Windows 8 Scanning and Repairing Drive 100% hanging

[JayWehi28]

Hi everyone, first time poster here.

Was in the process of a system restore to help fix a windows office 365 install problem. Windows told me I had a drive error that needed fixing before I could continue.
So I accepted and the PC restarted, now it is hung up on 100% the loading symbol is still spinning. Do I just leave it and hope it finishes??

I have a Toshiba L850 that is nearly 4 years old.

 

[kemical]

Hi Jay,
do you still have the spinning circle? If that fails or seems to go on forever I'd wait say for an hour then try to reboot. When you reboot though press F8 to enter the advanced boot options. (you have keep pressing F8 as soon as the system boots). The setting you want is in the same place you find safe mode and it's called 'Last good known configuration'. Hopefully that will get you back into windows which at that point I'd run a chkdsk to make sure the HDD is ok:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/

 

[JayWehi28]

Hey mate, thanks for the reply.
Yeah still got the spinning circle been about 4 hours now lol.

Okay will attempt to do that. Is the best way to reboot just to hold the power button till it shuts down then fire her up again? And I guess it's FN+F8 for my laptop or will just F8 work??

Will do as you say and let you know that results. Thanks again

 

[kemical]

Is the best way to reboot just to hold the power button till it shuts down then fire her up again

Basically yes..

And I guess it's FN+F8 for my laptop or will just F8 work

Try that and or shift + F8 if the other attempts fail.

 

[JayWehi28]

Now I'm stuck in some loop of restarting and trying to repair. Can't get to the BIOS screen at all.

The last time this happened (2 weeks ago) I was successful with a refresh of the PC, so basically took my computer back to factory but preserved the file.

If I do this again is their a way to prevent it in the future??

 

[kemical]

You could try creating a back up but I'd also still check your hard drive using chkdsk just to make sure you don't have a broken sector or the like.

 

[JayWehi28]

I was able to open a command prompt from the troubleshooting menu instead of refreshing the PC.

The chkdsk has completed, is their anything specific I should be looking for in the text? Can you advise on what to do next.

Thanks again for your help so far

 

[kemical]

Hi,
you can always check the chkdsk logs to see if it's repaired anything. This guide will help:
https://askleo.com/how_do_i_see_the_results_of_a_chkdsk_that_ran_on_boot/

If your still having trouble booting into Windows then the next step is to boot from a install disk and do a repair. Do you have a windows install disk? If so then pop into the bios, change the boot order so that the machine will boot off the CD/DVD ROM drive and pop the disk in the drive. Go through the install pages as if your doing a new install but at the actual install page choose repair instead.
Your other option would be a refresh or return to factory defaults.

 

[JayWehi28]

I don't have an install disk. The laptop didn't come with one supplied. I am however able to do a refresh or reinstall without a disk, I guess there must be a repair partition on the HDD.

 

[Saltgrass]

Kemical hasn't mentioned this yet, buy you may want to start thinking about replacing the hard drive. The sooner you take steps to preserve your data the more chance you will have to keep it safe.

If the drive fails completely or is not bootable, you may end up loosing your recovery options and factory image. In that case you would need to go back to Toshiba to get new media or download the Windows 8.1 install media. The Windows 8.1 install media being usable may depend on how the system was originally shipped, and four years ago it was probably Windows 8.

This, of course, assumes the drive is having problems. There could be other causes, such as a virus or some other system problem.