Urgent help required as Daughter’s laptop won't boot into windows any more.ro Natl.Academic OnlyCA A

UKMEDIASTORE · 28 Nov 2012 at 20:09

Daughter’s laptop windows Coa sticker says ‘Windows 7Pro Natl.Academic OnlyCA Acer Group’

Every time it's switched on it reports

SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0: WDC WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0-(PM)
WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A Failure is imminent.
Press F1 to Continue.

When I continue it stays on the windows loading screen forever, ok not forever, 1st time left = 1hr, 2nd = 3hrs, 3rd a whole day. You get the picture.
Tried windows recovery & repair options = nothing works

Trouble is, we have no physical disks for windows.
Guessing from above I need to buy a new HD (Will be SSD)

What I'm asking is that if I buy a new SSD & install it, how do I get Windows reinstalled on the new drive?

Do I need a specific windows disk to re- install as the recovery/back-up stuff is all gone as cannot access it.

I have a d/l of win 7 pro 64 bit on a usb pen drive I used for my main desktop pc, can I use this to install windows on a new ssd in the laptop & then a new problem arises.

Windows key = there is no obvious key on the COA, just 1 line of numbers & another Tracking ID?

Totally lost & need any help possible on how to restore the laptop ASAP so my daughter can use it for her school.

mogwai · 28 Nov 2012 at 21:09

On some laptops they put the windows licence sticker under the battery

bremen1874 · 28 Nov 2012 at 21:13

Even if the existing drive is faulty it may still be possible to clone it onto a new drive. If you can get that far you should be able to use the system recovery partition (or whatever recovery tools Acer use).

UKMEDIASTORE · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:07

mogwai said:
On some laptops they put the windows licence sticker under the battery

Its doing it's thing at the mow, thanks for the advice

UKMEDIASTORE · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:14

bremen1874 said:
Even if the existing drive is faulty it may still be possible to clone it onto a new drive. If you can get that far you should be able to use the system recovery partition (or whatever recovery tools Acer use).

So if I remove the hdd from the laptop & use Acronis to clone it to another drive it may work?

bremen1874 · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:14

Have you downloaded and tried WDC's HDD diagnostic? The repair options may get things going well enough for drive cloning to be viable.

UKMEDIASTORE · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:16

mogwai said:
On some laptops they put the windows licence sticker under the battery

Not on me daughters laptop :-(

mogwai · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:16

If you can get it into windows in safe mode then there are apps you can download to find out what the current windows key is.

bremen1874 · 28 Nov 2012 at 22:18

UKMEDIASTORE said:
So if I remove the hdd from the laptop & use Acronis to clone it to another drive it may work?

I'd get it pulled out of the laptop and cloned/backed up as a first step, especially if there's anything important on it.

If Acer use a recovery partition (and it's intact) you've got a reasonable change of recovering it back to factory settings on a new HDD even if the primary partition is junked.

UKMEDIASTORE · 28 Nov 2012 at 23:06

mogwai said:
If you can get it into windows in safe mode then there are apps you can download to find out what the current windows key is.

I cannot get anywhere

mickyflinn · 28 Nov 2012 at 23:13

Just to clarify have you tried pressing F8 while booting up ?

UKMEDIASTORE · 29 Nov 2012 at 22:25

mickyflinn said:
Just to clarify have you tried pressing F8 while booting up ?

Yes I am, I chose safe mode as Windows loads the drivers for Safe Mode, it hangs at Windows/SYSTEM32/drivers/disk.sys

d_brennen · 29 Nov 2012 at 22:39

Check your inbox, I sent you a useful bit of info regarding the academic license

UKMEDIASTORE · 30 Nov 2012 at 20:24

d_brennen said:
Check your inbox, I sent you a useful bit of info regarding the academic license

Many thanks for the inbox, the info you sent worked 100%, however the windows install kept crashing at the same point all the time.

So ripped out the laptop's HD it's a WD1600BEVT 160GB WD Scorpio Blue.

Gonna pop out my 60gb Agility 3 SSD I have kept on my main pc, (just in case my new 256gb Samsung gives me trouble) & pop it in the laptop to see if it's the HD that is causing the problem.

UKMEDIASTORE · 30 Nov 2012 at 20:33

Removed the Agility 3, took all of 20 seconds, now putting it in the lappy

UKMEDIASTORE · 30 Nov 2012 at 21:00

Bingo, windows working perfect, just need to buy a new SSD for the daughters laptop & try to clone the old HDD to the new SSD so have the correct legal version of windows