Can I download Windows 7 Home premium

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ASKER

I notice that this thread has been edited: I didn't realise that the package I downloaded was illegal.

This is going to take longer than I thought. My DVD drive won't write any more. I'm going to have to go to a friends house to do this.

davidlevans13

You can make a bootable USB flash drive to install the Windows ISO.
See here:
http://www.guidingtech.com/2589/bootable-usb-flash-drive-iso-windows-7/

The same applies to the UBCD, there is a utility on it which you can use to create a bootable USB stick from it (in the "ubcd\tools\win32\ubcd2usb" folder).

Take the drive out of mashine and slave it to any workstation. There perform CHKDK c:/f on system drive. After that try to boot from the drive on original toshiba.

ASKER

I put the drive in my pc. It said it wasn't formatted and asked if I wanted to format it. So naturally I said no thank you.

This laptop doesn't seem to have an option to boot from the USB

I finally got that win 7 image burned to a dvd at my friends house. When I boot off it, it gets a little way in and just after the 'Starting Windows 7' screen it hangs at a black screen with a white cursor. This is exactly what it does if I boot from the C: drive and choose startup repair. So I couldn't use the Win 7 cd to get a command prompt.

When I boot in Safe Mode, I can see all the drivers scrolling down the screen. The last one I see is aswRvrt.sys It stops there and reboots about 30 seconds later.

Have you run the manufacturer's disk diagnostic on it? I also suggest to run at least 3 passes of memtest86+ (is also included on the UBCD).

ASKER

I cant run anything on it because I can't get it booted. I'm hoping that Chkdsk will fix it if only I can get a command prompt.

As that CD doesn't boot to windows, but rather DOS or Linux based OS's, you may be able to boot it. Did you try it? Also, if you can't boot from that PC you can always connect the disk to another PC (internally, not via USB), and then boot the UBCD on that PC.

ASKER

If you are referring to the cd that we can't mention the name of..... Yes I tried it. I tried the mini XP on it which seemed to hang at a screen with nothing but a cursor on it. I tried the DOS utilities, but that didn't recognise the C: drive.

No, I was talking about the UBCD, the one I posted links to in my first comment.

Your file system is heavily damaged. Accept it. There is no way to recover it t working state. If there is sme info you want to recover then run data recovery software on the drive while it is slaved to your pc. Otherwise complete reinstall of the system is recommended.

ASKER

Accept it? You are the first person to suggest that there is a serious problem here. Maybe it's true though.

I would have to format the drive in another pc in order to reinstall it. The Win 7 installation disk just hangs at that black screen with the white cursor currently. No option to do anything.

I don't think a mere reinstallation is going to work. In my opinion either the HD is bad, which the diagnostics on the UBCD would confirm, the RAM is bad, which memtest86+, also on the UBCD would confirm, or the mainboard is bad, and that is something there isn't a good diagnostic for. So if the disk diagnostic is fine, and memtest86+ too, you'd be looking at a bad mainboard. As changing boards on a laptop is usually more expensive than replacing the PC, you'd then have a laptop to recycle. The HD or RAM could be easily replaced. But you must first run those diags.

Accept it? You are the first person to suggest that there is a serious problem here. Maybe it's true though.

The error message about unmountable volume indicates corruption of ntfs.sys drive which is directly resposnsible for your file system. As you connected the drive as slave to another system you saw the file system is shown as unformatted.
If the damage was not so heavy simple chkdsk from your system would fix it. But you cannot run chkdsk as well on unformatted partition. That's why I recommended you giving up with fix and looking for the way of data recovery and reinstall. And yes, reformat is needed to reinstall in any case.
Follow the advice from rindi and test the hdd surface for bad sectors first.

ASKER

@rindi: I'm not having a good day. I downloaded UBCD and found it wouldn't work. Further investigation revealed that the download was incomplete from that mirror site you linked. I downloaded it a further 3 times and got a different size file each time. I tried one of the other mirrors, and that also gave me an incomplete file. Third time lucky though. The next mirror I tried gave me the full download. So now i can boot this laptop with UBCD. Now the next problem.... The HDD is a Hitachi, but the IBM/Hitachi disk testing software doesn't seem to support SATA drives. Is it ok to use one of the others? If so, which would you recommend?

The IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test does support SATA drives as far as I know. When you start it just select "ATA" and it should work. If it doesn't find the disk, then try testing it from another PC.

ASKER

When I choose ATA It hangs at 'Loading DFT...'

My only other pc doesn't recognise this drive as formatted so i'm not sure if the test will work on that pc. It would be nice if I could use one of the other packages on UBCD

It doesn't need to recognize it as formatted. It just has to be recognized by the BIOS of the PC (connect it to an internal SATA adapter and not via a USB device).

ASKER

Ok i'll give it a go. Thanks.

ASKER

Ok that was useful. When I ran UBCD with the drive attached to my own pc, I ran the Advanced test which eventually popped a red message on the screen saying that it found corrupted sectors and offering to fix them. When I let it try to fix the errors, it popped another message on the screen saying that the device had failed. So I guess it's time to buy a new drive.

Thanks everyone for your input

As I predicted.

davidlevans13

What was the question again?
I think I lost track.