PC not booting

[Mikelee0351]

So last night my HP 6230y which has windows 7 64 bit, crashed last night and now will not boot. I am unable to get even as far as F-8 being usable to get into safe-mode or try a system repair.

I was able to run a system diagnostic and it came back with a Biohd-4 error. I googled and it looks like it some kind of hard drive corruption. I would rather not have to run a full system recovery, or buy a new hard drive.

Has anyone else ever gotten this error, and were you able to fix it? If anyone could offer some help that would be awesome.

[Isiolia]

Have you tried booting from a Windows CD/PE environment/etc or putting the drive in another computer to run a checkdisk or the like? Could have a corrupt boot sector or something. The HP diagnostic might do a drive check, but it likely isn't trying to fix the filesystem on the drive. Then again, if it's throwing an error, the HDD may have simply gone belly-up.

[Olo401]

Is it hanging during POST, or after when it's trying to load the OS? If it's the latter it sounds like a corrupted drive.

[Mikelee0351]

It never gets to the point where it tries to load the OS. It gets past the initial bios screen, then i just a black screen with a blinking cursor.

Also, no I have not tried the drive in another PC, the only other thing I have is a laptop.

[Yabby]

Boot into the recovery console, Type C:\boot.ini. If it doesn't find it, its corrupt. type bootcfg /rebuild and pray.

[Mikelee0351]

Umm does getting to the recovery console involve hitting F-8? Or am I thinking of something else

[Olo401]

It never gets to the point where it tries to load the OS. It gets past the initial bios screen, then i just a black screen with a blinking cursor.

Also, no I have not tried the drive in another PC, the only other thing I have is a laptop.

Yeah that sounds like it can't find the MBR.. either the drive is dead or the OS is corrupted.

If the drive is still showing up in your BIOS screen & scanning at POST that will be encouraging heh.

Umm does getting to the recovery console involve hitting F-8? Or am I thinking of something else

You can use the install CD/DVD to bring up the recovery console.

[Mikelee0351]

I guess I'm answering my own ? here, but when i run the diagnostic at start-up, the hdd passes, but i get a fail mssg from the boot path. "BIOHD-4 Unauthorized/corrupt boot structure detected" Then it suggests I repair my shit. Guess I'll throw the disk in and see if that works.

[Isiolia]

Start from your 7 disc, Repair My Computer, Command Prompt, and type bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /fixmbr.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/02/p...wont-start-to/

Maybe?

[Gustave]

I think Swamp is spot on. I have dealt with a pc doing the exact thing your are describing. You should be able to correct this in under 30 mins.

Download AVG recovery cd or usb. (If you have a Linux or Windows OS that can run from CD you won't need this)
Boot to cd or usb.
Choose other utilities > File manager
The file path is mnt\sda\? (You'll have to check which sda folder contains your OS files etc)

I'm not sure exactly which ones fixes the problem but AVG says rename the Program files > AVG folder on one topic and advises to rename the Windows\system32\drivers (anything starting with AVG files) on another page. I did them both. I ended up logging back into the recovery cd later to delete the folders. When I tried to delete from Windows I received a corrupted/access denied error.

If you have any troubles you can PM me or google for the fix. It's pretty straight forward and easy.

[Mikelee0351]

Thanks for the advice guys. I ended up booting from a USB and repairing from there, which fixed my issue

[Gustave]

Good to hear It's nice when it turns out to be a simple software issue with no data loss ^^