Please Help - HDD Rebooting, Can't Get To "Repair"

Windows Vista HP Desktop - System Disk is WD Caviar Blue 640Gb Just bought a new 1Tb Caviar Black drive. Planned to make it the system drive after getting it all set up so it's installed in position 1 in the system and I was using the boot menu to select the actual system disk, now in position 3 to boot. I used Easus Partition Master to partition the new drive it but didn't like the results. So I set it to delete the partitions and "wipe the drive" not realizing that "wipe the drive" was not what I wanted to do. The machine rebooted and was taking forever in the "wipe" phase so after a couple of hours and 2% completion I turned the machine off thinking that the only disk that was being affected by the procedure would be the new unpartitioned drive with nothing on it. (Prior to doing this I did some searching on the topic and consensus seemed to be that since it was not the system disk being formatted/wiped, it wouldn't have any affect at all. So much for that idea.) Now I can't boot the machine. It asked if I wanted to do a startup repair and I said yes. But it failed. Then I got an "ERROR 100c" and now the machine keeps rebooting. I used F8 to get to the menu where I tried to boot into Safe mode. Didn't work. There's a Repair option. That didn't work. I tried the "use last known good configuration to boot" and that didn't work - each time getting ERROR 100c. I am absolutely clueless as to what to do. When we first got the machine we made the 3 "Recovery CDs" but from what I can tell, they do not access any type of repair functions - only Recovery/Restore to Factory which I DON"T want to do - We're backed up onto Carbonite so ULTIMATELY I wouldn't lose anything but the hassle would be unbelievable. I really need to be able to fix this. Please, anyone, help??? Also, since it keeps rebooting, I have no idea how to turn it off or when I can turn it off without doing more damage. I already tried selecting the "don't reboot on failure to start" but it didn't work. I believe I've supplied the needed info but if not, let me know and I'll reply right away. Thank you.

Borrow a copy of Vista HP and use it to boot to the Advanced Boot Options menu and select Repair your computer.

If you can't then Download Vista Recovery Console and use it.

Thanks for commenting. What is "Vista HP"? Do you mean borrow another Vista HP computer? So far during the reboots, I've been able to use F8 to get to a screen that I think is the Advanced Boot Options window but "Repair Your Computer" has failed. Are you saying to do something different than that? Sorry I didn't completely understand. Thank you for your help.

What is "Vista HP"? Do you mean borrow another Vista HP computer?

HP is the computer and Vista is the Operating System. borrow a recovery disk not another Computer.
The link Ztrucker supplied "dowload vista recovery console" is a link to download an ISO image of the recovery console that can be burned as a bootable disk. That can be used to get to the Advanced Boot Options menu where you can select "repair your computer"..

You said in your first post you already burned the recovery disks, so you should have the recovery console disk. If you have already been to Advanced Boot Options and "repair your computer" has failed, your in a bit of hot water and might have to do a
Restore to Factory, but if you have everything backed up as you said, it's not so bad.

Turning off your PC while a program like Easus Partition Master was ingaged in an action you set it to do, was probablty not a wise idea.

"Error 100c" on a HP indicates that the System Recovery process can't complete as the system does not have the complete files to load the operating system.

Cheers,
Lee

What is "Vista HP"? Do you mean borrow another Vista HP computer?

HP is the computer and Vista is the Operating System. borrow a recovery disk not another Computer.
The link digerati supplied "dowload vista recovery console" is a link to download an ISO image of the recovery console that can be burned as a bootable disk. That can be used to get to the Advanced Boot Options menu where you can select "repair your computer"..

You said in your first post you already burned the recovery disks, so you should have the recovery console disk. If you have already been to Advanced Boot Options and "repair your computer" has failed, your in a bit of hot water and might have to do a
Restore to Factory, but if you have everything backed up as you said, it's not so bad.

According to the 4 page "troubleshooting manual" that came with the computer, the recovery disks don't offer access to anything other than Restore to Factory - they're not really "repair" disks. And yes, you read right about the "Repair your computer" not working - I have the screen up right now and when I choose it, I get the same error over and over.

Is there any other way to REPAIR the OS on that disk besides the Advanced boot menu? I have an Easus boot CD (though I don't know what it does) and I could always create some other type of boot CD (like the one mentioned) on the machine I'm typing on now. There is a 9Gb "recovery partition" on that disk but again…I want to repair if at all possible, not recover.

Turning off your PC while a program like Easus Partition Master was ingaged in an action you set it to do, was probablty not a wise idea.

I'm still confused how an action that started on reboot (Easus Disk Wipe) for a 2ndary disk (not the system disk we're discussing) could have had any effect on the system disk. There was nothing important on the new HD being acted on so it didn't matter to me if it got a bit scrambled - I'd just reformat it. But the fact that my system disk got screwed up, though it shouldn't have been doing anything during this process, has me scratching my head (and pretty scr*wed).

I don't want to do any more damage to anything. I'd like to be able to turn off the machine but can't figure out when that could be because it's in this loop of rebooting - the only way I've paused it is by hitting F8 and now it's sitting on the Advanced Boot Options screen. Any thoughts? If I can turn the machine off, I can unplug the system drive. Load Win7 on the new drive. Put the system drive back in. Boot from the new drive and then I should be able to access my data on the system drive…right???

"Error 100c" on a HP indicates that the System Recovery process can't complete as the system does not have the complete files to load the operating system.

Ugh. That's why I'm desperately hoping there is a way to repair rather than recover.

Thank you for your help.

