Windows 8 crashed and won't boot

Hi. Last month i 'upgraded' my Dell XPS15 from win 7 to win 8. Everything was fine until yesterday when i booted, it said it had failed and tried to repair automatically. This also failed. I tried ALL of the other repair options but none work. In the CMD PROMPT window however, the default drive is labelled X: I notice when i type C: and hit return, it says the drive doesn't exist. I know it is there and all my files are there as i ran a tool from a bood disc to recover my most important files that i hadn't backed up. It seems it is just invisible.

I have tried to install windows 8 again from the Upgrade disk, but this too failed. I have ran out of ideas.

Can anyone help please?

Cheers

Ian

 

Is the drive showing in BIOS?

 

No, everything i try, C: drive seems invisible. The only ones i see are X: and the D: 9DVD RW).

Ian

 

There aren't any drive letters in BIOS. Do you need help checking the BIOS?

 

Sure, it would be better. Cheers

 

That's a pretty powerful machine and one I'm not personally familiar with, but we need to see whether the hard disk is being recognised at the bootup stage, which we do by checking the BIOS. You usually enter BIOS by tapping a function key as soon as you power up, before the Windows splash screen appears. I'm not familiar with Dell machines but very often F2 or Del will do it. If they don't then study the screen closely immediately after powering on and look for what it says about Setup, or about interrupting normal boot.

Once into BIOS you will have a blue screen with white print. You navigate between tabs and lines with Up/Down/Left/Right arrow keys. You are looking to see what drives are being recognised at the bootup stage and that's often on the very first tab. The drives will have descriptions including the word SATA. Carefully write down what you see and let us know.

 

Ok..

first tab is 'Main'

BIOS Version - A04

SATA Operation - Intel Smart Response Technology

Now... under Boot Tab...

Boot device priority

Hard Drive
CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Network.

That's it.

 

OK, so far so good but we need more. On the first tab arrow to the SATA item and press Enter. Does it give you more info?

 

I can only select SATA operation.

This gives me:

ATA
AHCI
Intel Smart Response Technology

SATA is mentioned in another tab but that is just the make and model of hardware.

 

That's really what I was looking for, but I think you have answered the question - the BIOS is seeing your hard drive on power up, it's just Windows that isn't.

It sounds like the boot sector may be damaged but I'm not at all sure what to suggest next. There are some real experts here on boot problems, let's hope one of them appears when he's needed

 

Ok mate, thank you anyway...

Ian

 

Anyone else have a suggestion please? I have tried the usual boot fix things to no avail.

Ian

 

Ok guys, I’m happy to say, I have resolved this issue myself with minimal affect.

I initially tried to reboot Win 8 with the upgrade disc but that didn’t work. I then downloaded a recovery boot disc for Win 7, as that was initially installed on my machine prior to Win 8 Upgrade. That didn’t work at first. The problem was the repair options brought up a window that asked to choose an OS to repair. But, no OS was visible.

From earlier posts in this thread and a few things I read from searches, I had an idea. Change the SATA Operation to AHCI rather than the default option. I went into the repair facility again and BINGO… Win 8 was showing as Drive D: I then went into the Command Prompt window, changed the drive from X: to D:, then ran:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd

I then allowed the boot disc to run from startup and followed the online instructions as it did an auto repair through ‘Refresh PC’. This will restart windows from scratch but will leave most files. It did however remove some programs which I can easily re-install. All of my important stuff, photos, music etc are still there. That said, I managed to back these up from a backup tool I purchased after the system crashed; worth every penny!!!

I hope this info helps those who cannot see the drive that windows is on; go into bios and consider changing the SATA Operation setting. I will say though, I am not an expert. Although it worked for me, changing settings like that may not work for you. I hope it does.

Cheers

Ian

 

Well done and thanks for the detailed feedback

 

Ok Guys, it would appear my earlier fix wasn't quite 100%

I have managed to reload Win8 and run it when SATA Operation (in the BIOS) is set to ATA or AHCI.

However, if i set the SATA Operation to the default setting of 'Intel Smart Response Tecnology', Win8 fails to boot and goes into a perpetual 'try to fix 'routine. I also tried to reinstall Win8 after setting the BIOS Default, but then i get a message during install that drives / earlier OS can't be found, and the window is blank

Any ideas please?

Cheers

Ian

 

I believe these instructions is exactly what i need to do,

BUT...

if I can't boot up in Intel Smart Response mode, can I boot in AHCI, install the driver (which i downloaded here) for my Dell and then go back to BIOS and restore defaults? Then, reload windows (hopefully in Intel Smart Response Tech mode)

I suppose there's only one way to find out :confused