[Closed] Laptop failing to reboot/restore - any ideas?

Personally I would take out the laptop disk, and attach it to another working PC using a USB adaptor (or straight SATA connection). You can then use the disk tools on that PC (chkdsk /f amongst others) to fix and recover any filesystem errors.

If you don't have the bits to do this (or don't want to), booting the laptop using a recovery environment such as Ultimate Boot CD and using the tools built into that would be my next choice.

There's two likely issues - either there is minimal file corruption preventing Windows from booting (a few core system files broken) - in this case you can probably recover your files. The other, worse option is that the disk has suffered serious corruption - in which case less (or none) of your files can be recovered. As it will still occasionally enter recovery mode it's likely it is the former at present. But it usually will get worse (generally a sign of impending disk failure).

If you reinstall Windows, usually Dells have a product key stuck to the bottom of the laptop that you will need to enter. On some versions of Windows you don't even need to enter the key - it figures you are on a Dell so it is licensed automatically.

Windows 7 will pick up most of the drivers on a reinstall (with an internet connection), some may need to be installed manually from Dells support site.

Before doing anything, I'd get an external caddy from PC world for £7, take the drive out & back up all your files (assuming the drive isn't knackered...).

Once you know your files are safe & stored somewhere else, then start fudging around trying to get it working again.

Great, thanks for the replies.

Was actually thinking last night about putting the HDD in a caddy and plugging it into another PC - forgot about it today.. So will it act as a standard external hard drive, or will it act funny as it's got an OS etc on it?

Forgot the laptop has the Windows key on the bottom - I actually used it last year when I replaced the HDD.

Also, if I do have to reformat the drive, what's the deal with putting MS Office back on it? As far as I know, it's got the student edition on it, no clue on location of disks/product keys though..

If you stick the drive in a caddy, it will just show up as another drive when you plug it in.
It won't try to load Windows or anything. You'll just be able to browse it like a usb drive.

Not sure about ms office. I imagine you'll need the key for it.

Good advice here.

One thing that might be worth a punt, can you get to "Safe mode with command prompt"? If you can, you can run chkdsk etc from there.

Depending on what the 'recovery disc' actually is, you may well be able to run the Windows repair options from it. Try booting off it, see if it gives you the Windows installer; if it does, you should have the option to try and 'automatically troubleshoot startup problems' (I forget the exact wording, sorry).

Right, so I've just got back from work, and I must have left it trying to do a system restore this morning as when I turned the laptop on this evening, it started up fine, and after logging in, came up with system restored succesfully to last month etc etc, and all seems to be working fine.

So, apart from learning from this and backing everything up (once my new HDD arrives), what should I do now? chkdsk? I'm half tempted to still re-format the thing as it could do with a bit of a clean up..

Chkdsk definitely. After that, open an admin command window (type cmd in the Run box, right-click the cmd command and choose Run as Administrator) and then enter sfc /scannow

I'd take this as nature's way of telling you to take a backup, as well.

If you're going to format, there's pros and cons to either method, but consider Dell's own system recovery. That will leave you with all the original preinstalled gubbins, but will dodge the bullet of having to find drivers for everything. Uninstalling what you don't want is easier than reverse engineering all those little yellow exclamation marks if you're not too confident with what you're doing.

Thanks, is that the same as checking "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" in OS(C)/Properties/Tools/Check now ?

Yeah, hopefully this 1tb HDD will arrive in the next couple days, so I can set it to back everything up while I'm away over Easter!

No.

For chkdsk, go to the Check Now as you detail and then tick the first box but not the second. Answer Yes to schedule a scan, then reboot.

The bad sector thing does a surface scan of the disk, it's more thorough but usually unnecessary and can take hours. If you do want to do that, I'd fire it off overnight.

The sfc thing I suggested will check the integrity of your system files, replacing broken files with known good copies.

Brilliant, thanks a lot, will do that now. Had read about the surface scan taking hours, hence asking.

No worries.

Make backups. Data recovery is a pain in the donkey.

Right, done both, nothing alarming happened, so hopefully it's all good on that front.

Regarding backups, before I make another thread pleading for help, any suggestions for going about how best to get a reliable and regular method of back up running?

I'm thinking not every time I plug the HDD in (as it will get annoying), but a reminder every few days to back up?

I had a laptop did something similar. I copied everything off and re-installed Windows, but then you have to re-install the Windows Updates. When I did that, it crashed again. It turned out that it was a Windows Update that was causing it to crash; it was an update to feature of Windows that wasn't used, so I excluded it.

The point is, have done a System Restore, you'll be missing the recent updates; before you install them, I recommend doing a full backup, in case the same happens.

Cheers, when I restarted the PC to do the chkdsk it installed 2 updates, luckily it doesn't seem to have done any harm!

Glad you got it working again. Regarding backups, your external drive will likely come with some proprietary backup software that you could use, or you could use the built-in Windows backup. It isn't great in Windows 7 TBH, although much better in Windows 8.

Personally on Windows 7 installs I use the free software Cobian Backup. You can schedule this to dump everything to the external disk every week and forget about it. It will do differential backups too, saving you copying everything each time - it only copies the changed files each time.

Alternatively on the most simple front - just copy your files by dragging/dropping them onto the disk every few weeks.