So, I'm fixing a pc for a friend, and I was told the hard-drive was dying / running slow. He had brought it to bestbuy, who quoted him 315 + tax for a new drive plus to migrate everything over. Simple enough to clone the dying drive to a new drive, but turns out Windows is corrupt. It starts, gets to the windows 7 loading screen, and reboots. The startup repair doesn't work, running startup repair from a windows disk gives me a "startup repair offline" error. I've tried using the CMD through the disk to do the sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows to try and fix / repair windows. I've also tried the repair install, which says nothing is wrong, and I tried using the CMD to fix the boot manager. Just tried a system restore that failed, going to try one more time, but I'm lost for fixes. I'm hesitant to re-install windows because the pc is 3-4 years old, has a bunch of software and files, and multiple user accounts (one for the owner, and than each of his daughters has their own user profile). It's testing my patience, and I can't seem to figure it out.
Does it give a BSOD when trying to boot up? Tap F8 on bootup and disable automatic restart on system failure as it sounds like the BSOD is being too quick to see. Then if it is a BSOD you should be able to grab the error code from it. Also, is it Vista?
No BSOD, just restarts. Tried the win. 7 disk repair, nothing. It's odd, I have it up again, I did a system restore, it says it failed, restarted, nothing, tried a system restore to a different point, says it failed again, restarted, BUT windows is working now. Cloning it to the new drive now (old one is pitifully slow) so I can work on it safely, clean it up, and hopefully everything will be okay once I've finished.
Er, install fresh on the new drive, create all the new users, drag all the important data across from the old ... simples
Now I can, prior to it, I wasn't able to. I forgot to mention, it is windows 7 home premium. I've got it working, but the computer has seen a lot of abuse. Malwarebytes found 10k worth of things, and I still have some things to do for windows / bloatware to uninstall. An in-place upgrade doesn't seem to work, so I'll have to figure it out. Most of the windows services (update, security center, etc) are "offline". Again, the simple solution of re-installing and copying over the files is the logical choice, but they wanted it "as is", so I'll do the best I can. I've already spent more time on this than it's worth. Probably irrelevant but hardware is an i5 750, 1gb 5570, 8gb of ram. It's a gateway system, and I think for a basic home pc, it was worth fixing over buying a new pc.
My plan of attack now is to download and create a bootable windows 7 service pack one, install it, and try to do an in-place upgrade. Currently won't work without the service pack installed, and the windows update is offline, along with other windows services. Also tried booting from a retail disk and going to the advanced repair settings, using the CMD to try and do the sfc /scannow, and it just says there is one already pending, please restart, which there isn't. Windows is pretty cocked to say the least, but the customer wanted things as it was so doing what I can to make it work. Edit: System is operational, its just missing some windows features. The repair upgrade failed, I'm going to let the owner know windows does work, but it is corrupt and I'd recommend re-installing the OS. At least that way, he could perform his own backups and whatnot.
In place upgrade should sort it. I did a few of these last weeks , no loss of data/programs and resulted in a fully working windows
Sadly that failed, it got to the installation part, and about 30-40% through it failed. That was 3 hours wasted. I tried everything to reset windows updates, cmd, all sorts and nothing. I'm just gonna send it off and let the customer know that now it runs, but it isn't ideal. For what he paid me and the work I put in, it's more than enough. I got it out of a boot loop and cleaned out all the crap.
