windows 7 repair

[Btone]

what the best software to repair/recover a crashed win 7 hdd.
can't upgrade to a newer os as the old software won't run
don't want to do a clean install as i can't get the drives to run the add in control card anymore (firm went bust)

 

[Btone]

we had a power cut and the computer that run the parlour crashed, when we now try to reboot the machine it tells us that there No HDD.
took the old HDD out and fitted in the office PC and was able to get all the data off it (cow yield and feed records)

if i just have the old HDD plug in, the computer doesn't see it, how ever if i boot off a different HDD with the damaged HDD as a second drive i can copy files off it

 

[Btone]

What would it be? Are we talking about the HDD not being seen/detected by the BIOS or something like a black screen with text saying it can't detect NTLDR, or maybe even a BSOD?

blank screen, with text tell me Hdd not found press f1 to try again f2 to enter bios

 

[Btone]

If you hit F2 to go into the BIOS is the HDD detected/listed there? If so then the *boot record is probably damaged so the advise darkblade just gave would also be my advise.

*tiny bit of code at the start of the disk to tell the computer what/where the files are that it needs to load.

bios doesn't see the HDD, ill take it that it unrepairable ?

 

[Btone]

You need to boot from a Windows 7 install media and then go into the System Recovery Options to open a command prompt window.
Then run the following commands:
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

Let us know how you get on. If that doesn't work, the next thing is to try and restore the boot sector code.

tryed this on another pc i had (being a farmer with lots of storage i think ive every pc ive owened all the back to my first 286 pc). machine wouldn't boot off the CD as it kept telling me there was NO hdd attached. i think that might be a dell bios thing. will dig out another old machine i have and retry.

If you can see the files when the HDD is attached to another PC the chances of it being the HDD itself that's faulty is low, it could be if the HDD was faulty you'd expect it not to be detected on another machine also.

Plus it would be unusual for a sudden loss of power (an unplanned shutdown) to cause a fault in the hardware. If as you said earlier you can see the files when plugging the HDD into another PC it's possible it could be an issue with the SATA/IDE cable so maybe try swapping that out for a known good cable, or if you have a spare HDD laying around try attaching that just to see if it gets detected in the BIOS (to rule out it being an issue with the Motherboard or some other hardware in the system).

should have said that iam connecting the faulty HDD to my main PC via a USB C caddy. to this i can see (and copy) all the files i need.
also took an old but good (replaced cause it was too small) HDD and plugged it into the faulty PC. it was corrupted right away, so ill take it something had gone bad on the the faulty pc.

would love to upgrade to a win10 pc. but have tried the HASP key (another rant for another day here) to my main PC and can't get it to work at all. as there no win10 driver for it

 

[Btone]

sorry for not being clear.
i have the parlour machine. which i now believe to be total fbur, as i tried it with a different working HDD and it wrecked it the minute it was turn on, I'm not worried about the machine it self, i've enough old PC around to replace it

i Have the HDD our of the the wrecked machine, if i plug it into my Main(office) machine via a USB C caddy i can read all the files off it, how ever if i plug it in via a sata cable the machine does NOT see it (not even in the bios)

i believe the cables are OK as i'm using the cable that is pluged into the second HDD of my Office machine to test the Bad HDD

 

[Btone]

ended up doing a fresh install, which was not fun finding all i needed to get it to run, stuff that i thought was going to be hard like getting drivers for the "special " hardware was easy enough as i was able to get them off the old HDD. it was stuff i never though hard like getting a working browser, as explorer8 is no longer supported by most web pages, and 11 need sp1 installed + a few other things. also the first machine i use was too "new" and not everything worked right so had to find a slightly older machine for it all to work.

thanks for the help