Hard Drive No Longer Bootable Or Detectable By Windows 7
Jan 19, 2012
I'm running into issues recently with a number of Windows 7 pc's where the hard disk will no longer be accessible. If I use startup repair, it will fail and not detect the disk or not even reach the recovery options screen. If I plug the drive into another windows pc, it will want to initialize and format.I can plug the disk into a mac or linux and am able to read / write to the disk as normal. The only way i've overcome this so far is to reformat the drive.
My computer isn't picking up my other two hard drives. They appear when i turn on my computer and only sometimes with that. They don't appear to let me assign a letter or path to them either. They are both 250 gb drives and both are standard in computer but neither are accessible. If anyone has any ideas that would be great. Command line functions to check if i have drives isn't working either.
I am about to buy a new internal hard drive for my laptop, and want to do a clean install of Windows 7. My laptop came with XP, but I did an online upgrade to Windows 7 (student edition) Professional.
How can I create a bootable Windows 7 disk so when I put my new hard drive in my computer, it will setup Windows 7 for me? I also don't have any old XP disks because my laptop didn't come with any.
I looked on my C: Drive but couldnt find any .iso files or anything like that?
I'm trying to install 7 on a VHD using the command prompt. Now it does work but the problem is that it installs 7 Basic when I do it like this. I have Professional. Now I can use the Anytime Upgrade and use my product key to get Pro activated but because I'm in basic, 7 won't work on the VHD at boot. When it asks for my product key upon first time setup, it doesn't work since it's looking for a Basic product key.
Is there a way to get 7 Pro on the VHD through the CMD?
My system is Dell Inspiron 17R SE (7720), 1 TB Hard Disk 5400 rpm + 32 GB mSATA, 8 GB RAM, 3rd Gen i7. I was trying to make a bootable USB flash drive for windows 7 from Windows 7 Home Premium Reinstall disk that came with my Dell laptop, using the WinToFlash utility. But in starting the process, the PC froze, all applications (even explorer.exe) stopped, and Alt+Ctrl+Del refused to work. I turned the laptop off and back on, where it refused to even show the OS list and showed a DRMK message instead with a command prompt C:> as:
Loading DRMK V8.00... DRMK Version 8.00 COMMAND.COM Build 37 - Jul 28, 2008 DRMK KERNEL Build 15 - Aug 8, 2008 Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. C:>
I tried booting from Windows 7 reinstall DVD but none of the repair options worked. I tried reinstall and repair options but my Hard Drive did not show up. It rather asked to Load Drivers for the Hard Disk. However, it did show any of the USB drives I connected to it, along with an X: drive, which must be the recovery drive for Dell's factory restore. I tried looking for Hard Disk drivers in that but no luck.
Then I downloaded from another PC a USB utility for Seagate Hard Drives from Dell website that makes a bootable USB. I ran that utility and it showed all the test passed (But there was no firmware update during the tests). Another thing I tried was using list disk command on command prompt in Windows Repair, but It did not show any drives, not even the X: drive. It only showed the USB drives I attached to it, or the DVD drive in list volume command.
I cannot boot to windows, I cannot install new windows, I cannot repair the windows and I cannot even factory restore my laptop. The hard drive shows up in BIOS, but not in Windows Boot or Windows Installation. Is there any way I can get my Hard Disk back without losing data? I have two partitions of that drive. I don't care about formatting C: Drive (Windows) but I wanna preserve E: Drive (the one filled with personal data but no programs).
How to full format my laptop hard drive. I have already Re install windows 7 in E: drive. Previously I have win-7 in C: drive after encounter some problems, Re-install new Windows 7 but that time I didn't format the hard disk that's why its install in drive E. Now when start the up of the lap top both selection are coming will start with old win or new win-7...and having some trouble with my windows 7 that's why I want to full format the hard dive without bootable disk and install new win-7.
I have a terabyte external, WD Element I think. I have never had an issues before but today I plug it in (to play Diablo III) and it is not being recognized. At all. It's not in Disk Management, I can't find it anywhere. Suggestions or reasons this might be happening out of no where??
I had XP and Vista installed on my primary SATA hard drive (on SATA0 channel). There was no space for another operating system, so I added a secondary hard drive (to SATA2 channel) and installed Windows 7 to it. It worked perfectly. After a few weeks my old primary hard drive suddenly died, and the computer doesn't boot anymore. So I put the remaining live hard drive to SATA0 channel, and bought another new SATA drive and put it to SATA2 channel. Now I need to add boot files to my drive, because both operating system and data files are there, I just need to let the computer start.