No I don't know anyway to solve this without returning to factory state. You could try Ztrucker's advice: "Download Vista Recovery Console and use it". To turn the PC off, just turn off the power, but make sure there is no disks in your optical drive first. Cheers, Lee PS Edit: If you have everything of value already backed-up as you say, I can't see what the big drama is about restoring to factory state(?). If you do still have valuable data on the PC you wish to recover, I can tell you how to do that if required.

When I said Vista HP, I meant borrow a Vista Home Premium installation CD. If you can't borrow one, I gave you a link to a site that has good instructions on booting to the Vista Advanced Boot Options menu and a link to download a bootable iso of the Vista Recovery Console. That should allow you to boot the RC (Recovery Console) and run the System Repair from there.

As for turning off your computer. Once you are at the Advanced Boot Options just click the Turn Off button at the bottom.

Here is another good link: Create a Recovery Disc - Vista Forums

Hi again, I got the Vista Recovery Disk you recommended and burned it to CD. Just booted from it and it got me to a repair screen which was great. It said it found an installation of Vista and was going to repair it. Then it rebooted and came back to the same screen asking if I wanted to repair. I said yes and it brought up the following: ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- System Recovery Options Select an operating system to repair and click next. Only Windows Vista operating systems are listed and can be repaired. Under that are listed: Operating System Partition Size Location HP Recovery Manager 12762MB (Unknown) FACTORY_IMAGE Windows Vista ™ Home Premium (recovered) 597715MB (D:) HP ———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- My problem now is that I don't know which of the 2 operating systems I should choose. Any thoughts? Thanks again.

I chose the Vista Home Premium and it worked.



Thank you again for your input. Following up on my last post… the instructions I got at the 2 links below helped me create a Vista Recovery/Repair CD and repair the boot function on my drive. Prior to doing this I disconnected the new 1Tb drive and booting from CD I was able to get my original system drive working again. The boot process now is weird and I'm seeing screens I never saw before flash by and sometimes I have to select to boot from windows instead of going to RAM settings??? Don't know what that is all about but don't really care since I can boot to windows, log into my profile and do my work.

Now the problem is with the new HDD after running some diagnostics on it. I'm posting a new topic in the HDD forum here: http://forum.easeus.com/viewforum.php?f=10 and hopefully someone will be able to help me.

Here are the links to the resources I used to get out of the Error 100c problem:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/141820-c…disc.html?ltr=C

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/194765-s…ry-options.html

I was about to use the instructions here regarding the manual process of How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows, if the above techniques didn't work: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

Fortunately I didn't have to.

That is very good news indeed. Glad you are up and running again. If you want to pursue the weird boot process and strange screens you are seeing, we can work on them here or start another topic.

If you want to pursue the weird boot process and strange screens you are seeing, we can work on them here or start another topic.

Thank you very much. I actually started another topic here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?showtopic=116750

and though I haven't updated it with the most recent (last couple hours) occurrence of the machine saying "imminent drive failure" each time I reboot, that is the situation and I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow to dump it. Yes, after 2 solid days of trying to get Win 7 installed I'm giving up and am going to try and exchange for a new drive. It's been 25 days and the receipt says I have 30 so I'm in under the window.

Hugely frustrating though. Esp since my goal was to upgrade my wife's machine from a Caviar Blue to a Black in order to give her some more speed to work with. But since actually getting Win 7 installed, every click results in a pause - nothing is smooth or quick. Even though I can hear the drive spinning like crazy the whole time, it's like it has to "spin up" anyway before it will respond to any mouse movements or catch up to what's being typed.

I'm really hoping this all is the drive and not ALL Caviar Blacks cuz I'd really like to upgrade her machine.

With everything that's happened with this machine in the last couple days…do you happen to know of any list or something like that of things I can do to this HP Pavilion to get the most out of it? I'm looking for a step by step - go here, turn this on, turn that off, etc, that will make the machine perform at its best (nothing fancy like overclocking, just good sound tweaks of this or that setting).

Thanks again.

With everything that's happened with this machine in the last couple days…do you happen to know of any list or something like that of things I can do to this HP Pavilion to get the most out of it? I'm looking for a step by step - go here, turn this on, turn that off, etc, that will make the machine perform at its best (nothing fancy like overclocking, just good sound tweaks of this or that setting).

"Black Viper's Top 9 tweaks for a faster (and less annoying) Vista PC" (no overclocking).
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

If your going to tweak (anyway), this is a good place to go.

Black Viper has been around for a long time and his advice is at least reliable. The only thing I disagree with though is turning off System Restore, unless you have a regularly updated OS image back-up (which I do, but I still do not disable System Restore). Having said that, reducing the restore space to about 2GB is a good idea. All other tweaking advice is OK ..IMHO.

Cheers,
Lee

Windows 7 doesn't really need any tweaking, at least not for performance. I have made lots of changes (tweaks) but they all have to do with usability, not performance.

Thanks for the suggestion about Black Viper - definitely good info. And nice to hear that maybe win 7 (when I actually get it going) will be better. I did exchange the Caviar Black today and have my fingers crossed for install this weekend. I got an interesting response from MS re a post I made on Technet about the issues I was having - they recommended that I not partition the disk prior to install. I had put a 200Gb partition on the disk for system and applications and left the rest unallocated (to make into the data partition later) but the MS folks at Technet said that I should just install to the drive right out of the box. So I thought that was very interesting.

Sorry but I disagree with MS on this. 200MB is way more than enough for the OS and installed software. My Win 7 Pro X64 boot drive is 80GB and after a year and a half, I still have almost 40GB free.