, that should be no problem.

 

[Dystopia]

Get a new HDD. It will most likely solve your problem. Bringing it to some computer store fixer-upper-place will just cost ya a lot of money

 

[brian]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your continued efforts....

My uncle ( a techie by trade ) came over this morning with an XP installation disc and he said there was nothing he could do.

The picture that gamerman4 posted, I can see that screen.

My computer never came with a Vista installation disc, only an Upgrade thing that I never used.

Overall, I am between a rock and a hard place. I guess my options are
1) Buy a new hard drive, get someone (my uncle) to install it.
2) Bring the whole comp to a comp repair place.
3) Buy a brand new computer.

If I buy a hard drive and something else is broken, that's a waste of money.

I'm relatively tight on cash, and naturally this all has to coincide with when I need my computer the most, for school work.

Any more suggestions, anyone? I heard about something called the Ultimate Boot Disc. What is it?? Will it work??

YES!!! you can use this. (assuming i am thinking of the same disk) anyway put this in your cd drive and start up the computer. Start hitting f12. that should bring you to a boot screen. if it doesent try f11 or f10. Then chose cd drive. boot it up. Once you are at the keyboard selection and language hit next. Then you will be at a install now page. Instead go to the bottom left and hit repair your computer. It will search for instilations and hopefully find it. Hit next and then you will be given 5 different selections. I would first try command prompt When that comes up type
"bootrec /fixboot"
without quotes of cource. If it asks your if your sure just say yes.
next after it finishes type
"bootrec /fixmbr"
once again say yes if it askes you. then type
"exit"
and then hit restart.
If that does not work, go back and boot into the cd but instead of hiting command prompt ty startup repair.

 

[Dean11]

if the hard drive had anything wrong with it it would be coming up as "system boot failure"... it sounds like windows is corrupt so running a chkdsk in the recovery console like people previously suggested might fix it or a windows repair with the install disk.

 

[somewhatsavvy]

Thanks for those suggestions guys... I'll get back to you with how that works or didn't...

 

[somewhatsavvy]

Get a new HDD. It will most likely solve your problem. Bringing it to some computer store fixer-upper-place will just cost ya a lot of money

I brought this up to my uncle. He said that new HDD would be essentially useless because there would be no OS on it, meaning I wouldn't really be better of than I am right now. Is that true? When you buy a HDD, how do you install an OS? Can you do that with BIOS? I don't know anything, I'm just throwing suggestions out there!

 

[Cleric7x9]

you need to run a chkdsk on your computer

get a hold of a windows XP installation CD

when the blue screen comes up, select R to repair from a command prompt

if it asks you for your Admin password, put it in, leave it blank if you dont have one, and press enter

type chkdsk /r and press Enter

let it do its thing

 

[brian]

you need to run a chkdsk on your computer

get a hold of a windows XP installation CD

when the blue screen comes up, select R to repair from a command prompt

if it asks you for your Admin password, put it in, leave it blank if you dont have one, and press enter

type chkdsk /r and press Enter

let it do its thing

it is a vista instilation. So that would work with what i posted but just do chkdsk /r instead of the bootrec

YES!!! you can use this. (assuming i am thinking of the same disk) anyway put this in your cd drive and start up the computer. Start hitting f12. that should bring you to a boot screen. if it doesent try f11 or f10. Then chose cd drive. boot it up. Once you are at the keyboard selection and language hit next. Then you will be at a install now page. Instead go to the bottom left and hit repair your computer. It will search for instilations and hopefully find it. Hit next and then you will be given 5 different selections. I would first try command prompt When that comes up type
"bootrec /fixboot"
without quotes of cource. If it asks your if your sure just say yes.
next after it finishes type
"bootrec /fixmbr"
once again say yes if it askes you. then type
"exit"
and then hit restart.
If that does not work, go back and boot into the cd but instead of hiting command prompt ty startup repair.

 

[Cleric7x9]

it is a vista instilation. So that would work with what i posted but just do chkdsk /r instead of the bootrec

sorry, i didnt read the whole thread

 

[brian]

sorry, i didnt read the whole thread

haha yeah truest me i wouldent have eather

 

[2048Megabytes]

From what I read it looks like there is something wrong with the boot file loading Windows. (It ticks me off nowadays that most computers don't even have a Windows recovery disc.)

Anyway, I think this is the solution. She should have her hard drive pulled out of her system, have someone get all the valuable data off of it. Be sure you get the device drivers off the hard drive.

Next get the hard drive reinstalled. Format the the hard drive to wipe it clean then do a fresh reinstall of Windows. Reinstall the device drivers and everything should hopefully work if there is nothing wrong with the hard drive.

 

[Cleric7x9]

From what I read it looks like there is something wrong with the boot file loading Windows. (It ticks me off nowadays that most computers don't even have a Windows recovery disc.)

Anyway, I think this is the solution. She should have her hard drive pulled out of her system, have someone get all the valuable data off of it. Be sure you get the device drivers off the hard drive.

