N150 recovery issue.

[hyper67]

Hi everyone.Glad to have found this forum.I have a N150 that got banged around when it was on and now windows 7 will not boot. my son said the F4 key worked twice, but he said the recovery program was taking too long so he shut it down. Ughh! I know I wish he would have just waited till I got home. Now the F4 key will no longer bring up the recovery program. It just says " operating system not found". I can get into the bios and it does have the hard drive listed as " sata1" I think. I have been reading through some related posts and still a little confused. It sounds like I should be able to download a copy of the recovery program or admin tools to a stick. Change the boot sequence in the bios to boot to the usb port, and try and recover the harddrive from there. one problem is some of the links I have found for these programs are bad links. Does anyone know exactly which program I need and have a good link to it? Thanks.

[hyper67]

O.K. I've read through the sticky on this by Glenn about 10 more times and done some more research and I am going to give it a try. The English translation on his post was giving me problems, but I think I now understand it. I thank him for posting it. Its a great writeup. I might have to post up some individual questions when I start this. I'll post them up here and hope somebody is monitoring this thread. Cheers.

[hyper67]

I downloaded "multibootiso", but it appeared to be an old program and not very user friendly. Especially for stupid people like me. lol. Also seeing glenns post is two years old I figured there must be something newer out there. I couldn't find a site to download "hirens" so I found "RMPrepUSB" and downloaded it. It comes with "grub4dos", so I made my bootable usb stick and booted my netbook up with the stick. At the grub command line I typed -

grub>rootnoverify (hd1,0) then ENTER

grub>chainloader +1 then ENTER

ERROR 21: Selected disk does not exist


I'm now googling grub error 21 but anybody know what this means. My hardrive still shows up in the bios as AHCI HDD : SAMSUNG HM250HI
I did not load an ISO on my stick to check the harddrive partitions. Maybe I should do that next?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[hyper67]

O.K at the Grub4Dos command line I typed " root ( " then hit the tab key to bring up all available devices. It returned only "hd0 rd ". This was not what I wanted to see. hd0 rd would be my flash drive (ram disk) that I booted Grub on. SO either my harddrive is toast or for some reason Grub is not seeing it. I'm leaning toward my HD being toast. So at this point I guess I will have to get a new HD and install a clean copy of windows7 on it. I just found another thread on here where it explains how to do this.

http://www.sammynetbook.com/forum/th...erating+system

So unless anyone has any different advice for me this is what I'm going to do. Thanks.

[sammyone]

before you give up and replace what MIGHT be a drive with 'bad' partitions... NOT a knackered drive....

Try a bootable USB version of Easeus Partition Master - How to here...

http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus...bootablecd.htm

The program is FREE any way, you just need a working computer to download and install the program then follow the instructions to make the Bootable USB Stick...

It MIGHT be possible to rebuild the MBR to get your partitions back...

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523...ader-problems/

to make a bootable Windows 7 Install disk... (you are PROBABLY going to need this later ANYWAY...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/wind...ta-before.html

Don't forget to manually remove the ei.cfg file - so you can install the appropriate version

Please post back so we know how you are doing..

[hyper67]

Sammy,Thanks for your reply. I haven't removed the HD yet,so I will definitely give this a try.

[hyper67]

I downloaded the free version of "Easeus Partition Master" but the option of making a bootable disk was not available, so I had to download the pro version for $31.95. The program is easy to use and I was able to make a bootable flash drive in no time. I booted the netbook with the flash drive and it recognized the two partitions on the hd. I checked the boxes next to each partition and hit restore. I got the congratulations screen that said my partitions were restored but when I got back to the main screen it only showed the partition of my flash drive. I tried to do another search and it just said there were no unallocated partitions to restore. I closed the program and rebooted without the flash drive and now it hangs up at the recovery screen for @ 3 or 4 min and then says " no operating system found". I tried hitting f4 a bunch of times to bring up the samsung recovery program, but nothing happened. Also while its hung up on the recovery screen I can hear the hd making pretty loud clicking sounds like its trying to do something. It never did that before.I really think this hd is dead and I need to move on. What do you think? Thanks.

[sammyone]

My MOST SINCERE APOLOGIES... I just went back into PM to find out why mine allows me to 'build' an USB stick - only to find out that it just takes me to an advert for the 'Paid-for' version... I didn't realise that !

Hopefully, before you do spend money on a new drive... did you try formatting the compete Hard drive? See if that saves you the cost - though 'clicking' does usually indicate an mechanical failure of the drive....

[hyper67]

Sammy, no need to apologize. This is a good program and I don't mind paying for software once in a while. Lord knows we get enough of it for free. The problem with trying to format this drive is at present I don't have any program that will even recognize the drive anymore. So I've pretty much decided to replace it. I've been looking for a new drive and I was wondering can I install any brand drive in this netbook as long as its a 2.5" sata drive? I'm going to stay with a sata drive because the ssd drives are just too expensive. Thanks.

[sammyone]

@ Hyper67 - IF you made a bootable Windows 7 Install disk... It MIGHT be possible to Format the disk during Installation of Windows 7...

Just a thought... There Might still be the 'old' Dos Fdisk in Resources

1. Download the files and make a bootable Windows 7 USB Stick

2. Put stick in Usb Port then Go into your BIOS and set to boot from USB as the first boot device.

3. in the Repair section, go to Command Prompt (DOS) - Type the following command: fdisk and select "Y" to enable large disk support.

4. Use this program to create a partition and set the partition to active. (Windows will not need any more than 50Gb)

5. reboot with the boot disk still in and do the same up to Command Prompt...
this time type Format c: (where C: is the letter of your hard drive)
then Type "Y" to accept. If given a choice use NTFS...

6. When formatting is done, (Y-A-W-N!) you ought to be able to Install Windows 7

Hope this saves you some money and/or fills the time while the new Drive arrives...