Posted on 05/11/2015 8:29:18 AM PDT by Eric Pode of Croydon
"DISK BOOT FAILURE - Insert system disk and press enter"
Doing just that produces no result.
I've tried booting with the system disk I used to install W7 on this machine, and with two repair disks created on other 32 bit W7 machines, and get the "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible" message with them all.
I have a Windows PE install on a flash drive which will boot and let me in to look at the drives. I've been able to copy all the files from the boot partition to another USB drive, and run chkdsk (did not run chkdsk /f) on that partition with no errors, so I think it's just a boot sector issue, not general disk failure.
A web search on the "system disk not compatible" message reveals two possible causes:
(1) UEFI not consistent between the W7 install and the optical drive. This is a vintage 2007 motherboard which is pre-UEFI, so that's not at issue.
(2) Optical drive located farther up the disk hierarchy than the boot FDD. Looking at my drives in the BIOS listing reveals this:
SATA Channels
1 (other HD)
3 Boot HD
2 ----
4 (other HD)
5 Optical Drive
6 (other HD)
...so it does not look like that's the problem either.
Anything else I can try???
Make sure you don’t have a CD or a flash drive connected to the machine as it may be trying to boot to one of those if they’re ahead of your HDD in the boot order. <-— I did this one!
Open the Computer case and check connections for Hard drive ,I had a cable that would come loose
I’m no expert, but it sound like you just found a great new paperweight.
Get a Mac.
I’ve faced several of these in the past, but I’m fuzzy on my solutions, especially on win7. Rebuild mbr? Startup repair from install disk. Googling always helps, as there is no problem that someone else hasn’t solved.
Good luck!
Install Windows 7 (don’t format hard drive) again. It’s essentially a repair. Or upgrade to Windows 8.1.
My brother in law had this problem , I used a Linux CD to boot from and found out his Hard Drive was about to go Boom ,he didn’t listen and it went Boom and he lost all his data
If you can get to the command prompt
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
next try
bootrec.exe /fixboot
Pinging the Windows list keeper
Double bump for this. Often times failure to boot is a result of a bad MBR (master boot record). This normally results from a virus that has been cleaned.
Macs have disk failures, too.
Sounds like you’ve got bad sectors on the boot sector, in which case you are best off just backing up all your files, then getting a new hard drive and reinstalling from scratch. You might be able to do a chkdsk for repairs, then wipe and reinstall windows on this drive, but the failing sectors tend to grow with time so that isn’t the best solution.
If you don't have that, the next best thing would be to replace the HDD and reinstall Windows. Then copy your data (that is still readable) from the old HDD.
Is it possible to repair your HDD? Perhaps, but for that you need the tools and the information how to use them. It is easy to lose the whole HDD this way, so I'd recommend to save your data first.
I'm unsure why the recovery tool from the install CD is not able to repair your install. Perhaps it is related to the very issue at hand - it does not recognize Windows because it is damaged. You could connect the HDD to another Windows system (via a USB to SATA adapter, for example) and run chkdsk /f /r /... (several options here) on it. But failure of an HDD after several years of use is not exactly unheard of. Check the SMART logs if you can access them.
In practical terms, though, it is easier to grab a new HDD and reinstall - unless you are a geek who enjoys editing sectors on HDDs in a hex editor :-) All your data should be probably still on the old HDD, and you can copy it all to the new drive. You will have to reinstall the 3rd party software. It does not pay to try to restore the old drive because chances are that it will fail on you again, in the nearest future, and it may crash harder.
Can you get to the BIOS setup? If so. make sure your optical drive is #1 in the boot sequence to access the win7 setup disk to make a repair. If it is listed as #1 and you still can’t access, you likely have a failed disk controller which is extremely bad news. If you can’t even access the BIOS, you may have a failed/failing power supply.
Surprised it took till post #5 for this helpful piece of advice : )
croydon, england?
I used linux puppy to back up files when windows won’t start, just in case. I have it on a flash drive. If it doesn’t see your c drive—its dead, jim, or not powered.
My laptop hard drive does have bad sectors and even linux didn’t work the last time so I’m prepared to get a new HDD. I’ve reformatted it a couple of times...I will not go with windows 8. I like playing with it. Kind of like a cat playing with a dying mouse.
LOL. The thread was incomplete without the ubiquitous Mac snobbery. When you buy a Mac, you have to convince yourself of superiority because you paid 3 times what another person paid for a similar machine. You also have to be an evangelist for Apple because it somehow affirms your superiority. I know, because I bought one.
When I installed Windows7 on a system that previously had XP, I recall that the partition that it begins booting from was not the same partition that W7 eventually was installed on. So even though all your files are still there another partition with the primary boot information may be damaged.
In my case I can’t lose my XP partition, otherwise the startup process won’t find the W7 partition. I gave up trying to get it to boot directly from the W7 partition.
I may be dreaming but I seem to recall even with a clean from scratch installation W7 still wants to have that separate (small) boot partition.
Great advice as I use Lubuntu 12.04 live CD for checking hard drives. It has the Disk Utility program where you can click on the hard drive and it will bring up the info, including being able to click on and access the S.M.A.R.T data on the hard drive. It will immediately inform a person if the disk is bad or not and can even run tests to see if anything changes after running the tests. It’s a very good tool for checking hard drives.
CGato
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