I'm having a problem where my HP Envy 15 will not boot up correctly. It started when my system froze, so I held the power button to turn it off. When I attempted to turn it back on, it came to a black screen with 2 options for either starting Windows normally or running startup repair. Starting Windows normally will just return me to the screen with two options, and running System Repair leaves the computer at a blue screen with a cursor, but nothing to click on.
Running a test of the hard drive through BIOS returned nothing but a message that says "Hard disk 1 quick (303)".
Attempting to run it in Safe Mode also doesn't work.
I've read that it could be a hard drive crash. If this is true and I have to reinstall Win 7, how can I go about doing this? I don't have a recovery disc, and also haven't made any backups. The problem is, I have a paper due that's only saved on my laptop, and I can't lose it through a fresh install. So, my question is, if it comes to reinstalling Windows, how can I make sure some of my files aren't deleted first?
Thanks.
Best Answer
You seem to have access to another computer (else you could not have posted this question). Use that to download a liveCD.
Boot the liveCD and try to look at the laptops volume. If you can access that then it is likely that the windows installation is broken, but that the disk is fine.
Your first step after this should be to insert a pendrive and copy your paper to that.
Next make a backup of all the other documents you want to keep Do this before attempting to rescue the laptop. It might be extra work but you really do not want to take any risk until you have backups.
Swapping the pendrive for an external (USB) harddisk might help with this. Alternatively put the laptop drive in an external (USB) enclosure and connect it to another computer.
OK, we now have your paper rescued. And your documents. What is left is your windows installation. Repairing that depends a lot on just what is broken, and there is not enough information in your OP to determine that. However I recommend removing the harddrive from the laptop and putting it either in an external enclosure, or as a second drive in a desktop. Then run scandisk on it. That is a gamble, but I ran into several computers which refused to boot due to corrupted files c.q. a corrupted filesystem.
You might have noticed that I left out one option. That the HDD is broken. And you have no backups.
That is scary. Depending on the state of the drive some files simply might not be recoverable.