Lenovo Laptop Hard Drive Issues

[Lunariiia]

Hi, I've had a Lenovo laptop that had a broken screen, and when plugged into HDMI, it wouldn't show the screen on the TV/Monitor, so I took the screen off, and disconnected the cable/wire/cord connected to it, and when plugged in to HDMI again, it would show the screen. But, instead of it being typical Windows, I was met with a screen.

 

"Recovery

It looks like Windows didn't load correctly

If you'd like to restart and try again, choose "Restart my PC" below. Otherwise, choose "See advanced repair options" for troubleshooting tools and advanced options. If you don't know which option is right for you, contact someone you trust to help with this."

 

Now, for me, this wasn't the first time seeing this screen, I had seen it millions of times before, with this same laptop. So, wanting to see if maybe it was just because of the million times I had turned it off and turned it on again, I clicked "Restart my PC." and was met with the same screen again. After figuring out that something was wrong with the OS, I just simply clicked "See advanced repair options" and made my way to System Restore. But, instead of seeing System Restore like always, I was met with a error. "To use System Restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore." Now I had figured out that this may be more than just being a problem with the OS. So I made a Windows USB drive, and plugged it in to the laptop, and booted to it. It worked perfectly. I had a working Windows install.

 

But, it doesn't end there.

Just within a few hours of using the laptop I got a blue screen. I didn't think much of it as the laptop tends to blue screen alot, so I let it reboot and then it loaded to Windows, but it had to update. So, I walked away, grabbed a coke, and came back and saw a blue screen, again. I restarted the computer, and it loaded to the lock screen. Just before I was about to press the space bar it blue screened, but different this time.

The blue screen was VERY glitched, kind of like this one

And it restarted like 10 seconds after it happened.

Concerned, I watched it reboot and it didn't boot to windows, it booted to the recovery environment.

So I plugged in my Windows 10 USB again, and booted to it, but this time when I got to the hard drives, they weren't there. It was a blank list, and Windows setup could not find any drives. I went to Microsoft support, and they told me to remove the hard drive, and put it back in, and maybe that would do the trick. Now, at the time, I opened the thing up and then pussied out after realizing how many things could go wrong.

 

I put the laptop up and left it sitting in my room, collecting dust. Couple months after that I decided to maybe try again. And I got the hard drive out, but then again pussied out as I realized, "What if I plug it in and it doesn't boot anymore?" and so I put it up again. Years of it collecting dust and today, I picked it up.

 

This time I removed the hard drive and put it back in and plugged it up, and it didn't boot to anything, so I grabbed a Ventoy USB I had with Windows on it, plugged it in and it booted to my USB. I selected the Windows ISO, and waited, then clicked next, then clicked install now. It said setup is starting for I'd say about 1 minute. and so I rebooted the PC, but this time I selected my Ubuntu (Focal) ISO. I skipped the file check and waited, and waited. The setup didn't load, so I rebooted the PC and selected my Xenial ISO. And this is where I found out something that I wouldn't expect to find out. Xenial worked, if I did the Try option, and Xenial recognized 2 drives. "938 GB Volume" and "LENOVO"

 

Suddenly I had big hope for the Laptop, and then I clicked on "LENOVO" to see if it would let me see the files in the drive. Few moments later, it gives me a error. "Unable to mount (dev/sda/a/bunch/of/file/paths/) Drive has a corrupt file system (Is what I think it said? I really don't know I didn't get a picture of it but it looked something like this) 

So I figured out that Xenial didn't work, I tried windows again. and it got to the drive select screen, and It ACTUALLY SHOWED DRIVES. It was 5 drives I'd say. I deleted them all, and then clicked next. I waited a few minutes and it gave me a error code. Error 0x8000X800701B1 To save you time, the error code only happens when Windows is copying files to a drive and cannot proceed with copying files to the drive as the drive is no longer recognized

Ex. You're copying a video over to your USB drive, and you accidentally unplug it mid process. It would most likely give you this error.

I tried alot of other methods, and they all ended up at the same error. 

 

Now from here I don't know where to go, I'm confused to say the least. I can't install any other OS, I can't install Windows as it gives me the same error.

 

Is the hard drive corrupt? or is there a sign of life?

Also, don't even say "Have you tried bootrec /fixboot /fixmbr etc.."

YES. It doesn't work, it just says "Cannot locate C:" or something like that.