Next get the hard drive reinstalled. Format the the hard drive to wipe it clean then do a fresh reinstall of Windows. Reinstall the device drivers and everything should hopefully work if there is nothing wrong with the hard drive.

except that she loses all her programs, and that is WAY more work than needs to be done...

 

[somewhatsavvy]

YES!!! you can use this. (VISTA UPGRADE CD)(assuming i am thinking of the same disk) anyway put this in your cd drive and start up the computer. Start hitting f12. that should bring you to a boot screen. if it doesent try f11 or f10. Then chose cd drive. boot it up. Once you are at the keyboard selection and language hit next. Then you will be at a install now page. Instead go to the bottom left and hit repair your computer. It will search for instilations and hopefully find it. Hit next and then you will be given 5 different selections. I would first try command prompt When that comes up type
"bootrec /fixboot"
without quotes of cource. If it asks your if your sure just say yes.
next after it finishes type
"bootrec /fixmbr"
once again say yes if it askes you. then type
"exit"
and then hit restart.
If that does not work, go back and boot into the cd but instead of hiting command prompt ty startup repair.

UPDATE
Hi everyone.....
So I'm guilty of initially dismissing this post, seeing as I was under the impression thatnothing was opening from CD. After lettinmg my comp settle for a couple of days, whilst family situations in relation to its use escalated to the point of anger, betrayal, and accusations of deliberate tampering towards myself, I got so desperate that I figured, hell, why not?

I finally got it to boot from the disk and hit the Repair Your Computer link like brian suggested. It began a Startup Repair. This was at 9PM last night, and it's now a little past 7AM the next day. I am wondering how long I should leave it there. When I attempt to hit cancel, a tiny window comes up informing me that the current repair operation cannot be canceled. The tower doesn't seem to be working more than the minimal (i.e. I don't hear the loading sound of when the comp is "thinking").

Is it possible for the process to be frozen even through the computer and the System Repair window are responsive? The little blue bar is still crossing the screen at its precedented rate.... and has been for 10 hours now. Should I leave it on while i do to school?

Suggestions, ideas, comments? All appreciated!

 

[gamerman4]

I have been in situation where chkdsk or other disk scanner utilities would freeze at a certain point in a drive. You likely have a bad sector that the utility is try to scan over. See if you can use the Vista Upgrade Disk to reinstall Vista. It's worth a shot. If it asks to reformat I would suggest no considering that it is an upgrade cd.

 

[Kornowski]

Download a program called Drive Fitness Test, Here.

Burn that to a CD using something like this. It's an ISO file, so you'll need a special program like the one I linked to.

Let DFT run, if at the end, it says something like; 'Disposition Code 0x00' your HDD is still in working order. I'd do this before you fork out the cash for a new HDD.

 

[Dystopia]

Your uncle said that the HDD would be useless. Well, i forgot that you hve no OS, so you will not only need the new HDD, you will actaully need a new OS disk as well. Try

 

[somewhatsavvy]

Startup Repair Diagnosis and repair log
_____________________________
Number of repair attempts: 1

Session details
System Disk= \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory=
AutoChk Run= 0
Number of root causes= 1

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 15ms

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 94 ms
Test Performed:
____________
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 47 ms

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 15 ms

Root cause found:
______________
No OS files found on disk.

Repair action: Partition table repair
Result: Failed. Error Code 0x490
Time taken: 1482 ms


What does this mean? I can guess that I apparently don't have vista on here any more???


I still have access to my files via the seach function and have ftransfered some via memory card....

I guess I have to buy a new vista package no matter what, right?

 

[Dystopia]

Startup Repair Diagnosis and repair log
_____________________________
Number of repair attempts: 1

Session details
System Disk= \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory=
AutoChk Run= 0
Number of root causes= 1

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 15ms

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 94 ms
Test Performed:
____________
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 47 ms

Test Performed:
____________
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code= 0x0
Time taken: 15 ms

Root cause found:
______________
No OS files found on disk.
Repair action: Partition table repair
Result: Failed. Error Code 0x490
Time taken: 1482 ms


What does this mean? I can guess that I apparently don't have vista on here any more???


I still have access to my files via the seach function and have ftransfered some via memory card....

I guess I have to buy a new vista package no matter what, right?

yeah,that pretty much means that no matter what, you will need a new os. so purchase a new OS, have it installed(or do it yourself), and see If it works. If something goes wrong, chances are its your HDD, so you might have to buy a new one.

 

[gamerman4]

I have seen many articles showing how you can use the Vista upgrade Disk to install Vista without having a previous OS on it. I'm not sure about the legality but if she has a license, should it make a difference?

 

[Kornowski]

Download a program called Drive Fitness Test, Here.

Burn that to a CD using something like this. It's an ISO file, so you'll need a special program like the one I linked to.

Let DFT run, if at the end, it says something like; 'Disposition Code 0x00' your HDD is still in working order. I'd do this before you fork out the cash for a new HDD.

Did you try that?