Help diagnose computer problem

NYSpeed Automotive NYSpeed Off Topic
1

last night I was playing battlefield 3 and my computer freezes, I turn it off and it wont start up not.

I get an error when it tries to boot from the hard drive saying

Disk boot failure, Insert system disk and press enter

so I put in the disk and it boots up into windows installation. I hit repair computer, let it try to repair it automatically because it says there is a problem with my computers startup options. but tells me that it cant. The error that shows when I hit details is

Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Signature 01: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Signature 03: unknown
Problem Signature 04: -1
Problem Signature 05: ExternalMedia
Problem Signature 06: 1
Problem Signature 07: NoOsInstalled

the last line is very odd because there is definitely an OS installed. I can even navigate the hard drive to look for drivers

so then I try to just install it because I want to see if the hard drives are recognized and they both show up but when I try to pick the one I have windows installed on it says

windows cannot be installed on disk. computers hardware may not support booting to this disk, ensure disk’s controller is enabled in bios

So I got into the bios go to hard disk boot priority but none are listed and the only option I have is

Bootable add-in cards

At this point I dont know what to do or what the problem even is, the hard drives are working since I can navigate them like I said and they are recognized by the windows installation.

2

Sounds like total hard drive failure.

Take the drive out and connect it to a working computer. My guess is you can’t access the drive at all.

3

run a chkdsk from the recovery console. Chdsk C: /r

4

but like I said I can navigate through it to find drivers is windows recovery

besides I dont have another computer to plug it into, everyone in my house has laptops

5

Missed the part about being able to navigate the drive.

Try the check disk progrock mentioned. There’s also the free SeaTools boot disk http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

If the disk comes back ok you can try fdisk /mbr to rewrite the master boot record.

6

what os?

with win vista and 7 you can try bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr This all would be much easier with another computer.

7

Boot into the windows recovery console and use the bootrec tools. I used to randomly have issues with the boot sector and it would fix it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

try /fixmbr first and continue on.

EDIT: BITCH

8

IF you can see the Filesystem structure then you are in decent shape.

9

HD came back ok, did the bootrec fixmbr and fixboot both completed successfully but when I tried to do “bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup” it tells me

The store export operation has failed. The requested system device cannot be found

I agree it would be easier with another computer but thats not an option

10

If you’re in the recovery console, make sure the main partition is ACTUALLY C:…I’ve seen it switch to another drive letter like D:

Do a CD c: then do a DIR command and make sure that’s the correct one.

11

how do I tell if its the main partition? after doing DIR it says

Volume in device X is boot
then lists all directories and found 74 files, 6 directories. seems that there should be more files than that but im not sure, never done this before

12

X is the recovery partition, you’ll need to Change drives. a CD C: assuming C: is the main drive will change to the C drive, so the Command prompt should read C:>. Then do the DIR command and look for your program files folder to verify that is your main partition. Like i said it could be any drive letter so you might have to change drives using the CD command a few times.

13

yes C: is my main partition, I recognize most of the directories listed

14

You can try this:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows

Although I don’t think the System File Checker works off the recovery partition. If you do that command and it complains that the machine is waiting on a reboot, it won’t work.

15

I’m pretty sure sfc does work with the recovery partition as long as you cd to C: first.

16

sfc worked but said that “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them”

17

So is the consensus that its a windows problem? If thats the case im just going to go out and buy a SSD from BestBuy and install windows on that since I eventually wanted to do that

18

I usually boot to a copy of spinrite. That will tell you really quick if the drive has problems. It will take a week or so to try to fix them, but if it has a lot of bad sectors I just get rid of the drive and replace it.

19

Sounds like the drive overheated at first and failed, but from what I’m reading windows got corrupt. So this is my theory, you were gaming drive overheated computer restarted and got corrupt.

20

get everything you want off it, and scrap it.