Acer 9410 Notebook will not boot to Windows! 3

[BxWill]

Prompt assistance is needed!

Hopefully, I can salvage a friend's 4 year-old Acer Aspire 9410 laptop that has not booted to Windows for the last 5 days!

When the laptop power button is turned on, the following is displayed on the monitor;

!! 0xc000034!! 144/48581 (_0000000000000000.cdf-ms)

It appears that several sectors of the hard drive is damaged.

5 days ago, I noticed a "icon" at the lower task bar that indicated that a multimedia device was attached although I did not attach anything.

The next day, the laptop is not able to boot to windows at all.

So far, I have tried the following;

* System Recovery Options (Not successful)
* Open in Safe mode (Not successful)
* Depress F8 prior to depressing the power button (not successful)
* Using command prompts
CHKDSK - Performed but still not able to boot to windows
* Last known good configuration (not successful)

It appears that backups or system restores were never performed on the computer...

Why was there no backups or system restores? I cannot begin to understand...

It appears that at the very least, a new hard drive is needed.

Hopefully, the laptop can be saved!

What options would you recommend to resolve this?

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

 

[BxWill]

I have Vista Home Premium OS and cannot locate the cd.

A technician did a review and stated that I should purchase the Windows 7 upgrade. However, the problem persists - the laptop cannot boot up in Windows.

 

[vacunita]

The first thing to do is to determine if the HD is toast or there's something else wrong.

When the laptop power button is turned on, the following is displayed on the monitor;

!! 0xc000034!! 144/48581 (_0000000000000000.cdf-ms)

I assume this is a blue screen with a lot of text correct?

Can you enter the BIOS setup? usually by pressing the delete or f2 or f8 keys just as the machine is turning on.
If you can manage to access BIOS Setup, you can check if the Hard drive is being detected in there.

You can also try downloading The Ultimate Boot Cd and running the Hard drive diagnostics from it on the hard drive.

Also form this point, you could attempt to remove the Hard drive from the machine, and placing it in a USB enclosure and connect it to another machine, to check if it can be accessed from there.

Buying a different operating system at this point is pointless, until we can determine what is actually wrong.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[BadBigBen]

This problem usually happens when someone installed SP1 and certain 3rd party software was running in the background...

can you boot into safemode?

if not, then attempt the following, but you need to get a hold of a VISTA or W7 DVD first, it will repair the BOOT RECORD/BOOT MANAGER:

Error message when you start Windows Vista: "The Windows Boot Configuration Data file is missing required information"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927391/en-us

once you are able to log on the laptop in safemode, go to the CMD prompt and type MSCONFIG, and disable ALL non MS services... reboot...

While in SAFEMODE:

updating ALL drivers to their latest versions, should also be attempted...

search for the FILE noted in the parenthesis above, and DELETE it... (probably will not be able to do so, but worth a try)

uninstall the most recent updates!!! the file mentioned above, is a hotfix/update that is still pending...

keep us posted...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[flyboytim]

ACER Aspire 9410:
came loaded with one of the following:

Windows® Media Center Edition 2005, with Update Rollup 2
Windows® XP Home Edition (Service Pack 2)
Windows® XP Professional (Service Pack 2)

and was "Windows Vista™ Capable", whatever that means!

So, the first question is Which Windows? XP or Vista, or something else like Windows 7?

Was it XP dual-booting with 7 or Vista, which might explain the missing restore points?

It was fitted with either:
8x DVD Super Multi
or 24X DVD/CD-RW combo

So it could be booted from a CD or DVD - is the install media for the laptop available?

Maybe the Bios needs to be set up so that the laptop can boot from CD etc:

Acer BIOS are usually accessible via:

"To activate the BIOS utility, press <F2> during the POST; while the notebook PC logo is being displayed."

"To set the boot sequence in the BIOS utility, activate the BIOS utility, then select Boot from the categories listed at the top of the screen."

You may need to change the boot device to the CD/DVD drive in order to boot from a CD.

Most live Linux CDs will allow you to boot from the CD so that files on the hard drive can be examined and backed up if necessary and possible, as well as the "UBCD" mentioned by Vacunita.

If it is determined that the files on the laptop are not recoverable, is the recovery partition setup accessible by pressing the Alt and F10 buttons at the same time when the notebook PC logo is being displayed at startup? This should reset the machine to factory default conditions, but will overwrite any data on the disk.

http://www.fxxxingcomputers.co.uk

 

[BxWill]

Still at it,


Will download the ultimate boot cd, try suggestions and post back.

