System recovery - Windows cannot repair automatically and won't start

Are you able to boot into Save Mode?
If yes then get to C:\windows\minidums and find there dump file. Upload it here or somewhere else where I can habe a look on it.

Thank you for the offer.
I don't think I can boot into safe mode and I am not sure how to - Fn and F8 ? No Fn key combination does anything. It is a Lenovo and it has a blue Thinkvantage key, but that doesn't do anything.
It runs for about a minute before it crashes so it must be reading the disk.
This is my fault because I should have taken a system backup or made a startup disk and I haven't (well a backup a very long time ago, but no startup disk.  I got hold of a Windows Home Premium disk and that atempted repairs, but perhaps it wouldn't repair a Professional system anyway.). Lenovo didn't give me a Windows disk when I bought this two and a half years ago. I do have up-to-date backups of the most important business files, but there are others, and in any case I don't want to reinstall everything.
Thank you agian.

Thank you again. The computer is protected with Malware Bytes Pro and MS SecEssentials. It crashed while running, I wasn't even sitting at it. Error messages suggested that I had added some new hardware but I had not although I have been charging mobile phones off it, but not exchanging data with them. I forgot to put that detail in the original.  But help apprciated.

After the computer passes ghe POST stage (where you normally enter BIOS) press F8 and keep pressing it.  It will show you safe mode and other options. If you get Windows Logo then it must be able to get to this selection step as well.
Another way os to boot this system from Parted Magic CD and try to browse the partitions on the HDD.
Or use Paragon rescue Kit CD to boot from it and get that dump. I got this problem recently due to bad driver for video card and fixed it by disabling the driver. But first I need tl look on minidump file.

I am grateful for these points of advice.
I have concentrated on recovering the backups so far, to enable me to continue with ongoing work. I have completed this recovery - which is only of the essential and immediate requirement. Because of the normal work which is taking time, I have only started on the system repair, hoping to use one or more of the solutions I have been offered. I have not dropped this project, and it is high priority. I am working on it when I can. It will take one or two weeks at least. Thank you all again very much.

no problem - take your time

I have booted up with UBCD
For the disk diags only certain brands are shown and not mine which is
Toshiba HDD2f52
MK5061GSY
I have not attempted to run disk diags.

I have run Parted Magic and set up network connection.
I have found the Minidump particion and attach some of th efiles found there.
(for noxcho)

This has all been quite difficult and so I am having a rest!

I await further comments, and thank you.
MinidumpfilesLenovo.zip

Visit the Toshiba site and look for disk diagnostics tools there.

3 of your dumps indicate problems with your disk, and the other 3 with your video driver. Video drivers (like any other files and drivers on the disk) can be corrupted by disk problems. So you should definitely first run a disk diagnosis.

Right. Thank you. Just an unrelated question please.
From Parted Magic I can configure the Wireless connection and access the internet. That enables me to copy files.
What would be really useful if I am to save a lot of files directly, would be to configure the Parted Magic PC on the local network. I cannot see how to do this. On Windows I can connect via Network connections, from Explorer.
But I cannot see the other computer on the network.
Please could someone advise on this basic question (I am sure).
Thank you

If you are connected to the Internet you should also have connectivity with the LAN.

In the menu of PartedMagic, under the Networking section, you'll a tool called PyNeighborhood. With that tool you can connect to network shares.

you can normally run drive fitness test from the UBCD

Thank you.
I have tried to connect but can't find out quickly how to do it.
In PartedMagic
 In pyNeighborhood I have got up the Workgroup and within that the Windows PC name which is T113.
It started sync and browsing, and found Master browser with an ip  for the network.

How do I go from there to access files on the other PC (Windows) - or from that to look at files in ParteMagic?
Thank you.

I was just able to select the shared folder on the other PC, and that opened up the FileManager of PartedMagic with that folder selected, and then was able to browse and do whatever I wanted.

