Hello everyone, my Mother has a horrible habit of turning my computer off by holding the power button until it shuts off. She did this two weeks ago for the 10,0000000th time and when I turned it back on, it wont load windows, and it gives me messages saying things like "Cannot boot from HDD, please insert boot disk and press enter" I made a windows vista disk with all the proper specs and It gets to the loading screen with the green bars and it "Loads" forever.
Some people think it may be a corrupt HDD, but some people think it may be the power supply. I think the power supply makes more sense, as I dont see how its possible that a Hard-Drive can get corrupted from an improper shut-down.
Win Vista
x64
SP2
6G RAM
Gateway FX 2008 Model
That's really all I can remember that would matter off by heart.
Hard drives can easily get corrupted from improper shutdowns. If the OS has open files with unsaved data (there are always background files being read and written to, you don't need to have a program open) then it will be lost.
Also, HDDs store frequently used data in volatile cache on the drive PCB. Part of the proper shutdown process writes the contents of the cache to the drive before powering down. The cache contents are lost during an improper shutdown, which can lead to massive corruption.
Both of these are likely why Windows won't boot. If the PSU was failing, there would be other symptoms like random BSODs, the computer won't reliably boot (requiring several resets before the computer will POST), and certain peripherals won't work properly when powered on (like drives constantly spinning up/down or CD-ROM failure to work properly.)
I'd recommend using the Vista install CD to either try and repair the install, or use the recovery console to do a chkdsk on drive C:
Damn, it looks like im going to have to pay for a Hard-drive recovery...
Just because the drive is corrupt, doesn't mean all data is lost. The only files usually affected by improper shutdowns are open applications (the OS and any application currently open.) Try what I said and use the Vista install CD to repair the installation, or use the recovery console and do a chkdsk.
oh hey flame have you payed those people back yet?
[QUOTE=Mcfuret;32977509]oh hey flame have you payed those people back yet?[/QUOTE]
No, I had to drop out of school and I now live with my parents in a hic town.
[QUOTE=bohb;32968694]Just because the drive is corrupt, doesn't mean all data is lost. The only files usually affected by improper shutdowns are open applications (the OS and any application currently open.) Try what I said and use the Vista install CD to repair the installation, or use the recovery console and do a chkdsk.[/QUOTE]
How do I do that? The only menu that I can get to gives me the option of changing the boot order.
Bump.
[QUOTE=flamehead5;32966686]Damn, it looks like im going to have to pay for a Hard-drive recovery...[/QUOTE]
pay for it with that $130 you scammed!
[QUOTE=Gareth;33037229]pay for it with that $130 you scammed![/QUOTE]
You are a terrible reader and a terrible poster. I had to drop out of school because I wasn't making enough money and now I live with my parents in a shitty hic town as ive said twice now. Now I find out that my computer is trashed and I cant use it, I never said I had enough money to pay for it because I don't and you have to assume after all this that I am a scammer?
You sir, are stupid.
Your computer isn't trashed, the OS is just corrupted.
Put the Vista DVD in your computer and boot off of it. When you get here:
[img]http://www.bleepstatic.com/tutorials/vista-repair-options/setup-option.jpg[/img]
Click "repair your computer"
You'll see this:
[img]http://www.bleepstatic.com/tutorials/vista-repair-options/system-recovery-options.jpg[/img]
Highlight your drive C:\ (or whatever the Vista install is on) and click next.
You'll get here next:
[img]http://www.bleepstatic.com/tutorials/vista-repair-options/advanced-recovery-options.jpg[/img]
You need to do two things here (so you'll have to do one thing then reboot and get back to this menu.)
The first thing you need to do is click the command prompt option and open a command console. When in there, type "chkdsk -F" and let it run a disk check on your corrupted drive. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I warn you that you MUST NOT interrupt this process, or it will destroy the partition and you won't be able to do anything but reinstall Windows.
After you run the disk check, reboot the machine and follow the above steps to get back to the above menu. Now you'll want to click "Startup Repair". It should automatically start repairing the selected Windows install, and possibly ask a few questions before it does it.
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