sisters laptop again

[chesters1]

bugger knows what she gets up to but its "busted" and dropped off for bro to fix

blue screen of despair

windows startup repair fails

fixing the mbr etc fails

i know theres recovery points on the machine but it cannot find any

using the win7 disk to repair fails

trying to start in safemode stops at "drivers/classpnp.sys" and restarts back to fix your computer again (and again and again)

trying to reinstall win7 inplace fails it merely says start windows and put in the disk ,the only other option is fresh install

 

cannot fresh install as theres files she wants (her clickfree cannot be seen to see them if they have been stored ,looking on my pc theres a system image and pc transfer files on the clickfree) ,but you cannot access them in the repair options part of the repair dooda

 

please help its not for me but a nice lady not at all like me

 

forgot to mention she said it happened after a reboot and the screen told her about updates

Edited August 26, 2015 by chesters1

[kirisute]

MS released a god awful wireless driver a month or so ago; its shafting laptop after laptop

i would suspect this could be the same issue.

especially after updates.

 

easy way to diagnose if it is that is to remove the wifi card;

on most laptops you can take off the back plate and simply remove the wifi card; its fairly obvious, just follow the black and white wires to the card, unscrew its retaining screw and un clip it from its socket. if you search online for the make and model of the laptop youll soon find a guide to removing the back plate etc.

 

if it is the wifi drive the laptop will boot perfectly once its unplugged. if you still have the issue then chances are windows has corrupted itself with a bad update etc

 

as youve tried windows 7 in place install etc the only other options are trying and update with a new OS (windwos 8 or 10) which might allow you to update rather than format...

or pull the drive, install in a usb caddy, access it on another laptop/pc, recover the files. then format and reinstall clean and restore the files.

a drive caddy is only about £10 and can be picked up from amazon, argos etc they are bloody handy things to have floating about for situations just like this

[chesters1]

We have decided to replace the hard drive then use the old one in a usb caddy ,if i can clone the original (wait for it) then run the dell restore function on the new drive it will re-install it to the state she bought it in .

A couple of provisos it will have to be done (the cloning) on my machine which means removing my secondary drives and fitting both hers ,i can whip off any pictures and docs while i am doing it hopefully ,so i will end up with a faulty windows installation on a new drive ready to reset ,a faulty windows installation but with her files intact and a copy of all her pics and docs on my machine.

Then ofcourse reality sets in ,the laptop is not easy to get into looking at youtube ( inspiron 5110) so fat fingers are not a help in this issue

 

The annoying thing is the system save on the clickfree but i cannot get it to run within the parameters of booting off a system repair disk or win7 disk or perhaps its so simple i'm missing how since i have never owned a clickfree

 

Does windows 10 know what machine its being installed in ? I have a copy i downloaded on my tablet as an iso to try an install on it after the windows update version didnt work ,so i have a copy on disk

Edited August 27, 2015 by chesters1

[kirisute]

Windows 10 serial is linked to hardware on installation, which is then coded back to MS servers.

Without a serial you will need to call MS to activate

[chesters1]

playing in dos ,copy wont move the user files

xcopy doesn't want to but robocopy appears to be the screen looks like a cheap scifi movie but without the beeps

 

unfortunately i set the destination to a usb disk not a folder so it will be a repeat performance once it stops and i can format the usb disk and make the appropriate directories ,it could take days!

 

thats luck it got an error 1921 and looped ,the /xj dooda will stop that ,not played in cmd for decades outside of windows

Edited August 28, 2015 by chesters1

[chesters1]

fricking hell

machine (i hope) copied entire disk to a usb disk but bloody robocopy has denied access to them ,tried the "take ownership" software but it fails so can someone in simple terms tell me how to unhide the files on the usb disk ,unfortunately unticking "hide" in its properties does not work

found this "ATTRIB -h - s" but how do you input it into the cmd prompt and point it at a drive?

as soon as i know her stuff is there i can try sticking in win8 to hopefully kick start her laptop into action again but i know being me its not going to upgrade but demand it runs within windows like win7 disk did!

 

running a cmd within the drive with attrib r -s -h *.* /s /d RESULTS IN ACCESS DENIED ON ALL DIRECTORIES

Edited August 29, 2015 by chesters1

[wotnobivvy]

Are you an admin on her pc ??

[chesters1]

It doesnt know who i am so i am whoever it thinks as admin ,she is the only user so i guess has admin rights when windows loads but as its not gone into windows theres no user with or without admin rights

Edited August 29, 2015 by chesters1

[Andy_1984]

Doing any file transfers on a busted drive/os which still has files accessible i install hirens boot cd to a bootable usb and load mini xp which comes with hirens. Allows me access to most files on the drives attached then browse manually and back up personal data on the ab containing hirens or if not enough space plugin a larger usb drive.

 

Rufus is best for formatting the usb and loading the hirens iso to it.

[chesters1]

Well fingers crossed and famous last words i did the dell restore ,a little more clever than just a reset to new it saves any files it sees as personal ,at the moment theres a functioning win7 busily updating and a 69gb folder containing hopefully every photo and document on the drive that was .

I also copied the folder onto her clickfree (found the problem it wouldnt restore was its not her one but my neices ,silly woman)

So laptop running win7 and hopefully in the morning running the saved folder will put back all the personal files

I will hide any wireless drivers in windows update incase that was the initial problem as kirsuit suggests

 

Still got the problem of the denied access files on my usb drive but they may not be needed

Edited August 29, 2015 by chesters1