I have just found that sr0 under /root shows no media, and if I click on it - run Mount /dev/sr0 it says Status finished with error (exit status 32).
I don't know whether to come out of PartedMagic and run TestDisk which seems to be on UBCD  - I am hoping to get the network connection set up, ie to transfer files - I haven't managed that yet.
I am also looking for a Toshiba disk test.
Thank you for your patience.

testdisk is on PartedMagic and not on the UBCD as far as I know (or then maybe on the UBCD4WIN). There are of course also differences in the PartedMagic versions, as there is an update about every month, and often new tools get added and others dropped. The problem I have with PartedMagic is that you can no longer download it for free (since last year), so I don't have the current version. Mine is one of the last versions that was still free.

sr0 is the LiveCD, and as it normally gets ejected when loaded, it'll be empty.

In PyNeighborhood, when you click on the down arrow of the workgroup, then select your server and click on it's down arrow, you should see the shared folders on the server. When you then click on the shared folder you want to copy data to, and select the "Connect" button, you are asked for your connection credentials (username and password), and further down, you can also select a mountpoint (for example you can use an empty folder you created for that, maybe /media/net), After that the file-manager will open, and you'll be in the shared directory you selected (shown in the front like this: //IP-of-Server/SharedFolder. You should also see your hard-disk with something like this: sda1, and if that is mounted you should be able to browse it and copy data from there to your shared folder on the Lan.

Thank you  very much for these comments.
I think where I am now I have an issue with sharing on the host PC, ie that I want to copy files to.
googling pyNeighbourhood I found an ubuntu page:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=888674

I started to follow this but realised I had to change my mount folder, where it says :

/home/[your user name]/mnt/lan

I made mine a long path because that's where I found my user folder:
So without copying all of it I have:
/media/Windows7_OS/....username/mnt/lan
I must say this seems an odd place to have a mount point, and perhaps that is a problem.

Then I changed my host permissions to everything on the C and D drives (dangerous I know)

So pyN finds the WORKGROUP and the PC and it scans the host for shares and says starting sync. There it hangs!

Any suggestions ??
Thank you.

By the way I downloaded UBCD 530 and Parted Magic is on the CD. I didn't have to pay for it. Version 2013_08_01

That's about the last version that was downloadable for free (it's about the same date I have).

You don't need a long path. Many Linux distros (including PartedMagic), have a /media/ folder. That's where you would normally mount your other stuff. So that's where I created a new partition called "net", so I now have a /media/net folder. That 's where I mounted my server's share. Of course you should enable sharing on your server, and select a folder on it which you want to share (maybe the C:\Users\Public\Documents folder), and then when you have setup the share on your server, connect to it with PartedMagic. It may be simpler though if you attach a USB disk or stick and just copy your data to that, Or if you have a dropbox account, or maybe a hotmail account (which would then include OneDrive), you could copy the data to that.

Thank you. I want to stream off big file systems because the computer won't boot up and I am in rescue mode. I may be able to connect an external drive though.  I will look at the rest of your suggestions shortly. Thank you.

Back after a few days..

I did not find how to stream data off over the network with PartedMagic, but instead I found I could esily copy on to an attached hard disk drive. So that served the purpose I needed of rescuing data.
I have now copied off all the user data (ie my document files) I had with no problem (I had most of them backed up anyway).
I haven't yet copied off application files or Windows bits but I think I will now, if possible.
Whatever the corruption is it seems that it has left my own files alone.

I was still hoping to find a way to restore the hard disk so that I could run everything through Windows, but there does not seem to be any way I can do this. I did not take disk images unfortunately.
I don't know if anyone can advise me of a way to run up applications now. If I ran Windows from an external disk perhaps I could - how do I make one if this would work?
Secondly, clutching at straws, is there anything which would attempt to repair the disk, such as a program I found called RegCure Pro from ParetoLogic Inc. ?  I can't run that as it is because I don't have Windows running.

I cannot see any sort of Repair tool in UBCD, Parted Magic. I read that Toshiba disks are made by Fujitsu and so I ran the Fujitsu test but I could not make much sense of it. I have also run tests for ATA disks - I don't know if I should have done this. I do not know what to look for in the tests, or what to do about any faults found.

Am I right in thinking the disk cannot be repaired?

Thank you for advice.

I don't think it makes much sense copying programs and pieces of your OS. Programs generally need to be installed, which writes data to the registry etc., so those copies wouldn't really be of any use.

