Another hard drive problem

Philistine

Lads,

I was asked to have a look at a HP laptop which wont boot up. When I turn on the laptop I get a black screen with the following:

A disk read error occured
Press ctrl + alt + del to restart

I can press ctrl + alt + del all night but keep getting the same screen and message.

After I press ctrl + alt + del and the laptop tries to start I can press F10 to access the setup utility, and in the diagnostics tab I can initiate a Hard Drive Self Test.
The result of this test just says: TEST STATUS #1 - 07 FAIL

Any ideas?

IrishTonyO

Sounds like hard drive failure, download a dos bootdisk and run
CHKDSK /F /R

this will try mark bad sectors

Philistine

Thanks for reply.

I downloaded dos boot disk and booted from it (USB floppy drive)

I got the following:


STARTING.....
A:\> mode con codepage prepare = ((850) ega.cpi)
mode prepare codepage function completed
A:\> mode con codepage select 850=850
mode select codepage function completed
A:\> keyb uk,, keybrd2.sys
A:\>
A:\>

Do I change directory to C: and then run the CHKDSK /F /R ?

Thanks

IrishTonyO

type
CHKDSK C: /F /R

bonzodog2

Yes, or you could
CHKDSK C: /F /R

Philistine

Actually, this isn't what I expected to see after booting from floppy? Does this look right?

Philistine

I tried CHKDSK C: /F /R and got "bad command or file name
I then changed to C: and tried CHKDSK /F /R and got same message as above

bonzodog2

Looks reasonable for some versions of DOS, haven't used a floppy since Win98.

If you change to c: (working dir/drive) you might need to
A:\CHKDSK C: /F /R

The ver command should tell you the OS version

MunsterCycling

The boot floppy doesn't have CHKDSK on it, add it to the disk and reboot.

bonzodog2

If you have a CD drive and a Win CD (bootable) you could try the recovery console option

maybe the chkdsk command is in some subdirectory on the floppy ?

Philistine

MunsterCycling wrote: »

The boot floppy doesn't have CHKDSK on it, add it to the disk and reboot.

Little above my paygrade:o. How do I do that?

Thanks

bonzodog2

If its WinXp, try
copy C:\WINDOWS\system32\chkdsk.exe a:

you might not need to reboot

Philistine

bonzodog2 wrote: »

If you have a CD drive and a Win CD (bootable) you could try the recovery console option

maybe the chkdsk command is in some subdirectory on the floppy ?

I presume if I boot from the WinXP Pro CD, I'll have an option to use the recovery console and not overwrite / reformat the harddrive? I don't want to erase all her saved info!!!

bonzodog2

Correct. I cant remember the letters you have to press, might be L or R

bonzodog2

Before it ever gets to copying any files, it will ask you which partition you want to install to; if you get that far, its too far (but not too late!) . Reboot then.

Philistine

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Before it ever gets to copying any files, it will ask you which partition you want to install to; if you get that far, its too far (but not too late!) . Reboot then.

Great. Thanks for replies. I'll find disk and try in the morning.
Thanks again

Philistine

I copied the chkdsk.exe file from another PC to the floppy and tried again but got a message saying “this program cannot be run in DOS mode”.

I then tried to get into the recovery console by booting from a WinXP CD. It got as far as the windows setup page before giving the following message:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:
Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.
Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0x0000005, 0xF786B0BF, )xF7CB7208, 0xF7CB6F08)
*** pci.sys – address F786B0BF base at F7864000, datestamp 3b7d855c

I dont have the option to modify or update the BIOS in the BIOS setup utility and the laptop wont boot up in safe mode.

Am I fighting a losing battle or is there any hope of getting the PC to boot up again? If not, is there any way to recover any of the user saved info from the drive?

MunsterCycling

You can burn a copy of Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD a recover your files to a memory stick / external drive and then reinstall, your files are not lost just windoze is having a hissy fit.

ricman

IF you have a windows cd ,just reinstall windows in c:\ windows , then use the search function to find the mp3s, photos, etc, they,ll be in the old user directorys, old my documents, etc OR just use a linux livecd ,set bios boot from cdrom/dvd.
REinstalling will not delete the old mp3s, just do not FORMAT THE hardrive , select leave the hardrive as is, install without formatting in the setup process.Thats if say the pc has windows xp on it at present , then setup using a winxp disk.

bonzodog2

Any idea how old the laptop is ? Or the size of the disk ? Its possible the disk has some serious error, and you might be better off to get a new disk, install XP onto that, and if there are valuable files on the present disk, maybe get an enclosure for that to do recovery. I bought a 320GB SATA in an enclosure recently for less than 50 euro, and an empty enclosure for less than 10

softdancomputer

pci.sys – address F786B0BF
That will suggest a PCI problem (graphic, modem...).
If you get the error when trying to repair/reinstall windows, make sure you got a SP2 disk with the SATA, or it may be the old XP drivers problem.