 

Is there a way to fix it without buying a HDD reader?

[Jared_Reabow]

Sounds to me like physical failure.

Your first mistake was continuing to use a standard machine that was highly unstable as this is not normal behaviour for a mass produced stock machine.
Try running smart diagnostics on the drive , it will probably have a fair few smart failures.

 

[Jared_Reabow]

Let us know the result

[Lunariiia]

14 hours ago, Jared_Reabow said:

Let us know the result

Sorry for not replying, I had fell asleep.

So idk if I did it correctly, but I entered the command "wmic disk drive get status" and it said

"Status

OK

OK"

 

Also, using notepad to open the file explorer and then going to the drives lists Local Disk C:

 

also, here's some bios info

 

Sorry for the mass amounts of edits, but I just tried to run a CHKDSK and it came back with

 

"The type of the file system is RAW."

"CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."

 

Okay, so I've got another edit. I went into the windows setup, and of course it didn't show any drives. But, after I exited the setup and opened command prompt, I ran diskpart and then entered list disk.

 

It showed the drives, so I ran CHKDSK again (CHKDSK c: /f)

 

and it came back with

The type of the file system is NTFS.

The first NTFS boot sector is unreadable or corrupt.

Reading second NTFS boot sector instead.

All NTFS boot sectors are unreadable or corrupt.  Cannot continue.

 

Also, DISKPART lists the drive as NTFS, but CHKDSK says it's RAW.

[Jared_Reabow]

Do a low lever format

[Lunariiia]

13 hours ago, Jared_Reabow said:

Do a low lever format

Okay, holy shit. GROUND BREAKING progress right here.

 

So after a few moments I discovered that the drives InterfaceType was different than the SATA controller type. So I went in the BIOS and changed the controller type to IDE. And when going to install Windows, it didn't give me the error(yet) I'm now at 93%. on getting files ready for installation.

 

I'll update if it actually installs windows

 

It installed. Holy shit. Can you tell me how the hell one bios setting fixed the whole thing?

 

Another edit, So it fully installed windows, but I did have to skip OOBE as it was so slow..

 

But it's fully functional, I'm not spotting any bugs or blue screens, yet. I'm gonna go take a shower, and when I come back I'll see if its blue screened.

 

Okay so, it fully worked, and so I gave the drive a few scans in CrystalDiskInfo and HDDScan and they both came up with one caution, and that was the reallocated sector count.

 

Other than that, it was all blue. Drive is in working condition, and I don't plan to update unless it forces me to. Other than that, I ran a game on the thing and I didn't get any blue screens, it blue screened before because the RAM was at it's limit, or something like that.

 

But I'm still wondering why in the world changing the SATA controller type to Compatible fixed the issue with Windows not installing. Well, either way I got it working, I'd say 12 months from now it'll actually start getting slower and start showing size of death.

 

Thank you for your help!

[Lunariiia]

On 5/8/2022 at 4:58 PM, Lunariiia said:

Okay, holy shit. GROUND BREAKING progress right here.

 

So after a few moments I discovered that the drives InterfaceType was different than the SATA controller type. So I went in the BIOS and changed the controller type to IDE. And when going to install Windows, it didn't give me the error(yet) I'm now at 93%. on getting files ready for installation.

 

I'll update if it actually installs windows

 

It installed. Holy shit. Can you tell me how the hell one bios setting fixed the whole thing?

 

Another edit, So it fully installed windows, but I did have to skip OOBE as it was so slow..

 

But it's fully functional, I'm not spotting any bugs or blue screens, yet. I'm gonna go take a shower, and when I come back I'll see if its blue screened.

 

Okay so, it fully worked, and so I gave the drive a few scans in CrystalDiskInfo and HDDScan and they both came up with one caution, and that was the reallocated sector count.

 

Other than that, it was all blue. Drive is in working condition, and I don't plan to update unless it forces me to. Other than that, I ran a game on the thing and I didn't get any blue screens, it blue screened before because the RAM was at it's limit, or something like that.

 

But I'm still wondering why in the world changing the SATA controller type to Compatible fixed the issue with Windows not installing. Well, either way I got it working, I'd say 12 months from now it'll actually start getting slower and start showing size of death.

 

Thank you for your help!

Okay, so..

