Problems with Evesham laptop booting

My son has an Evesham (or is it Acer?) laptop, which has encountered problems and is not booting up properly.

The laptop is an Evesham e-Machines e525, running windows 7. On staring up the machine, a screen briefly appears with the Evesham logo and "Press F2 to enter setup". If you continue to wait, the laptop eventually just goes to a screen which is headed "Windows Boot Manager" with this information:

File: \boot\bcd
Status: 0xc00000e9
Info: An unexpected i/o error has occurred.


We don't have a recovery disc, so I decided to try making one using my wife's laptop which is identical. The disc burned just fine, and when putting it into my son's laptop, (after making the CD/DVD drive the primary boot option) I did manage to progress a little further than before. I got a message to "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD", which I did, and then a message saying "Windows is loading files" as a loading bar appeared across the bottom from left to right. That then disappeared and I got to the point where a loading bar appeared above the words "microsoft corporation". That then disappears and I end up back at a black screen with the cursor in the middle.

At times I'm getting the Advanced Boot Options screen, but it seems that no matter what I select, I just end up with a black screen with a low resolution cursor in the middle of it.

Help please! the wife is threatening to take it to the local computer shop and I'm sure they'll charge a fortune to do something pretty basic.

A word of warning - I'm far from a techie, so keep it simple please!

Thanks in advance.

 

The Status: 0xc00000e9 means there was an I/O error. Most often these errors are due to problems with the hard drive.

So, start with a hard drive diagnostic (it's bootable). Here's a list of them, free from the manufacturer: http://www.carrona.org/hddiag.html (read the details at the link) - Test ALL of the hard drives.

 

The HD tests are a good idea.
I just want to amke sure that you are giving the boot from CD a full 5 minutes to load up. It shouldn't take that much time but just to be sure since I think it should fully load even if the HD is bad. Let it sit at the black cursor screen for a full five minutes just to rule out a timing issue. (Also make sure you have no USB devices or memory cards in any slots.)

 

I gave the laptop about 2 hours before shutting it down, so I think it had enough time

And yes there were no devices connected.

 

Just FYI - I see this at work a lot (and we charge $70 US just to diagnose the problem)
When the hard drive is so bad that we can't run any tests, we test by removing the hard drive. If we can boot with a bootable disk then, we presume that it's the hard drive and replace it. Subsequent bootable tests will confirm that the new hard drive is good (never had one that didn't).

Just thinking out loud here, but I believe that this happens when the controller on the hard drive (NOT the controller on the motherboard) gets damaged somehow. It sends out signals the mess up everything with the system. It's even possible that this could be from another hard drive on the system - that's why I recommend testing ALL drives.

Should all the hard drives pass, then we can check the file system on the hard drive with CHKDSK /R /F (and yes, I know that the /r /f is redundant - but that's how I learned it and it works for me!).

Finally, laptop hard drives are usually easy to replace. Take a look at page 9 of this PDF: ftp://ftp.emachines.com/notebook/E725/Manual/eM_HM50_MV_Eng_QG_0223.pdf
Item 4 is the hard drive bay.

So, in order to replace the hard drive (if needed) you'll have to:
- purchase a replacement hard drive. It's a 2.5" Notebook hard drive. It's either SATA or IDE (depending upon the age).
Here's a picture of the connector: http://www.laptopparts101.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg
- Make sure that you have recovery disks in order to reinstall the operating system. I prefer those from the manufacturer as they contain everything needed to get back up and running. Contact eMachines for a set if you don't have them.

Then, to take it apart:
- remove the battery
- unplug the adapter from the wall and from the laptop
- unscrew the 2 screws to open the hard drive compartment
- touch the metal of the frame - either with a finger, or through a metal piece that touches the frame. This is to discharge static electricity which might damage the hard drive)
- remove the hard drive by pulling it away from the connector slot (there may be a screw or two holding it in place - so if it doesn't move, have a look around).
- once out, they're usually in a holder that has 4 screws holding it in (newer models occasionally only use 2 screws) - remove them to remove the hard drive.
- reverse the procedure in order to install the new hard drive