My Windows 8 1 Acer Predator has started booting to a black screen with the cursor visible and mo...

[G+_Rud Dog]

My Windows 8.1 Acer Predator has started booting to a black screen with the cursor visible and movable.

Acer's Alt F10 gets you into tools but none of them recover the disk.

If I take a backup drive made over a year ago and plug it in the computer boots.

If I then connect the failing drive via USB connection I can, by running Diskpart, see the hard drive and all its folders.

 

Connect to the drive and run all the dos utilities which claim to do things like fix mbr but nothing.

 

At my wits end.

 

Even when I create a recovery USB drive it fails my guess it has to be from the original drive but wait the backup disk is the original drive which was used to create the current drive. Which worked for the year it was cloned.

 

Going to get away from this thing for couple of days and see if I can find a way to recover the boot portion of the failing drive.

 

Any ideas or approaches for this end result are welcome.

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

Definitely not the hardware (excluding the hard drive). Looks like your Windows installation has gone south.

By any chance, did you get the physical restore DVDs? -- (Extra step... extra cost) -- If not, I'll send you a copy. (Will ONLY work on an Acer Predator desktop)

[G+_Rud Dog]

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Thank you Padre and no didn't get the DVD's . Any help you can offer is appreciated. Let me know what you need from me to get the media in question.

Have to ask will the DVD's restore the boot portion of windows or restore to original factory settings?

[G+_Joshua Hamlett]

It sounds like hard drive (hardware) failure. You could run diagnostics until you are blue in the face and get no definitive diagnosis, but my professional recommendation would be to replace the drive. Boot sectors don't just erase themselves, and if you try to keep on using the same drive, you might end up having the same thing happen again soon.

 

I would recommend you get a download of Windows 10 from MS and install that on a new SSD. You can also get a download of Windows 8.1 from the MS site as well, but why bother? A Google search should give you the official download links to create either am ISO or USB drive. No product key is required as it is embedded in the UEFI firmware. The Acer official media is unnecessary. Windows 10 can use the Windows 8.1 key until the end of the month.

 

After installation, you can copy whatever you can from the old drive. You could also try cloning and repairing the boot files, but that will probably be beyond your level. Windows repair tools aren't all that great.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Joshua Hamlett I do want to give Padre's approach to solving this problem a shot but in the meantime would like to share something which was stumbled upon during my attempts to recover my unbootable drive.

First off as mentioned the original drive was cloned about a year ago and is fully functional just a year behind.

Current setup is original drive replaced the un-bootable cloned drive.

The un-bootable clones drive was placed in a USB box and attached to my PC.

Then went into diskpart and changed it from offline to online.

This made the drive available for viewing on my PC desktop. All the files are there in all their glory.

Here is where I would like to pull from your expertise.

Is there a piece of software which will allow me to fix the un-bootable clone drive given the events stated herein?

[G+_Modi R]

Spinrite ?? maybe

[G+_Joshua Hamlett]

Rud Dog Winows 8.1 relies on an EFI bootloader (located in EFI\Boot directory) and Windows boot manager (BOOTMGR) to load the operating system. These would be located in a small partition (between 100 and 450 mb typically) with no drive letter by default. You will want to make sure those files are intact first. Running CHKDSK /R [driveletter]: can check and see if files were lost or damaged on the hardware level.

[G+_Bob Sincick]

Spin rite

[G+_Rud Dog]

Modi R  Bob Sincick Thanks guys that was the first thing I ran but it did not fix the disk contacted GRC and they suggested some programs that might help and educated me to the fact Spinrite doesn't fix this kind of problem it is for fixing and recovering data or parts of the disk platters.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Really would like to try everything and anything at this point speaking of point could you point me in the direction where I might find the DVD's you mentioned?

[G+_Rud Dog]

While I am at it does anyone know why the following cmds don't work yet chkdsk does?

 

D:\>bootrec /fixmbr

'bootrec' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

 

D:\>bootrec /fixboot

'bootrec' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

[G+_Joshua Hamlett]

Rud Dog Download the Windows 8.1 ISO here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8ISO

 

bootrec is only found in Windows RE, such as the PE environment of a Windows installation disk. Download and boot from a Windows 8.1 disk and you will be able to use it.

 

And, may I mention, tomorrow is the last day for the free Windows 10 upgrade. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO?navItemId=efeeb2c6-47c7-44eb-b3f3-b3b70e1e49f1

[G+_Rud Dog]

Joshua Hamlett Thank you downloaded it. Unfortunately while testing and asking for help managed to get the refresh to work but it did not keep all my installed applications intact. Don't know if it is to late to fix but will try the downloaded software you suggested. As for windows 10 not sure I am ready for more headaches:)