 

Actually, it didn't live for as long as I thought it would. Weirdly enough, it did the same thing as before, it just took longer. So, one day I was using as usual and then it was being very, VERY, slow. So I just rebooted the thing and then it booted to Windows as usual, but it said "Getting Windows ready

Please do not turn your PC off."

 

And then it was "Updating."

It then rebooted and went to Windows. This time, it blue screened while it was loading Windows. Now it was doing this at like 1AM so I just turned it off and went to sleep. Next day I got up, and turned it on and it booted to Windows. Still it was, VERY slow. So I thought, what if I just update the damn thing myself? So I went into Windows Update, and started downloading the updates. Went away to grab a drink, and came back and it gave me a BSOD. "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" Turned it off, turned it back on. And then it booted to the recovery environment. So I was like, "Dude, I was literally just in Windows, You're fine." So I clicked exit and continue to Windows. It booted back to Windows, but once again, it was VERY slow. But I was able to go back to update it again. I left it running and turned off my monitor. Then while having a chat with a friend the thing literally started getting SO LOUD. Like it literally sounded like a PS4. Turned my monitor on to only see..

This.

 

I can't even make out the stop code. I'm pretty sure it says DATA_READ_???????_ERROR

or something like that. Jesus. It didn't even restart too, I had to LITERALLY turn the thing off myself.

Once again it was like in the middle of the night, so after I turned it off I just went to sleep.

 

Got up in the morning and turned it on and again, it booted to the recovery environment. So I ran wmic diskdrive get status

In CMD. 

 

And, it gave me this.

 

"Status

Pred Fail"

 

Now I was shocked, but I decided to run CHKDSK c: /f

 

Now it scanned it perfectly unlike last time. Then it gave me a error, (I didn't get a picture of it) But after that, trying to run it again,  didn't work. I ran wmic diskdrive get status again, and it said "No Instance(s) Found"

 

Opening Notepad to see if the drive was still there, led to it being gone and Boot (X:) Was the only drive there.

 

I turned the thing off and wondered why the hell this same exact thing happened TWICE. Installed Windows, and then it says it has to update after a reboot, and then it just gets fucked up.

 

Like there's no way in HELL, that it's not just a coincidence. IT LITERALLY GAVE ME THE SAME EXACT BLUE SCREEN! After I turned it off, I just chilled for the rest of the day, and then today, I woke up and experimented with it. Weirdly enough the thing wouldn't let me in the recovery environment. It would TRY to boot windows, but it would just restart. So I looked online for the BIOS button, and found out there was a thing called a "Novo Button" on the Laptop, so I grabbed a toothpick and clicked it and it gave me 4 options and one of those options I was HAPPY to see. 

THERE WAS A BOOT MENU!!! I actually hated this computer because it didn't have a boot menu so in order to boot to a USB, you had to change the BIOS boot order. And, I didn't like going into the BIOS because the unexpected loud ass beep it gave you everytime you pressed the key.

 

I then clicked on BIOS Setup but it didn't load, so I turned it off, put my Ventoy USB in there, clicked the Novo Button, and went to "Boot Menu" found my USB, and clicked on my Windows ISO. 

 

And, ..yeah it didn't load the setup for some reason.

So I turned it off, and clicked the Novo Button again, and this time I clicked System Recovery, and it opened the Windows Recovery, but it said Please wait.

 

So I let it sit for a few, and then it says..

 

"Recovery

Your PC needs to be repaired"

 

Now I literally felt a chill go down my spine, as I had only seen this screen in only one circumstance, and that's a virus overwrote the BCD, and trying to launch the recovery environment wouldn't work because there WAS no recovery environment to boot to, kinda scared me.  But it said I could press ESC to launch UEFI firmware settings, so I did that, and it launched the BIOS and so I grabbed a SeaTools USB I had laying around, and turned Secure Boot on, Exited Saving Changes, and turned the PC off, and clicked the Novo Button, then I clicked Boot Menu, and selected my SeaTools USB, and it gave me a error.

Honestly seeing the Recovery screen earlier was what did it for me. I think the thing finally died. But it probably didn't and the it only was at the Recovery screen because of the failed chkdsk earlier. 

 

So once again I am asking for your assistance.

(haha Bernie Sanders meme reference)

[Ty2525]

41 minutes ago, Lunariiia said:

Okay, so..

