Hooray for Macrium Reflect!

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When I booted my PC this morning it came up with an error, giving options to refresh etc. None of these worked, so I got my USB stick with the Macrium Reflect rescue media on it, booted from it and restored. And it worked! It just goes to show how important it is to do regular backups. I normally do an image every Sunday, but this week I was away on Sunday so did it yesterday (Monday), and this was the image I restored from – in 1 hour 15 minutes.

Why the problem occurred i don’t know, hardware monitor says the disk is excellent. Now to do a scannow and a few other checks.

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Aaargh, spoke too soon. Went out for an hour and when I returned there was a blue screen asking which keyboard I wished to use. Then the aforementioned choices. Trying to refresh it stated ‘ the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock and try again’.

Any ideas? I will have to use my tablet to monitor the forum until I can get this sorted.

To correct above, hard disk sentinel says disk is OK. HWMonitor says temps are OK.

Just running sfc /scannow.

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Here’s the log from the scannow run. Any ideas?

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What did sfc report on screen after it finished running? Did you get a message that there were errors that it could not repair? Sfc sometimes needs to run three or four times.

Also, have you run chkdsk /r on the drive?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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Thanks bbearen, I will run it again and a chkdsk

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Thanks bbearen, I have run it 4 times now with the same result. I was running chkdsk (after a reboot) but it failed before it finished. Down to the local repairers methinks.

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Time to jack up the CD drive and slot a new PC in underneath – to paraphrase an old car line.

cheers, Paul

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…Or just restore one of your earlier images and hope that the issue doesn’t follow it too.

I couldn’t make a lot out of your scannow report. A BSOD event taken from the event viewer would be more convenient, but less likely if you can’t boot
into Windows. Knowing the original error would be nice.

A shot in the dark…
Bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /fixBoot
bootrec /rebuildBCD

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Boot from a repair disk or USB stick (hopefully you have one or the other or both) and run chkdsk /r from there.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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Boot from a repair disk or USB stick (hopefully you have one or the other or both) and run chkdsk /r from there.

I agree. If your disk is failing or has too many issues, no image restore is going to solve that.

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Thanks for your replies guys, been offline for a couple of days. I’m shocked that most of my images are failing, only the latest is working and that appears to have the problem. I have neither the disk nor the USB stick. I was wondering, as I bought win 8 pro when it was on offer, is there any way of downloading an iso and to a clean install. I’ve got away with a lot when others haven’t, so this might be a good mmove anyway. Will be running Brlarc to see what I’ve got so I can reinstall relevant software.

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Thanks for your replies guys, been offline for a couple of days. I’m shocked that most of my images are failing, only the latest is working and that appears to have the problem. I have neither the disk nor the USB stick. I was wondering, as I bought win 8 pro when it was on offer, is there any way of downloading an iso and to a clean install. I’ve got away with a lot when others haven’t, so this might be a good mmove anyway. Will be running Brlarc to see what I’ve got so I can reinstall relevant software.

If your HDD is failing, reinstalling Windows won’t cure that. You said running chkdsk on a reboot failed before it finished. Such a failure doesn’t pinpoint whether the failure is Windows or the HDD (although it points to the HDD, since a reboot run of chkdsk has very little of Windows actually booted).

That’s why I suggested running chkdsk from a repair disk/USB; no part of Windows is booted, and nothing depends on the HDD, so chkdsk can give you a true state of the disk.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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checkdisk first
then get the iso from digitalriver
http://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to-download-windows-7-8-and-8.1-installation-media-legally/

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Sorry for dely to replies, just managed to get my old desktop with Linux working (well, off a memory stick anyway). 7″ tablets aren’t easy to use on forums like this one.

I’m running chkdsk at the mo – seems to have stopped at 13%. There is some disk activity though. However, I have Hard Disk Sentinal and that shows temps no higher than 51 C (ever) and 100% excellent. Can the disk be failing with a report like this?

The PC runs OK for about an hour and I can do stuff – just ran belarc advisor so that I have a list of all my software to get it reinstalled if i ever get to that position. I’m expecting that it will fail again shortly

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Chkdsk checks the magnetic media of the disk and all its parameters; partitioning, formatting, file system, sectors, the condition of the magnetic surface of the disk. It’s looking at things other than temperatures and the physical condition of the mechanical hardware itself.

Basically it’s looking for bad sectors, and the /r switch tells it to attempt to recover any usable files from bad sectors and mark them as “bad” so the file system will ignore them.

Don’t stop chkdsk. Let it run to completion, which can sometimes take quite a long while.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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Thanks Mr B, the problem is that it only gets as far as 13% and seems to stop. The system (even though it’s cut down for running chkdsk) then states that Windows has detected a problem and goes into recovery mode. Trying any of the options just gives the message that the disk is locked. Looks like it needs either a new disk or something being done to the disk (I once recovered a HDD using DBAN and Linux). Thank goodness I have Macrium Reflect, File History and my own backup of my data files! I saved the last by using Ubuntu on a memory disk and was able to copy the relevant files to my desktop drive. I’m currently using Ubuntu to type this (it’s a pain on a tablet!).

Thanks for all your help!

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Thanks Mr B, the problem is that it only gets as far as 13% and seems to stop. The system (even though it’s cut down for running chkdsk) then states that Windows has detected a problem and goes into recovery mode.

That is why chkdsk /r needs to be run from a Recovery/Repair boot disk. It will continue to run. I’ve had HDD’s that took hours for chkdsk /r to complete.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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OK, thanks for all your suggestions and help, I’ve now taken the PC to our local repair shop. I just don’t have time to try and fix it myself, as I’m preparing to move house and have a family issue I have to deal with.

All I can say is that IT forums rock (having been on the Mint forums to get another PC sorted which has Mint on it and have received good advice there too!)

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Just to update, I now have my desktop back. Some of the OS files were missing (that might have been due to a failed MR restore). However, they ran chkdsk from a stick (as bbearen suggested ) and that seemed to fix the problems. they also checked the HDD and gave that a clean bill of health.

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Just to update, I now have my desktop back. Some of the OS files were missing (that might have been due to a failed MR restore). However, they ran chkdsk from a stick (as bbearen suggested ) and that seemed to fix the problems. they also checked the HDD and gave that a clean bill of health.

Glad you got it sorted out, and thanks for posting your success.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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