It is probably also a good time to consolidate on which programs you actually need, as often there is really a lot of stuff that get's installed and is accumulated over time that no one needs, and also, many installers add further, unwanted stuff. If you have lost the original installation sources, or the registration keys, you can probably also find something to replace it with that is free and doesn't need registration. You should also take a look at "PortableApps". That is a tool which you can install to a USB stick, or also to your PC itself, and for which you can get many different programs which can probably replace most of what you have used so far, and the advantages are that you could take your stick with you and use it on any Windows PC, it manages updates for all of the apps, you can easily get them etc. On my Windows PC's there really is very little software I actually have to install the conventional way, most of what I need are portableApps. Examples are LibreOffice, which is a very good replacement for m$ Office, or Thunderbird, which replaces Outlook, etc.:

http://portableapps.com

If the disk diagnostic tools show you any sort of problem, the tool itself usually has options to repair them if they aren't too severe, Otherwise, if they show unrepairable issues, there isn't really anything to do except to replace the disk.

Also, many manufacturer's use those error codes the diagnostic came up with to RMA the disks or handle their warranty. So you should visit manufacturer's site and check their service and support areas for help.

The manufacturers usually RMA and replace the disks, and they might repair them in-house and use the repaired disks as replacements.

i use hddregenerator often for repairing disks
download the trial, and check if it fixes the first sector before buying it
http://www.dposoft.net/hdd.html

rindi's comments are good advice I think. I shall look at PortableApps. I will save the contents of the disk so that I have access to something which will remind me of what I had installed. It may be an opportunity to do a spring clean but that will take a lot of time which I don't want to spend. I had some programs installed which are complicated to set up (requiring .NET and IIS for example) and for the moment they are lost.

Before doing that I will investigate hddregenerator (comment from nobus). Would you advise taking further backups of what is there first, as hddregen involves messing about with disk layout which could conceivably go wrong? One thing is that - this may be a fool's optimism - but of all the 300 GB of file data which I have copied, I have not found one file inaccessible, and if there is only one disk corruption stopping windows from loading, this program may have only the one patchup to make.
Reading the blurb on it I see that I can do a preliminary scan so I will try that.

Thanks to both rindi and nobus for these two replies.

up to now - HDDReg never lost any bit if info

There is a big snag! hddregenerator runs on Windows. What I have managed to boot up in is not Windows, it is Ubuntu. (Parted Magic). I will contact their support, but are there any suggestions please?

Connect the disk to another PC running windows, or create a Boot CD with HDDReg on it (the installer gives you that option).

It is running on Parted Magic. I just need a tutorial as to how to use it! Where can I find some instructions please?

Attached are screenshots of hr.exe and of what happens when I click on it.
Does this make sense? What do I do to analyse the disk?
Will this work from Linux? Or do I have to create a new boot CD with HDDReg on it? I am not sure how to do this either, sorry.
"Connect the disk to another PC running windows"  - I can't do this because I haven't managed to network the Ubuntu so that it connectw with the Windows PC.
Better if I can run HDDReg from Linux,

Sorry if these are some basic questions.
Thank you.
hr-screens.png

No, it won't run from within Linux, and even if you had the windows emulator, wine installed, and it might start from there, it still won't be able scan your disk, as it needs lowlevel access to the hardware, and that is prevented by Linux.

You either need to make a boot CD of HDDReg or run it from another PC running Windows and attrach the HD to that PC.

Please would someone advise me how to make a boot CD of this program HDDRegenerator  (hr.exe). If you can't run it from the disk you are repairing which sounds logical, why can you not run it from a Linux boot CD such as UBCD? Would I just make a copy of UBCD adding hr.exe to its contents? Then I suppose I run UBCD, from it run Part Magic, from that run hr.exe - all on the same CD, And from that select the filesystem on the defective PC in order to analyse and repair.
Otherwise how do I make a Windows boot CD from which you can run hr.exe which is on the same CD? How do I do that please?
Thank you in advance

UBCD does not have the option to hun HDDReg - so that's not possible
you have to make the SEPARATE HDDReg boot cd, as Rindi said

When you start the HDD Regenerator after having installed it on a Windows PC, you are presented with 2 options, one to create a Bootable USB stick, the other to create a Bootable CD / DVD. Clicking on the CD / DVD will create a CD or DVD with HDD Reg on it (I recommend using a CD, as it needs only very little space). After that you can boot your bad PC with that CD and it will run the utility directly. You could of course also make a bootable USB stick with it (again use a very small one). The stick has the advantage that if you interrupt any tasks it is doing (which can take days, weeks or even months). and you restart the process, it will know where you left off and you can then continue the task from there.