 

Actually, it didn't live for as long as I thought it would. Weirdly enough, it did the same thing as before, it just took longer. So, one day I was using as usual and then it was being very, VERY, slow. So I just rebooted the thing and then it booted to Windows as usual, but it said "Getting Windows ready

Please do not turn your PC off."

 

And then it was "Updating."

It then rebooted and went to Windows. This time, it blue screened while it was loading Windows. Now it was doing this at like 1AM so I just turned it off and went to sleep. Next day I got up, and turned it on and it booted to Windows. Still it was, VERY slow. So I thought, what if I just update the damn thing myself? So I went into Windows Update, and started downloading the updates. Went away to grab a drink, and came back and it gave me a BSOD. "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" Turned it off, turned it back on. And then it booted to the recovery environment. So I was like, "Dude, I was literally just in Windows, You're fine." So I clicked exit and continue to Windows. It booted back to Windows, but once again, it was VERY slow. But I was able to go back to update it again. I left it running and turned off my monitor. Then while having a chat with a friend the thing literally started getting SO LOUD. Like it literally sounded like a PS4. Turned my monitor on to only see..

This.

 

I can't even make out the stop code. I'm pretty sure it says DATA_READ_???????_ERROR

or something like that. Jesus. It didn't even restart too, I had to LITERALLY turn the thing off myself.

Once again it was like in the middle of the night, so after I turned it off I just went to sleep.

 

Got up in the morning and turned it on and again, it booted to the recovery environment. So I ran wmic diskdrive get status

In CMD. 

 

And, it gave me this.

 

"Status

Pred Fail"

 

Now I was shocked, but I decided to run CHKDSK c: /f

 

Now it scanned it perfectly unlike last time. Then it gave me a error, (I didn't get a picture of it) But after that, trying to run it again,  didn't work. I ran wmic diskdrive get status again, and it said "No Instance(s) Found"

 

Opening Notepad to see if the drive was still there, led to it being gone and Boot (X:) Was the only drive there.

 

I turned the thing off and wondered why the hell this same exact thing happened TWICE. Installed Windows, and then it says it has to update after a reboot, and then it just gets fucked up.

 

Like there's no way in HELL, that it's not just a coincidence. IT LITERALLY GAVE ME THE SAME EXACT BLUE SCREEN! After I turned it off, I just chilled for the rest of the day, and then today, I woke up and experimented with it. Weirdly enough the thing wouldn't let me in the recovery environment. It would TRY to boot windows, but it would just restart. So I looked online for the BIOS button, and found out there was a thing called a "Novo Button" on the Laptop, so I grabbed a toothpick and clicked it and it gave me 4 options and one of those options I was HAPPY to see. 

THERE WAS A BOOT MENU!!! I actually hated this computer because it didn't have a boot menu so in order to boot to a USB, you had to change the BIOS boot order. And, I didn't like going into the BIOS because the unexpected loud ass beep it gave you everytime you pressed the key.

 

I then clicked on BIOS Setup but it didn't load, so I turned it off, put my Ventoy USB in there, clicked the Novo Button, and went to "Boot Menu" found my USB, and clicked on my Windows ISO. 

 

And, ..yeah it didn't load the setup for some reason.

So I turned it off, and clicked the Novo Button again, and this time I clicked System Recovery, and it opened the Windows Recovery, but it said Please wait.

 

So I let it sit for a few, and then it says..

 

"Recovery

Your PC needs to be repaired"

 

Now I literally felt a chill go down my spine, as I had only seen this screen in only one circumstance, and that's a virus overwrote the BCD, and trying to launch the recovery environment wouldn't work because there WAS no recovery environment to boot to, kinda scared me.  But it said I could press ESC to launch UEFI firmware settings, so I did that, and it launched the BIOS and so I grabbed a SeaTools USB I had laying around, and turned Secure Boot on, Exited Saving Changes, and turned the PC off, and clicked the Novo Button, then I clicked Boot Menu, and selected my SeaTools USB, and it gave me a error.

Honestly seeing the Recovery screen earlier was what did it for me. I think the thing finally died. But it probably didn't and the it only was at the Recovery screen because of the failed chkdsk earlier. 

 

So once again I am asking for your assistance.

(haha Bernie Sanders meme reference)

Drives can be dead from the reallocated sector count. If it is an error, the drive will not be reliable but may appear to function. 

 

In your case, the drive is almost certainly trying it's hardest to stay alive as life is trying to run its course. 

 

I would say, most likely, the drive needs to be replaced.