Windows not starting up

[aznmajiktaru]

So I get brought a laptop that doesn't load up windows when powered. Story I'm given is that guy who owned laptop got a virus and erased the system/boot file or something and now it won't load. I was wondering if it was possible to get it to load/write up a new boot file for it so I didn't have to resort to the system recovery disk.

P.S. he didn't use the recovery disk because the nab thought his cd rom drive was jammed and all it needed was a good flick to open lol.

Edit: whoops I forgot to write down the details on the load up screen

 Booting 'Windows Vista'

acpi
Vista Loader2.1.2

     ACPI: Reclaim Memory not found!
Done!
fallback 1
find --set-root  /bootmgr

Error 17: File not found
          Booting 'Windows NT/2000/XP'

fallback 2
find --set-root  /ntldr

Error 17: File not found
         Booting 'Enter Command Line'

Boot Failed! Press any key to enter command line.

After hitting any key the screen becomes like this

GRUB4DOS 0.4.3 2007-03-13, Memory 638k/2037M, CodeEnd: 0x3D7BC

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ESC at anytime exits.  ]

grub>  __

Right and he also downgraded the vista it came with to xp if that makes a difference.

[mootsfox]

Reinstall windows.

[Shuemue]

Reinstall windows.

Definitely.

[aznmajiktaru]

yea I got the cd rom drive to finally work and I pop in the windows xp disk...... and it says it can't find any hard disk drives in the computer and tells me to check that it's powered on ROFL. Soooo I'm guessing this laptop is fucked and I should just give it back to the guy?

[Isiolia]

Boot sector might be different than windows expects with GRUB on there too. Did he have Linux on the laptop as well?

[jmc]

yea I got the cd rom drive to finally work and I pop in the windows xp disk...... and it says it can't find any hard disk drives in the computer and tells me to check that it's powered on ROFL. Soooo I'm guessing this laptop is fucked and I should just give it back to the guy?

Seems like a fairly new laptop if it came with windows vista installed?

Can you enter the Bios Setup?

If you can, there should be a option to force detect drives including Hard drives (all depends on the system though, you might not have it) but try that to see if the hard drive can be detected.

[Isiolia]

ACPI power management on HDDs can also futz with Windows setup being able to see them. So definitely check the BIOS to see if there's something like that you can turn off. Sometimes it's just a matter of needing drivers loaded at the start, but sometimes there's that too.

[Shuemue]

Highly likely that it's a SATA drive and with many boards you'll therefore need to install RAID drivers for the HD to be detected in Windows Setup.

What exactly is the make and model?

[aznmajiktaru]

It says it's an HP pavilion dv2000 special edition or some shit, buncha fancy drawings on it.

I can enter the bios but there's not much to do there, only main, security, system config, diagnostics, and exit here. I've tried hard drive selft test under diagnostics and it passes through the quick check fine but once it enters the comprehensive it gets stuck at 20%.

There's nothing else I can do in the bios cept change boot order which doesn't really help >.>.

[Shuemue]

Do you have access to a machine with a CD writer?

If so, burn this and run it in the laptop to test all the hardware:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Also, if you can find an exact model number or serial, we can look up raid drivers easily.

[aznmajiktaru]

just finished loading the disk and all, gonna see if what I can do with this disk :>.

Found the model online and the pics match up perfectly as do the other gear

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... d=kh936ea#

[Shuemue]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/soft ... 28&lang=en

SATA drivers for that line of notebooks. Follow the instructions on that page, you'll most likely need a floppy disk and to watch the XP setup process and hit F6 when it asks about RAID or SATA drivers.

[aznmajiktaru]

welp and so it ends here! <_< This thing doesn't have a floppy drive and yea not gonna go out and buy one to fix his shit soooo i'm just gonna give it back to him and tell him what to do lol. Thanks a lot shue and everyone else for input/halps :nikkei:



EDIT: holy shit I found an old usb floppy drive in my house haha, guess I'll give this a whirl and see what happens >_>

[Shuemue]

usb floppy drive should be perfect for it, assuming it's picked up by the bios, gl!

edit: it's actually possible to cobble together a custom xp install cd that forces sata drivers to load, I've only ever read about it. If you need to, come back and we'll try to figure it out.

[aznmajiktaru]

geh..... says can't find floppy drive to load OEM drivers from even though the fucking shit is plugged into the usb socket >(


Edit: fuck it looking up how to slipstream an xp cd now lol -o- we'll see where this goes

[aznmajiktaru]

sigh.... all right then so I went to http://www.nliteos.com/download.html and got the program there. It copied all the files off the corporate xp disk in my drive and put it in a new folder. Then I used the program to integrate the drivers into the xp disk and proceed to burn the image onto cd.

Next pop in cd into the busted laptop, boots from cd..... on the blue screen....then bam the file iaStor.sys is corrupted press any key to continue, setup has failed press any key to reboot your computer.

What the fuck is iaStor I burned everything perfectly to gdi can't figure where I fucked up lol.

[Reality]

Booting 'Windows Vista'

acpi
Vista Loader2.1.2

hehehehehe cracked vista ;>

(i have the x64 version, runs great :D)