I was able to add the HDD Reg to the UBCD, but it wasn't easy and I don't remember how I did it.

You really are helping me rindi and nobus!
I had not tried to run hr.exe on another PC not being sure what it would do. But finally I did and saw the options to create a disk or stick, and I have created a disk. I am currently copying off everything I think might be useful before I run HDDRegen, just in case of catastrophe, or further catastrophe. I will try it from the disk first, not being able to find a suitable stick!
Thank you again

up to now - i have never lost one byte by running HDDreg

Computer hard disk appears to be error free,
HDDReg appears to have changed something.
If Windows had become corrupted can I reinstall it and have my applications working? (I am sure not but it's worth asking).
For a period before the crash there was some malware which I couldn't get rid of. A popup called qone8 appeared on starting a browser. I shouldn't have left it but I did. That is something I know wasn't right in the system but I don't know of anything else.
I will tell HDD Regenerator   of the apparent effect on the startup fail.  I don't want to rule out something I may have done but it has definitely changed.
What advice please?

Sequence of events to 4th June

1. Ran HDD Regenerator Demo but (in error) against the external HD not the computer HD.
One error corrected. Thinking this was the computer HD I bought HDD Regenerator.
2. Ran the full version and then found my mistake - and ran it against the computer HD. No errors were found. I did not think it had changed anything - it shouldn't have done. But something had changed.
3. Starting from the HD (not from HDD Regen)_:
Windows would not start at all, instead of starting up and then crashing.
Selecting details of diagnostics:
The diagnostics say that the cause found is that it cannot find a SO.
All the error checks except the last one are clear.
It says it has tried to repair partitions but the error is code 0x490.

This was an error which corrected itself.
Parted Magic.
Failed to write lock: '/dev/sda2': Resource temporarily unavailable
Error opening ...
Failed to mount ....
Trying a second time it worked.

Conclusion - after running HDD Regenerator full version, which found no errors, the computer still won't start and the error message says there is no OS on the disk. This was not the case before.

So you mean you are not able to browse the partition using the parted magic?

No I don't mean that. I can browse it though the first time I ran parted Magic there were messages saying failed to mount. This corrected itself.

Ok, do you see then files on partitions? How many of these partitions and which size do you have on this drive?

what exactly happened?
you connected the BAD disk as usb drive, to a working PC - to run HDDReg ?
then ran HDDReg on the system drive?
and the virus  - was that on the WORKING PC -or on the BAD drive?

i don't believe HDDReg was the cause of change - but the fact you connected it,

USB drive was connected.
Ran HDDReg from CD,
By mistake chose USB drive to analise using HDDReg Demo. It showed errors.
Disconnected USB drive.
Now ran HDDReg full version against computer disk. No errors found or corrected.
Found that Computer startup was now showing No OS.
So what caused this change?
I am wondering if I had deleted some Windows files while running Parted Magic. I have checked some that I copied such as Program Files and they are still there in the Windows directory.
If this wasn't the cause then it must have been connected with running HDD Reg.
This virus that I mentioned had been on the computer not on the USB disk.
________________________

There are two partitions, C and D. I had not changed the setup as from new. The D partition is LeNovo recovery. I have not touched this. The C drive has everything on it and is about 900 Gb.
/root shows:
sda1 SYSTEM_DRIVE  1G
sda2 345G WINDOWS7_OS
sda3 1024 B---
sda4  21G  Lenovo Recovery
sda5 98G ---
sdb1  932G 1Tb   This is the USB drive
sr0 no media

On which partition do you have Boot folder and BootMgr file? Can you check this?

One Boot folder is in /media/Windows7_OS

There is another Boot folder in sda1 SYSTEM_DRV/media/SYSTEM_DRV
This also contains two files: bootmgr and sdrive

For sda2 I have:
sda2 345G WINDOWS7_OS/media/Windows7_OS

What are sda1, 2 etc? The logical partitions I know about are C: and D:

Thank you.

Try to set in Parted Magic the drive which has BootMGR as active. Then reboot.

