Lenovo B570 cannot boot from HDD

Hi folks,

I have a weird one, here... or at least it is pretty weird for me.

Lenovo B570 laptop... appears to have:
4GB RAM,
500GB Seagate HDD (ST9500325AS),
DVD drive is shown in BIOS as PLDS DVD-RW DS8A8SH
BIOS Version: 44cn43ww
KBC Version: 44ec29ww
Processor: Intel Core i3-2350M CPU @ 2.30GHz
I have not determined OS, yet. It was shipped with Win7, but the owner says she has Win8 on it.

I help friends and friends of friends with their computer problems. The complaint that the owner of this laptop brought to me was that she got a virus infection after opening the infamous email from USPS about a package awaiting delivery. The symptom: cannot shutdown, no reaction to keyboard, mouse, power button, etc. Owner disconnected A/C power, but left battery installed. Eventually, the battery discharged and it powered down.

However, the real problem was that it was caught in a loop attempting to reboot. The loop appears to be caused by an inability of the computer to recognize the HDD.

Initially, I couldn't access the BIOS screens. I left A/C power disconnected, removed battery, and pressed power button for 30 seconds to discharge any capacitors. After reinstalling battery and A/C adapter, I was able to open the BIOS screens.

The BIOS knows about the HDD, but booting from it fails... looping through the Lenovo logo screen, with options to access setup and multiboot selection screens.

Booting from a CD to SeaTools DOS 2.23 works, but SeaTools indicates no HDD installed. Same result booting from Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (BART) from CD or USB... Windows XP "Manage > Disk Management" fails to show HDD installed.

Have removed and reseated HDD, to no avail... same results.

Have installed the HDD in an external case and attached via USB to another system running Win7 and the file system appears to be intact. Ran Comodo antivirus scan on this drive, which found 24 malware items, which I allowed Comodo to "clean".

Moved the drive, in the external USB case, to the Lenovo laptop and that drive cannot be seen by either SeaTools or Windows XP running from USB or CD.

Also tried to boot from the external USB drive, with same results as initially experienced with drive installed in original bay... looping through the Lenovo logo screen. The BIOS does describe the USB external drive as an ST9500325AS.

Reinstalled HDD in original HDD bay and attempted reboot... same result.

I'm confused why the laptop cannot seem to see this drive, regardless of how it is attached, but can boot from other drives (USB and CD).

Suggestions or explanations?

Thanks!

 

It, unfortunately,seems it has a boot sector virus which, hopefully, didn't get transferred to the computer you were testing the drive with. Hopefully, someone here can help you with restoring the boot sectors. As for me, I'd wipe the drive and start over — but, that's me.

 

Thanks for your insight, mdonah. Could you elaborate on why you think it's a boot sector virus? I'm not disputing... just looking for the rationale. I'm confused as to why this drive can be seen on one machine, but not another...

 

Comodo may have cleaned the virus but cannot repair files or sectors. The fact that the drive is accessible on your Win 7 computer at least means that the MBR and MFT are intact but the fact that you can't boot from the drive indicates boot sector corruption.

Hmm, since this is XP, do you have the XP installation CD and did you try recovery console using fixboot, fixmbr and fixboot a second time (it has to be done twice)?

 

Thanks for your thoughts, mdonah.

Sorry about any confusion...
1) I am not certain about the OS level installed on this HDD. I used an XP stand-alone boot CD to look at the system because I cannot boot it from HDD. I wanted to narrow the problem down somewhat from "here's a brick", and XP was as good as any and I have a system built on Bart's CD to boot and run some utilities. Can you tell me how to tell whether the HDD has Win 7 or Win 8 installed? The owner says Win 8, but I'm not sure that is a reliable source.
2) The XP system runs, which tells me the computer, itself, is relatively healthy (not a totally broken system), but that doesn't tell me anything about the HDD, the connections, or the disk controller.
3) I used an external drive case to connect the HDD to a Win 7 system to see if the HDD is still alive and if the owner's data is still available. Since it is, and the owner complained about a virus, I used Comodo on Win 7 to scan and remove the malware. You are correct, Comodo can only kill the virus... it can't restore the files (or MBR, if that's where a virus was). As it turns out, all of the infections were in files under "Users"... and files that are disposable, too (what luck!). I don't know if Comodo will even look at an MBR on a disk if that's not the current boot disk... something to research.

I have not messed with the boot sector or MBR, yet, either. I really wanted to use the same OS as is installed before I tried any recovery functions and (as I mentioned above) I'm not sure whether this is Win 7 or Win 8. And thanks for the information about needing to run that program twice... I didn't know that. Maybe that's why I've never been successful fixing a boot sector so far.

In my very limited experience with non-bootable systems, I've found that I at least get a message that the boot was attempted and it's either a non-system disk or some other error from the OS. In this case, it just loops trying to boot. And more troubling, I can't see the drive when installed on the laptop when I use tools that are looking at the hardware level... not an unformated drive or a drive with partitions on it... it's just absent.

 

Issue is solved!! Rebuilding the boot sector fixed this problem. I still don't understand why SeaTools could not see the drive, but the laptop works, now, and I'm satisfied.

Thanks to those who provided insight and/or suggestions!!

Dan