Laptop Won't Boot From Disk

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I_Am_Steve

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Sep 29, 2014
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My laptop has recently been encountering problems when I boot it up. Whenever I try, I am told to boot from a disk. I restart with a disk inserted, and I am told to press any key to boot from the disk. However, after Windows loads the files, it gets stuck on the "Starting Windows" screen.

If I leave it for a few seconds at the "Press any key" part, it then tells me that a disk read error has occurred, and to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart.
 
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I_Am_Steve

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BIOS shows that it boots SATA CD first, then SATA HDD. Everything else is set to N/A.

Booting thr HDD to safe mode does not do much either - I get stuck at disc.sys
 
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JeckeL

JeckeL

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Jul 19, 2009
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Is it a brand name laptop? For example, most lenovo's have a rescue/recovery/repair utility that is accessed by pressing F11 (in the same way you would boot to safe mode with F8) and it can attempt a repair, revert back to a previous HDD state (assuming you use the auto-backup feature and haven't disabled it), etc... Granted, the repair utility rarely fixes anything but it's worth a try. Does your laptop have anything like this?

If not it might be time for a reformat/reinstallation. If you've got a secondary PC you can remove the laptops hard drive, hook it up alongside the primary hard drive in a different machine, and hopefully browse/save files from it to a flash drive or whatever before reinstalling windows
 
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I_Am_Steve

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I'be actually tried both of those options. Trouble is, even with a third-party disc, I can't reformat it. Even if I try to rescue/setup/etc., it just tells me that there's a disk read error.
 
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JeckeL

JeckeL

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What about hooking up the laptop HDD as a secondary drive in a different machines and use the disc drive from that machine to reformat/reinstall the laptop HDD (obviously you want to make sure you don't accidentally wipe the other computer's HDD)
 
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I_Am_Steve

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I'm afraid I have neither the experience nor the equipment to do that.

If it helps, I tried to wipe the hard drive with "Darik's Boot and Nuke." However, the wipe wouldn't start, and it displayed the message "the udevsettle program failed with error 1."
 
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I_Am_Steve

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Time for a new laptop, then?

Also, just out of curiosity, what exactly is meant by it failing at error 1? And why does this mean I need to get a new laptop?
 
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JeckeL

JeckeL

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How old is it and where'd you get it? If there's some sort of warranty (or even if there isn't a warranty) you'd probably save a ton of money by sending it in to have the HDD replaced... unless the hardware is extremely outdated to the point where it'd be pointless trying to restore it instead of getting a new laptop
 
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I_Am_Steve

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Is the data on my current HDD recoverable? I have backups of important files, but it'd be nice to have that option.



It's 2/3 years old, so it's not that old. The warranty's long gone, though, as it only lasted for a year, if I recall. Still, if the HDD's the only problem, I may do some reading up on the subject so I can transfer the files myself. I really don't want to have to pay a shop to do it if it's something I could easily do myself.
 
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I_Am_Steve

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I've not really got that much experience in handling computer guts. Is this something I could do with the help of an online tutorial? I am, how you say, very inexperienced. I can identify parts if you give me some time, but I couldn't put a jigsaw together if it had two pieces.

I'd ask a shop to do it, but I don't really know if I could afford it. Plus, chances are that I'm going to get somebody who'll want to look through my files if they can recover the data. And if I can't trust them not to do that, I don't really think they deserve my money.
 
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I_Am_Steve

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It's a Samsung. Not entirely sure what model, but it was fairly new in 2012. It unscrews at the bottom, but I've not been able to actually remove it.
 
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JeckeL

JeckeL

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If he can't boot to a disc in order to reinstall windows as it stands right now I don't think he'll be able to after putting a different HDD in
 
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