Cannot boot Windows, Cannot format Windows

[TastyTeo]

Dear TH,

I managed to help a friend's pc getting fixed so i took my cd case and got over there, first thing i did was to check out what the pc had

So when i turned on the PC normally, it would go on the windows loading/starting screen and it would restart in a loop all the time. I Tried getting in safe mode, but it just loads the files and then restart again... Also it had an option to boot windows on the last working state which end up on a bsod and then restart again.

No way i could get into windows so i inserted my Windows 7 disk to try installing clean windows there. I restarted but i cannot remember exactly the message i got instead of the press any key to boot from cd, i got a message like cannot boot from cd and some error code i cannot seem to remember because it would disappear in like 1 second or something and i couldn't type it down.

Could this be an HDD Issue? I am wondering... could you help me?

The PC Is very old (Over 5 years i think, maybe 8 years), and it had windows xp before.

---Also another thing that might help or might no---
I inserted the GWSCAN disk (To try writing zeros on the HDD) but it could not detect any HDD to write zeros into

---Another help---
The keyboard was not working properly at first, the leds were all lighting up on each key press and nothing would work, i changed some settings into the bios that fixed this problem, i don't remember which setting it was, but i could use the keyboard afterwards to do all those stuff above.

Would you please help me? I tried to describe everything i could!

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

Run a hard drive test in DOS... HIRENS BOOT CD etc, it sounds like a failing hard drive...

All the best Brett

 

[TastyTeo]

Hi

Run a hard drive test in DOS... HIRENS BOOT CD etc, it sounds like a failing hard drive...

All the best Brett

That was my guess also Thanks for your review, although i think GWSCAN already ran a test over this

 

[tysonwarrior2]

This may sound stupid, but a damaged disc can cause that. The windows installer/loader that runs at that time is a POS and will not tolerate the slightest nick in the disc. The reason I say this is one time i had an OEM copy of windows XP that bluescreened before it got finished loading drivers. At first I thought the drive had died, so I tried another CD drive. No good. I ended up taking the disc and cloning it with Infrarecorder, which then worked because the copy was now on a clean CD. The first disc had nothing truly wrong with it, just the CD read algorithm the windows installer uses seems to have been written by a toddler. The moral of the story is make sure the disc is spotless before you even attempt to install windows..

 

[TastyTeo]

The disk was freshly burned at the slowest possible rates. I am pretty sure it's not a CD Problem.

 

[tysonwarrior2]

Just making sure, because that windows XP disc was making my head hurt for 3 days.

 

[tysonwarrior2]

I didn't see the part where the HDD seemed to be missing. Try the drive in a different machine, and do a SMART check. Look at the sector reallocation count to see how many bummed sectors you have. Another thing is if it is an IDE HDD in an older machine, try resetting CMOS. something in CMOS may have been messed up, making the HDD act screwy. This can also happen with SATA drives, too.

 

[TastyTeo]

I didn't see the part where the HDD seemed to be missing. Try the drive in a different machine, and do a SMART check. Look at the sector reallocation count to see how many bummed sectors you have. Another thing is if it is an IDE HDD in an older machine, try resetting CMOS. something in CMOS may have been messed up, making the HDD act screwy. This can also happen with SATA drives, too.

The part where the HDD is missing is when i insert the other CD of GWSCAN to write zeros on the HDD and i don't get any HDD

 

[meathead_21]

Hello MEATHEAD here Did you try enabling your boot device in BIOS ?

 

[TastyTeo]

Hello MEATHEAD here Did you try enabling your boot device in BIOS ?

Obviously