Sian's friend has given me her son's laptop to try and fix. It's stuck booting Windows. Get the fading logo booting normally or gets stuck on the list or drivers in safe mode.

Any idea what to do? If it was mine I'd wipe it and reinstall Windows but its not. Currently using Windows Defender Offline to do a scan. After that I'm not sure.

Unless they're paying you an hourly rate, nuke it and reinstall Windows.

That's my new philosophy.

Good philosophy, I like it. I will try a couple of things first then consider that.

I was just trying to do some movie computer hacking, tapping randomly away at the keyboard and I cancelled the scan :S 1.5 hours it had been running for. Tried again and it said it couldn't compete the scan after only 5 minutes. Maybe the HDD is on the way out.

Every other thing I've tried has invariably proven a complete waste of time, and I always wound up nuking and reinstalling in the end.

It's a Dell laptop and it has a diasnosis utility built into the boot options. Fails on the HDD. Think that's the problem.

How do these recovery partitions work? I'll probably end up buying a new HDD and fitting it for her. I assume a clone of a dying HDD won't work properly.

If I install a new HDD how do I then get the Dell recovery bits onto it to reinstall Windows. Or do I just Jim it and put a proper copy on there.

With modern Dell's it's usually one of the advanced boot options you get when pressing F8 after the Dell logo appears. As to whether you can clone the recovery partition on to another HDD, I've never tried it.

Otherwise, find an OEM/multi version ISO of Windows 7 and reinstall it using the key the laptop came with.

Cheers Matt. I did look at a boot menu, F12 on this one which only showed the diagnostics. I've only ever done a full install so not used to recovery/install partitions.

Just had a look on the Dell website and it is from the F8 menu. Repair computer. That doesn't work though. It says loading files then goes back to the menu.

Are you able to run chkdsk repairs on the hdd by booting from an installer disk?

Tried booting from the Win 7 disc and using the command prompt. Chkdsk gave an unspecified error and the startup repair said it couldn't complete.

tried that FIXMBR thing and the other one I can't remember?

No. If it is trying to boot but getting stuck would that work? Worth a try. What's the other one? Might try another boot CD or putting the HDD from the laptop in my computer and see if I can scan it on there.

Then I'm guessing either the physical disk, or the partition map is hosed. All that's left is to attempt data recovery from a linux boot cd, or put it in an external enclosure and try to mount it on another pc. You could then try to reformat the disk, in my experience it is probably a waste of time.

That was my guess. I did boot a random Linux live CD I had lying around and could access the pictures on there so hopefully the stuff they want I can get off.

The other one is fixboot I think.

Bootfixyou!

Will it fix my boot? It keeps dropping down on my head unexpectedly.

Keep them by the door, like any normal person would. Putting them on top of the wardrobe is just asking for it.

Definitely dead HDD. I used my USB to SATA cable (with my PATA USB dock providing the power (I think I need a proper SATA dock)) and Windows immediately said there is a problem with the drive. It's trying to do a scan and just clicking every now and then. Maybe I should stop it in case I break it more.