How do I set it as active please?
Attached is a screenshot of what I see.
LenovSystemdrv.png

In PartedMagic open the Disk Editor, then select the recovery partition and manage flags. Now set the "boot" flag. That will make it active.

Such a lot of help - thank you.
I have two instructions here.
rindi says select the recovery partition flag to boot. boot was set on sda1 which was noxcho said set it. As it was already set and the system was not starting I have not done this.
I am about to try booting up with sda4 flag set to boot.
Right - it says that bootmgr is missing
I know that is in sda1.
While I am waiting for any further comments - how you all find time for this I don't know - I will get hold of paragon software. However I have managed to change the flag with Partition Editor in Parted Magic.
Anyway I can't yet boot up.
Yours gratefully.

You could try setting the boot flag to sda4. That might start the lenovo factory reset when you boot the PC next time.

When you used Boot Corrector - have you used "Find Windows Installations to correct"?
Did it find any Windows?

rindi - if I start factory reset the disk will be overwritten won't it?
noxcho - These are on Paragon? I have to acquire some more CDs before creating any more disks, so I will leave those for the moment and just see what I can do with UBCD.

Yes, it will be overwritten. But you have already saved your data, so that wouldn't be a big issue, or? Besides, you could just first boot and see if it would start, you don't need to actually run the process yet if you aren't sure.

You can do it with bootable USB stick as well. Not only with CD.
Get the Rescue Kit I gave the link to.

noxcho - I have booted with Paragon and it cannot find any OS.
I have set the boot flag to sda1 as it was.
Windows does load files then Microsoft comes up but it immediately reverts to the popup saying Windows can't repair automatically.
(I wonder if you could advise me how to answer this:
From HDD Regenerator suppliers. "Thank you for contacting Abstradrome Software. Before we cancel your order, can you connect this hard drive internally on a computer with working Windows operating system and send us a screenshot of the HDD Regenerator S.M.A.R.T. information screen? Is the hard drive correctly detected by the computer BIOS?"
I have not managed to connect the Lenovo running Parted Magic over my network to another PC. I suppose that's what they want. But I think I can say that the hard drive is correctly detected by the BIOS.
I will send them screen shots but of HDDRegen running from a CD.
It's looking as if I have to do a Reset on the disk. If it is reset to the disk as supplied then it should have Windows on it. If not can I read off the licence for when I have to reinstall Windows?
Sorry this is now rambling on different issues. All help appreciated.

No, they mean that you remove the HD from the Lenovo and connect it as a 2nd disk internally in another PC. The PartedMagic LiveCD also includes a tool that can read out the SMART attributes of disks and you can save that output to a txt file and the send that output. It is on the Desktop and is called "Disk Health". You can also do some further disk tests with it.

For the factory restore you don't need to worry about the License, that is included on the recovery partition. Once that has finished your PC should be in the same state it was in when you bought it, and then you didn't have to enter any keys either.

If it did not find any OS to repair then it could be bad for the Factory Recovery as well. Means it could fail also.
In boot corrector try Correct Partition Boot Records (bcd) on all partitions. Then try to restart.

Btw, are you able to start to safe mode?

Noxcho, I tried Correct Partition Boot Records (bcd) on all partitions. Then try to restart.
No change. It wouldn't restart.
I can't boot in Safe Mode.
Let me see what HDDRegen  company has to say. I did have an operating system before I ran that, though it crashed.
I found that the boot system gives me the option for a factory reset. That also apparently loads Windows so if it worked I wouldn't have to worry about licences. If it doesn't as you suggest it may not then it will be more trouble!

If the factory restore doesn't work, you can alway use your recovery DVD's you made when you first got the PC...