So I have one good healthy SATA drive, Windows 7 installed on it, but without boot files, because that other (now dead) drive was used to start up the computer. I though that Windows 7 Installation DVD will help, but it doesn't. When I try to use its repair disk feature, it fails to find any installed Windows, so it says there's nothing to boot to, nothing to reapir. If I use the command line utility from the same DVD, I can see both my C: and D: partitions are there, with all files, I can see all my directories, I can see Windows folder, Program Files folder etc. But what does it need to boot?
I also tried "upgrade" from W7 Installation DVD, but it says that I should run this option from inside Windows. Since I cannot start the Windows, this option isn't for me. When I tried a new fresh installation, I got a warning that all my current data will be overwritten, and that also isn't option I am searching for.
I am having 500gb usb hardisk in which i had create a partition of 10gb and i want to create that partition bootable with windows 7 pls tellme what to do there are many ways given to make harddisk bootable but its for complete harddisk not for selected partition.
I have been having many problems with my old hardcover and after finding out it was the source of all my problems I decided to go out and buy myself a new hard drive today,It is a 3.5" internal sata 2
7200 rpm 32 mb cache From intenso
My motherboard has two sata slots, I managed to install windows on my new hard drive through the files saved onto my other hard rive. Windows is successfully installed on my hard rive but I have to keep the old one in to boot from, is there a way to create a partition on my new Hardrive to boot from so I can unplug my old hard drive as it takes up the slot where my DVD drive should go.
when I install window 8...so the existing window 7 files moved into D drive(which was in c drive previously). so window 8 files are in C drive. so when I starting my computer only window 8 is booting....window 7 is not booting....bcoz D drive not bootable. so what can do I do? I want solution so that both windows work..
I'm trying to make an external hard drive bootable without losing any data that's already stored on it, if possible and use it to install Windows 7 on my computer, I'm currently running XP.
I installed a hard drive and upon installing drivers for my nvidia gtx 460, it just gave me a black screen once I got to the login screen. Went back in to safe mode and got older drivers, that didn't work either. I have tried 4 versions of the older drivers and it all goes exactly the same. Clean install of windows 7 Home Premium 64. Or do I just need to get a new motherboard/videocard? Also I have a dual monitor setup and the second monitor doesn't get a signal.
I have a Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive (External).I use it 99.9% of the time on my Windows 7 64bit computer to store pictures/videos and backup important files.It was working fine until I plugged it into a MACINTRASH to backup files from that computer.It was a simple copy and paste from the MACINTRASH to the External HDD.After copying the files from the MACINTRASH, I plugged it back into my PC.My PC no longer recognizes my external HDD. I unplugged the power, plugged it back in.Same with the USB cable. Rebooted. Then my computer wouldn't reboot and windows did its automatic self repair. Nothing.I unplugged EVERYTHING and left it that way for about 30 minutes. I plugged EVERYTHING back to my computer and turned it on.
Windows booted up fine. I plugged in the external HDD and windows had that little icon telling me it was installing drivers. I was excited to think that it finally would recognize my external HDD.Of course, it didn't work. The HDD does not show up in my computer. It does show up in Device Manager and Disk ManagementDevice MangerUnder Disk Drives it lists it only as "WD" My other drives it has a nice long name like "WD 7500AAK External USB Device" Under properties it tells me Volume information for the disk cannot be found. (The very first time I did that prior to the reboot it said there was 0MB of space on it). It claims the device is working properly Disk ManagementAt first this said that I must initialize my disk. Now it doesn't even show up anymore. I have no idea what to do anymore.
I recently built a new computer and connected my old hard drive to copy files across to my new one. Both drives had Windows 7 installed and while staring up I had to select one to boot from. I have since removed my old hard drive but am still asked to select one to boot from even though there is now only one connected. How do I remove my old hard drive so that it will automatically boot from the new one?
I've had my partitions over several drives set for many months. Suddenly on boot this morning, one of the partitions isn't recognized by Windows (7 64-bit). My partition software (EaseUS Partition Manager Pro) does "see" it and shows the correct division of used and unused space. This is an NTFS partition with 11.86 GB capacity and 2.50 GB used. The status is None and the type is logical.The error message box title is "Location is not available". The message is:H: is not accessible.The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.I've had no activity in this partition for several days. The partitions on either side are fine (fingers crossed they stay that way!). They same the same characteristics (although obviously different capacities) as the missing partition.
.I didn't wait for the computer to tell me it was ok to remove the drive in the usb port. Now my computer no longer recognizes the external drive After removing my external hard drive (without the ok) my computer no longer recognizes the external hard drive. What do I do.
