Vista can't recover from hibernation. Won't boot properly.

BennyC · 12 Oct 2010 at 19:16

Last night my Sony Vaio was acting up whilst I was watching a film. I was getting pritty ****** off with it to the point it froze. I gave it a few smacks and restarted it. It rebooted and worked fine after this 2-3 times.

I get back from work & the gym today to find that it 'can't recover from hibernation'.

I can get into the bios. It seems to take forever to load the recovery partition and then just seems to be stuck at a green background with the cursor. I have recovery disks I made which also do the same thing.

I have my older 120gb harddrive which I just put in and it boots totally fine. I've popped the 500gb back in. It's now booting but taking ages to reach the scrolling green bar just before login. And appears to have been loading now for about 4-5 minutes.

Anybody encountered this before? I've found lots of fixes online but in order to do these I have to be logged in, which I can't do!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

BennyC

Edit: When accessing the recovery partition via F10 I get:

Edit windows boot options for: VAIO Recovery Environment

Path: \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe

[ /DETECHAL /MININT /REDIRECT RDIMAGEOFFSET=8192 RDIMAGELENGTH=3161088 RDPATH=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\sources\boot.wim

Then I can either enter or escape. Entering loads a black screen, then the windows bar scrolls. Then black screen with a cursor....then that's it.

SiriusB · 12 Oct 2010 at 19:25

To be honest it's very likely the HDD has a problem. I would grab a diagnostic tool from the manufacturer of your HDD and run some tests.

The tools are usually something you run from CD or USB, so no need for working Windows. Before you do that, if you have any data not backed up, I would use a Linux Live CD [Linux Mint is a good one] and see if you can access your files and copy them to USB or wherever.

If the HDD tool reports your HDD is fine, then you can try a repair install. Pop in your Windows installation disc, follow the prompts until you see the Repair option. This will leave data intact, but replace system files with fresh ones. Some theme settings and config will go back to default though.

Dano · 12 Oct 2010 at 19:27

As SiriusB says, check drive health, backup data, if it says it's good might be worth trying a chkdsk /r on it before resorting to a repair install.

BennyC · 12 Oct 2010 at 19:30

SiriusB said:
To be honest it's very likely the HDD has a problem. I would grab a diagnostic tool from the manufacturer of your HDD and run some tests.

The tools are usually something you run from CD or USB, so no need for working Windows. Before you do that, if you have any data not backed up, I would use a Linux Live CD [Linux Mint is a good one] and see if you can access your files and copy them to USB or wherever.

If the HDD tool reports your HDD is fine, then you can try a repair install. Pop in your Windows installation disc, follow the prompts until you see the Repair option. This will leave data intact, but replace system files with fresh ones. Some theme settings and config will go back to default though.

Thanks for the reply.

I did at one point get asked what I wanted to do from a long list of things including repair windows but I never had an 'installation disk' only a recovery partition which I made a copy of on two disks. I have a 'windows update disc' I think this might have the OS on but it's unlikely.

Edit: appears that this disc may have the OS on.
It is however taking an age to load.
How do the HDD diagnostic tools work? do I not need to be logged into an account to run the file?

SiriusB · 12 Oct 2010 at 19:43

BennyC said:
How do the HDD diagnostic tools work? do I not need to be logged into an account to run the file?

No, they are small bootable programs, usually running in DOS. Windows isn't needed. They will usually be instructions on how to create the bootable CD or USB.

It will scan your HDD for bad sectors and other issues.

BennyC · 12 Oct 2010 at 21:08

Thanks.

I've got the files I need but not sure how to make the CD bootable?

I discovered that Toshiba don't provide diagnostics for harddrives (after a quick google) but the Hitachi DFT should work.

SiriusB · 12 Oct 2010 at 22:45

I would imagine you just need to burn the files to a disc and try it. Shouldnt be any more complicated than that.

BennyC · 13 Oct 2010 at 08:48

I had tried that but i just seemed to be greated with a black screen after booting past the bios.

I'm off to a local supplier to grab an external caddy so that I can get any files (providing the HDD will let me) off and backed up. Then I think I'll probaly just reformat & install and go from there.

If the HDD is borked then I'll take it back as it's only just over a year old.

edscdk · 13 Oct 2010 at 09:25

BennyC said:
I had tried that but i just seemed to be greated with a black screen after booting past the bios.

I'm off to a local supplier to grab an external caddy so that I can get any files (providing the HDD will let me) off and backed up. Then I think I'll probaly just reformat & install and go from there.

If the HDD is borked then I'll take it back as it's only just over a year old.

only just over a year... oh how they will laugh at you....

sir its 367 days old...
the warranty is only 365 days...
paid £700 did you, but the warranty is only 365 days
EU law, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha
we are big you are small, we dont care GO AWAY!

edscdk · 13 Oct 2010 at 09:26

at best they will offer to sell you an extended warranty for £200...

(but you might get lucky and get it fixed for free... its worth a go)

BennyC · 13 Oct 2010 at 10:37

Any particular reason you feel the need to be an ****?

I am aware of how warrantys and consumer law work but am not sure whether this particular drive is covered with (a standard 1 or 2 year). It is a small business not a massive chain like the purple shirts.

Most likely the drive will be okay after a reformat, if not it's not the end of the world I'll buy another.

I don't really think your childish scenario was at all necesary or helpful.

BennyC · 13 Oct 2010 at 17:24

Right I've connected my 500GB sata by the caddy to my laptop. I'm currently running the old 120GB original it came with.

When I do this 'my computer' and the process explorer.exe freezes/crashes until I unplug the drive.

My computer did show one of the drives on the 500 (it's got 3 partitions) when I clicked on the drive my computer then froze. Upon unplugging both USB leads (caddy has dual male connectors) all three drives/paritions flash up for a split second and then disappear.

Any ideas?