If you lost those, or for some reason didn't create them, you could also try imaging the recovery partition, or cloning it to another, replacement disk, it might work then. PartedMagic includes CloneZilla which you can use for both, cloning and making images. But of course the recovery partition must be intact.

this is becomeing a long thread -
may i ask if you ran a Ram and disk diagnostic yet?
that would be best before trying the factory restore

Yes, I know it's too long. I ran Ram early on and disk diagnosis a bit later. They are both clear. I was trying to find a solution to Windows crashing on startup. Now Windows is not being found at all. This was not the case at the beginning. You have said that it could not have been due to HDDReg which you advocated. The  other possible cause is some change I inadvertently made to the files on the disk. I don't think I made any such changes. The supplier of HDDReg, Abstradrome, has asked me for evidence and I have tried to supply it. I was hoping to recover the disk and its contents.
What do you suggest I do about the long thread? I am following though on all comments and appreciate the help given.

you must do nothing about the thread- i just said that because sometimes a comment is overseen
i have never had a case where HDDReg caused trouble; on the contrary; it helped me reapir / recover many disk drives.
i think that maybe you caused it (inadvertently) by what you did.
try booting from a rescue Cd - and see if you see any files (post a picture of the contents of the disk)
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/rk-express/

He sees there files but it won't boot somehow.

If I were you, I'd get a drive of the same or larger size. Then use CloneZilla on the PartedMagic LiveCD to Clone your drive to the new one (make sure you select the correct drives as source and destination). Then replace the faulting drive with the new one and try a factory restore from that.

I don't think I can expect more solutions on this - I am very happy with all the help given. Unless there is something else I will close the question within two days with a few final comments. I have not restored the disk and I think it's not possible.
I received the following from this software company. HDD Regenerator cannot do any change which could stop OS from starting to load. It sounds like your hard drive has a physical breakage (damaged disk heads, spindle, logical card, etc.) rather than magnetic errors on the surface. In this case the problem cannot be fixed by the software. Anyhow for properly diagnostics, the hard drive has to be connected internally under Windows.
I don't think it is worth going through another learning curve to get more diagnostics.

Reformat the drive then and see if you have any bad sectors. These guys are opposing to what they claim - repair the bad sectors. If it did not do anything to the boot sector then it would boot as it did before, thats the fact. I would be satisfied if they have given you an answer that some part of your boot sector files were in unrecoverable sector so it was isolated by HDDR as it does always. But instead they use denying :)

I don't know enough t comment on what you say. Windows does actually start to load - it says it is loading files,, and then a Windows start screen appears, but then ot stops and I get the ThinkVantage screen. Doesn't this indicate that the boot sector is undamaged?

And then you have to reset it manually to let it restart, or does it restart itself?

>>  and then a Windows start screen appears  <<  then you are long after the boot sector !!!
your OS is damaged it seems
it would held if you post a screnshot or picture of that screen

Here are a few screen shots.
1. A messages flashes up - I have managed to capture it. Image is shortstartmsg2
The OS start option preselected is Windows 7 (GO-Global enabled) - This is a product I have installed.
2, (not loaded) Video Startgood shows the sequence of Windows  loading files and then the Microsoft logo.
3. The Windows repair options show (image loadstopscreen).

The start option (1) should pause, though it never paused when it was working.

Initially Windows would load as far as a STOP screen. That doesn't happen now - since I ran HDD Regen.
That screen is stopmsg
shortstartmsg2.png
loadstopscreen.jpg
stopmsg.png

Have you tried cloning the disk like I suggested?

the last screen indicates a BSOD c00021a
look for minidumps in c:\windows\minidumps, and post the latest here
meanwhile, here a thread suggesting several fixes for this error :  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/blue-screen-error-c000021a-fatal-system-error/549075f8-f695-4047-b747-2b4e118e1ffd

Cloning - not yet. The disk is very big and I have not got access to another. I started looking at cloning with Clonezilla but didn't get far.
I have to leave this now for the weekend. Sorry about all the delays and I appreciate all the advice.

what disk is it? and post the minidmp

These are the minidumps I can find. They are a year old.
They are in this folder /media/Windows7_OS/Windows/Branding/Minidump


This not the directory you say.
They are the same files as I sent for noxcho on 24 May.

I can't believe they have any
useful information in them. I can't find any other minidump files.
EXPExch22junMinidumps.zip
090313-76066-01.dmp

If they are that old it is very unlikely they are relevant, unless you already had the same problems an year ago.

The disk is NTFS 500Gb
It would be complicated to clone it though I have a 1Tb backup disk.

The boot cd says:
AMSET V4.00 (mAXTOR)
ATAINF V1.3
LOOKS LIKE FUJITSU M16XX/M2915 HDDs
SMARTUDM v2,00
UATA100 v3.06 (SEAGATE)
+ a few more things.

I will look again at the last suggestion tomorrow.
Thank you.

