If possible please help me fix the problems without having to reinstall windows because he has no back-up of important files.
There are numerous problems so I will list them:
1: As soon as the computer starts a screen appears saying the following;
‘SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0: ST98823AS-(S1)
WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.
Press F1 to Continue’
Apparently he says that this has been happening for as long as he can remember and he has always been able to run his computer like normal.
2: Now this is the root problem and why I am concerned that a windows re-installation may be the only option. My friend says that he was running his pc normally and everything was fine but decided to reboot. After the reboot the windows screen would just keep loading without progressing to the login screen. After loading for about 2 minutes there is a quick flash of blue and then the computer restarts and repeats the cycle.
Now it always shows the screen asking if you want to boot windows in safe mode, safe mode with networking ect… but I have tried safe mode and it loads a screen of dll files ect and then just freezes.
3: The first thing I thought to do was simply run windows repair disk. This actually led to another problem as I couldn’t run repair because it always came up with this error message:
‘Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system’
So I looked on google and found that if you disable ‘SATA Native Support’ within the BIOS you are then able to run the boot disk. I disabled this option and then the boot disk would work but then led to a further problem…
4: I followed the options to get to the repair, (pressing r) and then on a black screen it says the following:
‘Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.
1: D:\MiniNT
Which Windows installation would you like to log onto (To cancel, press ENTER)?’
There is only this one option and after looking on google I think that this drive is a back-up or recovery drive. Anyway I typed ‘1’ and hit enter and then it would just say ‘1: D:\MiniNT’ below and nothing else would happen. I tried ‘chkdsk’ but ‘chkdsk/p’ is ‘unrecognized prompt’ or something like that.
Anyway now I’m stuck, I don’t know what else to do. My friend says that he will take his laptop to a repair shop because he thinks they will be able to recover his files before they reinstall windows but I’m skeptical that they will be able to, and obviously might end up paying 30 pounds for a windows reinstallation that I could do for him.
The laptop details are shown below:
Presario V5000 (RE308EA#ABU)
Processor Type: Intel Celeron M CPU 410
Processor Speed: 1.46GHz
Total Memory: 1024 MB
Video Memory up to: 128 MB
BIOS Version: F.13
(I reset to setup defaults and then saved and exit)
There are numerous problems so I will list them:
1: As soon as the computer starts a screen appears saying the following;
‘SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0: ST98823AS-(S1)
WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.
Press F1 to Continue’
Apparently he says that this has been happening for as long as he can remember and he has always been able to run his computer like normal.
2: Now this is the root problem and why I am concerned that a windows re-installation may be the only option. My friend says that he was running his pc normally and everything was fine but decided to reboot. After the reboot the windows screen would just keep loading without progressing to the login screen. After loading for about 2 minutes there is a quick flash of blue and then the computer restarts and repeats the cycle.
Now it always shows the screen asking if you want to boot windows in safe mode, safe mode with networking ect… but I have tried safe mode and it loads a screen of dll files ect and then just freezes.
3: The first thing I thought to do was simply run windows repair disk. This actually led to another problem as I couldn’t run repair because it always came up with this error message:
‘Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your system’
So I looked on google and found that if you disable ‘SATA Native Support’ within the BIOS you are then able to run the boot disk. I disabled this option and then the boot disk would work but then led to a further problem…
4: I followed the options to get to the repair, (pressing r) and then on a black screen it says the following:
‘Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.
1: D:\MiniNT
Which Windows installation would you like to log onto (To cancel, press ENTER)?’
There is only this one option and after looking on google I think that this drive is a back-up or recovery drive. Anyway I typed ‘1’ and hit enter and then it would just say ‘1: D:\MiniNT’ below and nothing else would happen. I tried ‘chkdsk’ but ‘chkdsk/p’ is ‘unrecognized prompt’ or something like that.
Anyway now I’m stuck, I don’t know what else to do. My friend says that he will take his laptop to a repair shop because he thinks they will be able to recover his files before they reinstall windows but I’m skeptical that they will be able to, and obviously might end up paying 30 pounds for a windows reinstallation that I could do for him.
The laptop details are shown below:
Presario V5000 (RE308EA#ABU)
Processor Type: Intel Celeron M CPU 410
Processor Speed: 1.46GHz
Total Memory: 1024 MB
Video Memory up to: 128 MB
BIOS Version: F.13
(I reset to setup defaults and then saved and exit)
