Repair Windows 7 startup drive in another win 7 machine?
 

My observatory computer drive acted up tonite. Can't get windows 7 to boot. It offers to let me run start up repair or boot normally to windows 7.

Trying to boot to Win 7 causes a reboot after it starts to load maybe 30-45 second in. Up till then it has the normal Windows screen with the 4 colors. Taking startup repair causes it to show a loading file progress bar then blank screen with lots of disk activity and then seemingly the twilight zone. 20 minutes and nothing seems to happen.

So I put the drive into another machine with a functional Windows 7 install and I can see the problem drive without any difficulty. Load files from it etc.

So is there a way to repair the problem installation from the current machine? I'll have to take it home to make any repair DVDs so I'm hoping I can fix it while I'm still here.

Thanks for any help!

just wipe the thing and do a fresh install

format

reinstall

replace files that you copied onto the other computer

Can you boot into safe mode?

stay off youporn

#antivirus

Not on the problem drive. I'm live typing on the machine that now has the drive in it. I'm CHKDSKing it now to see if there are problems.

It has one corrected index file so far

Yep only took 6 months to get all the software installed properly, might be able to reinstall it all in 2-3 weeks.

This. Just backup your data onto another drive, check the drive for disk errors and reinstall if it's still good.

I was going to suggest chkdsk and sfc /scannow....chkdsk will probably fix it for you. If you opt to do a backup and reinstall, you can get a free trial of Acronis to do a backup image.

http://download.cnet.com/Acronis-Tru...ml?tag=mncol;1

try to back up as many program configs as you can before wiping

So, once you get this fixed I assume you will start doing weekly (or nightly) backups, right?

I have a complete drive clone but its probably 3-4 months old at this point. Still it's a perfect nite and hoped to get some imaging time tonite. Actually after the chkdsk it's trying to repair itself. Crosses fingers.

The problem was caused by having to pull the power cord after a program locked up the system.

windows is the suck

try this link perhaps

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-win...e-reboot-loop/

It seems at least mildly reeruned that you can't stick a problem Windows 7 drive in another machine and not be able to un-fubar it but that appears to be the case. .

Frikken Microsoft

system restore....... or erase the entire partition and start new

Next time hold down the power button for 5 seconds.

The choices are clear

Either you have a hardware failure or you have an OS problem. Since the repair won't work, you'll have to reload. If the drive is bad, grab your data if you still can, acquire new HDD; you'll have to reload.

Action items:

Have a scheduled plan for continuity and execute it. Aka a scheduled back up plan.

Hiren's Boot CD should help you here.

Yep.

Whats that?

A bootable CD that contains about 200 utilities for diagnostics and repair.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

I've haven't had that happen since before Win XP.

You did something wrong there.

By the way, in addition to Hiren's, I've also used this one:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Honestly though, if you have another Windows system that you've put this drive in, stop trying to repair it and just copy all the files over.

Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset. It's a boot disk like Hirens that will fix most Windows boot problems.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'll just take both systems home to work on. I don't have an CD / DVDs here which I plan to correct. I'll make recovery disks and try to recover.

I'll also use my clone duplicator to clone both drives to a couple new WD green 2TB drives and then retire these as backups.

I was just hoping for an easy way to reset the drive but windows isn't real friendly for that type of thing.

Thanks Fish where can I come by one of these?

You running Win7 32-bit or 64-bit?

And are you interested in a paid version or a slightly less moral version?

Here's a start: http://mythoughtsonit.com/2010/11/ho...overy-toolset/

Want to think about that one? You're taking a known unstable drive and you want to use it as a backup? So that way when the active drive dies you have a lower probability of having a viable backup?

I commend you for wanting to do backups, but unless you're using it for a real short rotation then I'd just overwrite the drive with 0s and toss it.

+1

That would be my recommendation too unless you were certain that the original issue was Windows and not the HDD itself.

If you get to windows startup repair, would guess the hard drive is okay. If you have the windows 7 CD, or download one, I would try booting into that and choosing repair mode. The start using the bootsec commands (I forget what they all are, but google bootsec nt60), won't touch data or programs but attempt to repair any problems with booting as it will create a whole new mbr.

EDIT: I should include this should be done in the original computer.