After revisiting all the comments I realised that I had not tried to clone the recovery partition as suggested by rindi.
That partition is about 20 GB and I have a USB stick big enough to make an image on.
Now I find that the instructions for Clonezilla leave me with some doubts because I don't want to write to the partition instead of to the memory stick,
Lenova recovery is on /dev/sda4.
It says we need to mount a device as /home/partimag (CZ image repository).
Surely I don't want to choose sda4 for that?
At this stage it does not give me the option of the USB drive.
If this makes sense could someone advise please? I could choose sda1 sda2 or sda4. sda4 is what I want to clone and the image has to go on the USB drive which is neither of the other two.
Thanks

I know my explanation is not clear without pictures. I will submit screen grabs in the hope that someone can see in 2 minutes what my dilemma is.

The USB stick would look more like this:

sdb or sdb1. The first 2 letters would be the same, but the 3rd must be different. The "a" designates disk 1, "b" disk 2 etc. The number that comes after that is the partition number. Besides that, CloneZilla should list your partitions and disks with the actual manufacturer's name, or with USB disk or similar.

Thank you. I am nervous about getting the source and destination names the wrong way round. I have looked at tutorials but there remains a doubt. I will get the specific screens up as soon as I have dealt with various customers! Regards

I am still not making progress though I now know about a lot of new tools.

Latest attempt was to clone recovery partition. The contents of it don't make sense to me and I would like advice if I won't be able to create a bootable startup disk from it.
(Question 1)

Below are some of the suggestions I have received and my comments.

If I cannot recover the OS, could someone advise me how to reinstall Windows. I have the product key but no disks. Can I get a backup Windows from anywhere and put this key in?
(Question 2)

Anyway here are the points.

______________________________________________________
Partition sda4  Lenovo recovery.
rindi2014-06-06 at 13:14:06ID: 40116944
If I were you, I'd get a drive of the same or larger size. Then use CloneZilla on the PartedMagic LiveCD to Clone your drive to the new one (make sure you select the correct drives as source and destination). Then replace the faulting drive with the new one and try a factory restore from that.

Have tried this. Trying to clone Recovery partition.  But first will this do anything? Backup files  is full of zip files. I cannot see that it has anything to enable booting, if I do create a bootable clone.

If the factory restore doesn't work, you can alway use your recovery DVD's you made when you first got the PC...

If you lost those, or for some reason didn't create them, you could also try imaging the recovery partition, or cloning it to another, replacement disk, it might work then. PartedMagic includes CloneZilla which you can use for both, cloning and making images. But of course the recovery partition must be intact.

QUESTION 3    Is the partition all that needs to be put on the cloned disk, which has to be made bootable?
Only has zip files and a catalog directory in it.Screen sda4.png and Backupfiles..png attached.
The Factory Recovery directory is nearly empty.

___________________________________________
rindi2014-06-05 at 22:10:06ID: 40115672
The PartedMagic LiveCD also includes a tool that can read out the SMART attributes of disks and you can save that output to a txt file and the send that output. It is on the Desktop and is called "Disk Health". You can also do some further disk tests with it.

SMART Testop Attached. I don't think it shows any errors

______________________________________________________
These are questions before some others relating to Clonezilla. I can't see what to clone that's useful.
Backupfiles-in-Mikelenovo-in-sda.png
SMART-test-op-2014-06-28.txt
sda4.png
FRecov.png
Partitions.png

After a gap:
1. I have acquired LeNovo recovery discs but have not used them yet.
2. I want to clone existing partitions before they are overwritten.
I wonder if someone can help me use the file system properly running Parted Magic.
 
I have been saving screens while running CloneZilla/FileManager, but when I shutdown and then try to look at them they have disappeared. Why? I saved them in /root/Pictures

CZ says save the partitions in /home/partimag
I had an image in this directory but it has now gone.

 I have partitions sda1 sda2 sda 4 and sda5 and 1Tb which is my extrenal USB disc.
In the file system I have /home  /media (which has directories 1Tb  sda1 etc)  and /root/Pictures

I can't find where these are physically, ie in which partition.

I need to know because the Clonezilla instructions say don't put /home/partimag on the partition I am trying to image. So starting with partition sda1 how do I define /home/partimag - which I really want to be on the 1Tb USB disc?

