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Can I recover an unbootable Disk?

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My wife's Lenovo Twist (with an SSD) became unbootable immediately after a restart requested by a Window 10 Pro-64 update. I tried a bunch of different command prompt options for repairing the MBR - both from the disk's own recovery options and from a generic Win 10 DVD's recovery options - but they always ended in errors. (I have used them before successfully on other computers.) I have your backup software on my machine, but, stupidly, not on hers. I was able to plug the disk into my desktop machine and make a raw copy (File Manager) of the whole Win 10 Partition. I also tried 2 different disk utilities that I was experimenting with on my machine (I am embarrassed to say that I didn't know your Disk Director existed until today), but they didn't help even though their Fix MBR options seemed to complete successfully. The disk has a Lenovo recovery partition on it with Windows 8.0 on it. Somewhere along the way I lost the ability to boot to the disk's recovery options, (probably due to some mistake I made at the command line) so I can't do a recover from that partition (with a subsequent upgrade to Win 10). I tried loading Win 10 from a DVD from scratch (I have an extra license) but it stops at the beginning asking for a media driver. I have tried every driver from the original Win 10 partition, but no luck. Lenovo's drivers from its Web site are all Win executables, so they are of no help. I think that my mistake at the command line involved renaming a file, but I don't remember what file or in which folder.

Can I use Disk DIrector alone, or in combination with your other products to get this Twist back up and running, preferably with the original Win partition intact so I don't have to reload everything? If so, what is the procedure involved?

Note that I am thinking of plugging the drive back into my machine and trying to find drivers on the recovery partition, but I think that it might be one big recover file as opposed to individual discrete files that would be useful to me.

Thanks for your help.

Wayne Krakau

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Wayne, sorry to read of the issues with your wife's Lenovo Twist computer following what sounds like a failed Windows 10 update.

If you have Acronis True Image installed on your computer, then I would recommend making a disk & partitions backup of your wife's disk drive, including all partitions on the drive, so that you have access to any files that you may need to recover later.

Given the various actions you have already tried, I believe that the only way forward is either to restore the computer back to how it was shipped from Lenovo using the Lenovo recovery partition, or else start fresh with a clean install of Windows 10.

If you want to try the Lenovo Recovery, then perhaps the best way to proceed would be to delete the Windows OS partition from the drive, then change the BIOS settings for the Boot device to see if the computer will boot from the Recovery partition.  You may need to delete other partitions related to the OS.  

Personally, I would delete the whole drive and make a clean install of Windows 10.  You should not need another Windows 10 licence as the system should be activated based on the hardware signature since you have already had this OS installed and activated previously.

With regards to the Lenovo drivers from their support site for the Twist computer, then try opening these using a program such as 7-Zip as often these Windows executable files are self-extracting zip archives.

When reinstalling Windows 10, this should be the same version as was previously installed, i.e. the Home or Pro edition.  If you install a different edition, then you will be challenged to activate via a new licence.  You can download the latest Windows 10 install code from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 using the second option shown to Create Windows 10 Installation media, which you can use to create a bootable USB stick for installing.  This needs to be at least 8GB in size.

Steve,

 

Thanks so much for the above and beyond the call of duty advice well beyond the parameters of this forum.

Sorry about the delayed response. I was determined to find an answer before replying and I finally found 2.

First, a technical newsletter I read led me to an article about how two recent Win 10 updates do very bad things. One causes machines to become unbootable. The other causes machines to lose access to their USB ports. Coincidentally, shortly after the Twist became unbootable, my main, desktop machine lost access to all 8 of its USB ports. The mechanism for both is that they remove old drivers and neglect to replace them with the new ones. I applied MIcrosoft designated fix, uninstalling the offending update at the Command Line, on my desktop and it removed the update. After a reboot, I got my USB ports back. I then tried the corresponding fix on the Twist. It also removed the update, but upon rebooting, I was still stuck at a BSOD with a 0xc000000E error. I strongly suspect that if I had found the article and applied the fix before I fiddled with manual solutions for non-booting, the fix would have worked and I would have had a fully functional and intact machine.

Second, once I gave up on direct recovery and switched to installing Windows 10 from scratch, I encountered that media driver request, which I thought was a "normal" Windows request. After many days of what turned out to be totally useless work, I looked up that supposedly harmless message and found that it really indicates a problem with my copy of Window 10 involving either a corrupted ISO download or a bad disc burn. I downloaded the latest, greatest version of Windows 10 and tried the install again. I never even got the driver request message. The installation ran perfectly. Because of the boot problem and the fact that I had used Acronis Backup (your business product) on my main machine to back up all the partitions on the drive, I deleted all of the partitions and let Windows 10 have to whole disk. As I write this, I am reloading software on the now fully functionally machine.

Before that discovery I did the following:

1. I unarchived all of the filed I downloaded from Lenovo's site and fed them to Windows 10. It didn't find any drivers.

2. I pulled all of the driver files out of my raw copy of the Windows 10 partition and fed them to Win 10. I found a bunch of valid drivers, but rejected them, one-by-one.

3. I pulled all of the driver files out of the post-fix copy I made of the Windows 10 partition (because the drivers were now different) and fed then to Win 10. It found a larger bunch of drivers and rejected them all.

4. I pulled all of the driver files out of the all the rest of the partitions (which involved a lot of unarchiving sub, sub, sub archive files) and fed them to Win 10. It found a huge number of valid drivers, but rejected them all.

There are two morals to this story. The first is to not trust Microsoft's update processes or their "'normal" messages. The second is characterized by the old saying that the shoemaker's kids go barefoot. I was so concerned about my clients' backup status that I neglected my own computer's backup status. I'll have to get to work on that.

Note that my final raw copy of the drive was actually missing some critical data files, but I was able to do a redirected restore from my Acronis backup file and retrieve everything from that copy. Score one for Acronis!

Again, thanks for your help. I hope my reply helps someone else who stumbles upon this thread.

 

Wayne Krakau

 

  

Wayne, thank you for your detailed feedback on this issue. Windows Updates do have a habit of biting people hard at times!  I had to recover my neighbours computer from one just last week (with no available backup to recover from, despite advising her to use backup software!).  Fortunately, no data was lost but many hours of time was spent in the process.

Wayne, you said "I applied MIcrosoft designated fix, uninstalling the offending update at the Command Line"

Could you explain how to do this please?

Steven, probably not the same reference as used by Wayne, but a useful resource - see MS webpage: How to uninstall a windows update KB# using Windows RE: Administrator: X:\Windows\System32.cmd.exe

 

Sorry folks. I forgot to include the references. The first is https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4075150/how-to-recover-devices… . The tail end of this looks odd, but I cut and pasted it as is from the actual Web page.

The second is https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4091240/usb-devices-may-stop-w…

To give credit, I found these in one of the "Woody on Windows" columns in ComputerWorld. I forgot which newsletter led me to that article.

Wayne Krakau

 

Thanks