 

[BxWill]

Well,

I removed the hard drive, inseted into enclosure and connected to usb port of another computer.

See all of the files on the hard drive.

It appears that the hard drive is okay.

What exactly should I look for to determine if the hard drive was the culprit?

My assumption is that if I can access the files of the hard drive, then the hard drive was not the culprit but maybe it is the motherboard...

Was not able to burn a cd on the ultimate bootable cd site

The review continues...

 

[BxWill]

Downloaded a hard drive testing sofware, tested the laptop's hard drive and receive the status report displayed below.

Considering that the figure in the column titled "Value" is the same as the value in the column titled "Worst" for all of the categories except maybe one may indicate a defective hard drive??

If the drive is now defective, I would like to transfer as much data as I can from the defective hard drive.

Steps that I will take include;
Install new hard drive into the laptop
Install antivirus software onto the laptop
connect the "old" drive to the usb port of the laptop
Copy the contents of the old hard drive to the new hard drive

Thoughts?

Are the steps displayed above in the preferred order?

HDDScan S.M.A.R.T. Report
Model: Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00
Firmware: SBDOC70P
Serial: SB2D04E4H7AV6E

Report By: HDDScan for Windows version 3.3
Report Date: 2/20/2011 1:33:15 PM


Num Attribute Name Value Worst Raw(hex) Threshold

001 Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 0000000000-0000 062

002 Throughput performance 100 100 0000000000-0000 040

003 Spin Up Time 208 208 00001A0000-0002 033

004 Start/Stop Count 099 099 0000000000-07B7 000

005 Reallocation Sector Count 100 100 0000000000-0000 005

007 Seek Error Rate 100 100 0000000000-0000 067

008 Seek time Perfomance 100 100 0000000000-0000 040

009 Power-On Hours Count 092 092 0000000000-0DC0 000

010 Spin Retry Count 100 100 0000000000-0000 060

012 Device Power Cycle Count 099 099 0000000000-07AD 000

191 G-sense Rate/Servo tracking 100 100 0000000000-0000 000

192 Emergency Retract Count 100 100 0000000000-0015 000

193 Load/unload Cycle Count 098 098 0000000000-54D6 000

194 HDA Temperature 183 183 30 C 000

194 HDA Temperature Maximum 183 183 54 C 000

194 HDA Temperature Minimum 183 183 15 C 000

196 Reallocation Event Count 100 100 0000000000-0000 000

197 Current Pending Errors Count 100 100 0000000000-0001 000

198 Uncorrectable Errors Count 100 100 0000000000-0000 000

199 UltraDMA CRC Errors 200 253 0000000000-0000 000

223 Load Retry Count 100 100 0000000000-0000 000

 

[BadBigBen]

Thoughts?

it is the best option at present... for one it will determine if the drive was the culprit (but my guess: HDD wasn't the problem, but an OS problem...), so yes a fresh install will most likely work out for the best...

HDD Scan should have told you, if there was a SMART error... and from the LOG, the only thing I can tell is that the drive ran a bit hot (54 Centigrade)...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[BxWill]

After installing another hard drive, I attempted to install Windows XP without the product key...

Unsuccessful in deleting Windows XP.

What is the most expedient method of removing a incomplete installation of Windows XP and intalling the Windows 7 operating system?

 

[BadBigBen]

the most expedient...

FORMAT the drive...

or better yet, the install manager has the option to remove partitions, do so and then let W7 do the partitioning...



Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[BxWill]

Specifically, How do I reformat the hard drive if I cannot access Windows at all?

Also depressed "F2" and was not able to go to command prompt.

Also depressed "F8" upon logging on and only presented with safe mode options, etc.

 

[BadBigBen]

I know that W7 is finicky when it comes to installing on a previously formatted drive, so take the following guide as a reference...

Installing Windows 7 (step by step screen captures)

http://mygeekreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/installing-windows-7-step-by-step.html

when you get to Step 8, the screen where you choose the HDD to install to, there you will have the option to choose {b]Drive Options (advanced)[/b] (see picture); there delete the partition (DO NOT CREATE A NEW ONE)...

exiting should return you to the screen where you choose the partition/drive to install Windows to, now choose the unpartitioned space...

that should be all that is necessary to get W7 to install...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"