I use a lot of different usb hard drives in my shop. I have two basic enclosures, a generic one that uses pata drives on a usb 2.0 cable and an Apricon USB SATA 2.0 adapter.Suddenly when I plug in a new drive device manager does see the drive and installs it in device manager. I can see the drive in Disk Management but it has no drive letter assigned, and therefore doesn't show up in Computer. I can easily just assign a letter in Disk Management and the drive immediately becomes usable. However, I would like to get Windows 7 to resume automatically assigning a drive letter.
I have tried a program called USB DriveCleanup. What it appears to have done is remove all installations of prior USB drives and when I plug in a drive that has been in the machine previously it then goes thru the install again. Yet still no drive letter. I think the program is doing what would manually be done by going into safe mode and cleaning out all the entries that build up there that don't appear in normal mode, then removes them. Basically it seems like a shortcut to manually doing it.
I also tried a registry fix that essentially asked me to delete the upper and lower filters. This seems similiar to fix for CD/DVD drives that no longer appear in Computer. This fix also didn't work.I tried removing and reinstalling the chipset drivers. Still no go.Running Windows 7 Pro SP1, H55 chipset.
I created a 20gb partition on my external hard drive and no longer require the partition. It is currently unallocated space so I want to format it into NFTS. Using computer management the partition was selected and and I went through the steps to format but i keep on getting an error message saying there is not enough space on the disk to complete this operation.
Today at college I tried to continue my work by plugging in my USB hard drive and it simply wouldn't appear in "My Computer".When I tried later on that day it would appear as a "Removable Disk" but I was unable to double click it.The technicians at my college said that I need to format it, but when I tried to create a backup last week it was unsuccessful so it would mean losing all of my college work.
I have a HP labtop and my laptop froze all of a sudden so I did a hard restart of the computer. After restarting the computer I am no longer able to boot my computer up, the screen will go black sometimes after the log in screen. But now I do not even get the option to go to the log in screen now it just goes to the startup recovery stage. Everytime I try to fix start up I get startup repair off line following by the details of 0.00000 or something like that. The numbers are all zeros in the details but I tried other options like restoring to a previous point and I keep getting errors.
I successfully installed Windows 7 64bit in AHCI mode on a PC with 3 new 3TB Western Digital WD30EZRX Caviar Green hard drives.Then I installed "Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver [v8.9.0.1023]" & as soon as Windows restarted after installing it, Windows would not boot, & will now only boot in IDE mode.In IDE mode I have to do a system restore to the point before installation of "Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver" to be able to boot again in AHCI mode.
I recently purchased a lenovo laptop for home purpose around 1.5 months back. The laptop was having already microsoft security essentials (MSE) and mcafee antivirus plus software. Unfortunately, yesterday i was facing blue screen on death type of error (BSOD) error. On one forum, I found that it may be due to the mcafee antivirus software. So, I uninstalled the software.
When I installed windows 7 64 Ultimate I set up a multiboot machine from within Vista, I installed windows 7 and Ubuntu on separate hard drives (one HD per OS). The boot menu is on the Vista drive. All drives are SATA.I soon formatted the Ubuntu drive and removed the option to boot to it. My Vista OS no longer boots, it just hangs whilst loading so I want to format that drive now and just use Windows 7. However, I have tried removing all the hard drives apart from the windows 7 one and I find that this will not boot.i would like to make the windows 7 drive bootable but I am not sure how to do this.I have tried removing all the HD's apart from the none booting windows 7 HD and putting in the Windows 7 disk and carrying out the option to repair start up (not sure exactly what this was called) several times but this does not make any difference. It just prompts me to restart the machine and boots again from the DVD.
I want to create a pendrive bootable but for that is it necessary to have ur windows setup in ur dvd or cd? becoz i have my setup in one of my computer's drive E.so what command i should write in order to make pendrive bootable at the last..
I'm using Windows 7 Professional as a 32 bit version. Now I want to install Windows 7 Professional 64 bit on my machine from my USB drive. The problem is that my machine doesn't boot from the USB drive. Anyway, I've tried with a 32 bit version of Windows 7 on my USB drive. This works well, but not with a 64 bit version. Why it doesn't work? Just to be on the safe side, I've tested it several times with other USB drives and followd thoroughly the instructions(diskpart).
I'm Trying to make a Bootable flash drive for Windows 7 64 bit. I know the link to download it but I copy the files to the Thumb drive now I get bootmrg I don't think I got all of the images downloaded right.
I have a hard drive I want to backup to a 64gb flash drive and then restore it to another different hard drive than where it came from. I have windows 7 and office on my laptop and I want it on my desktop pc. There isn't close to 64gb of info on my laptop so it should be fine even though the hard drive says I have 160gb. It is all free space except for those programs.