In any case the image I created disappeared on reboot!

Thanks a lot.

Sorry about the late response, I somehow forgot about this!

"I have been saving screens while running CloneZilla/FileManager, but when I shutdown and then try to look at them they have disappeared. Why?"

CloneZilla is usually booted from a LiveCD and so is a read only system (even if you have it on a USB stick, it is still read-only). This means that what you store locally during a session is stored only temporarily in RAM. If you want to store something for longer, you will have to save it to some other location, like the LAN or cloud storage etc.

When you use CloneZilla to image a partition or disk, you first have to select a partition where you want that image to be stored from a list, like sda1, sda2, sdb1, sda2 etc. If for example you select sdb1 as the place where you want your images stored, you then get a list of the directories of the root of that partition, from which you can select a directory in which you want to store the image, for example if that partition has a directory structure like this:

/Windows
/Temp
/Users

you could select the "Users" directory. Now CloneZilla mounts that directory to the mountpoint /home/partimage, which is part of the LiveCD's internal file-structure.

After that you would move on and select the source partition(s) or disk you want to image, and after that the process begins. When finished and you close CloneZilla, the partition and directory you wrote the image to is unmounted, so after that the /home/partimage will be empty on the LiveCD. If you want to view the image files CloneZilla created, you will have to mount the partition you cloned to again (in PartedMagic you have this "mount" icon next to the Start button). Here you can then again select sdb1, and then you should be able to view it's contents via the filemanager. Navigate to the "Users" folder where you saved the images, and there you should see them. If you connect that disk to a Windows PC you should also see the files in the Users directory. If you allowed CloneZilla to use it's default name, you would have directories that look something like this:

2014-07-15-15-img

and within those the files that CloneZilla created.

This has not been abandoned.
I have today been finally reinstalling applicatons and now have a working computer.
There have been so many people who have helped me, some of them many times, that it is very difficult to divide up the points. I will do it tomorrow.
Thank you.

Thank you very much for all the advice. I tried to be systematic about allocating points but doing more didn't make much sense to me. rindi, noxcho and nobus are the stars and there are one or two others.  I feel I should have 5000 points to give out not 500.
I allocated points more systematically but lost the edit after quite a lot of time spent (but not as much time as you have all spent)!
I am following EE's guidance and just putting points against only one answer per user. That means that many good answers don't get any points which is not what i would like to have done but it enables me to get this topic closed, and to thank those who helped me.
The key stages for me were:
1. establishing that there wasn't a hardware fault. HDDRegen enabled me to do this and though I misused it and bought a licence, when I found out that I had run it on the wrong disk, and told them the disk for the computer was clear, they offered my money back. I took it - That was a very good service.
2. Running the UBCD disk with Parted Magic and getting all my data off. I had off-site backups but there were odd things I hadn't backed up.
3.Time spent in trying to restart Windows. I was very reluctant to reinstall everything, and though one person at the beginning of this saga said that would be quickest, and in the end he was right, if I could have saved the installation it would have saved me a great deal of time and effort. It was worth copying files off with Parted Magic, I have almost completed the reinstalations of applications and it takes a long time. but have improved the configutation greatly so there was a payoff.
4. I managed to clone partitions with CloneZilla though in the end didn't use the clones.
5. The awful secret I have to share is that I found out eventually that the PC was still under garantee. In fact once the facts had been established about the system being irretrievable, but the disk OK, purchasing a LeNovo Windows recovery disk would not have been expensive even without the guarantee.
6. In the new system I have separated Windows from applications and data in different partitions.
7. I am creating recovery discs.
8. I am setting up the off-site backups as I had before using Asigra (via Storage Guardian).
9. I am in the process of setting up Acronis True Image so as to have disk clones available - as the simplest means of restoring everything.
7. Nobody actually suggested I purchase recovery disks - but then everyone assumed that I still had the original recovery disks. Our administration originally had been wanting. We are taking steps not to repeat these errors. All the comments made here have helped very helpful in setting up these systems.
So a few lessons learnt. Thank you all very much for your patience and help.

tx for the feedback!

Sorry about the delay. I had made several attempts to close this, and needed some help from the moderator. I then forgot to do it! Thank you again. All my comments are in the box above this