k3kish
2013-02-24

Hi,

 

I am carrying HP Pavilion g6-2005 ax laptop with Windows 7 Home Basic edition. Till Friday evening (Feb 22, 2013), it was working fine and Norton Internet Security trial version (in-built) was over on the same day. From Friday night, system is not responding and it gets stuck in 'Starting Windows' screen.

 

In recovery options or repairing system, it showed pages after 30-60 minutes after each click. System restore points were also lost. With a great patience, system recovery was done and windows 7 was re-installed byFeb 23, Saturday evening. But I lost all critical data, documents, informations of mine stored in 300 GB (out of 500 GB) and system was up & running.

 

Today Feb 24, I upgraded YouCam (pre-installed sw) and again system showed unexpected signs of non-functionality. I checked the option for system restore points and asked to restore it before YouCam upgrade. Now, system is down again and showing page of 'Windows Boot Manager' with message 'Windows failed to start.....'

Status: 0xc000000f

Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

 

System is under warranty till Jun 22, 2013 and it was bought from India. Currently, I am travelling to USA and in deep trouble with this problem. Please help in recovering the system and my critical & invaluable data if possible.

 

Regards,

Kamal Kishore

AxshunJaxun
2013-02-26

Hey k3kish,

 

I'm really sorry to hear that you've run into such issues. It sounds like there may be an issue with the hard drive or the installation of Windows on the hard drive.

 

Just to clarify, were you getting any blue screens on or before February 22, the night it went down? If so, were the blue screens giving you the same "Status: 0xc000000f Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible" error?

 

The first thing I would suggest is running a test on your hard drive to make sure it is functioning properly. The following steps were taken from this document.

 

 

Complete the following steps to open HP System Diagnostics:Turn off the computer.Use one of the following methods: Turn on the computer and immediately press the F2 key repeatedly, about once every second, until the HP System Diagnostics program opens.Turn on the computer and immediately press the Escape key repeatedly, about once every second, until the Startup menu opens. Then press F2 . The System Diagnostics window allows you to run several diagnostic tests. Each test determines if the hardware is functioning properly, and displays an error message and a warranty ID if there is a hardware failure.

6. Run the Start-Up Test. It is very thorough and tests every component that has a part in the Start Up process. It will give you a pass or fail result for each component. Let me know what the results of this test are in your reply, please.

 

 

If any components fail, they will need to be replaced. The SMART Check, Short DST and Long/Optimized DST all test the hard drive so if any of those fail, the hard drive will need to be replaced. 

 

If all of the components pass, you will need to reinstall Windows 7. You can do this using the HP Recovery Manager if it is still on your hard drive. If the HP Recovery Manager isn't on your hard drive anymore, you can order recovery discs through HP Support Worldwide. Before you do that though, please see the information below for steps on how to try to recovery your data if it still accessible. Depending on how you did the reinstallation of Windows on Feb. 22, there may be a folder (C:\Windows.old) where you're old files may be stored. 

 

Here is the link for the data recovery steps. Using those steps, you could try taking the drive out and connecting it to another computer to access it like a flash drive. You could also try using a version of Linux (such as Knoppix or Pendrive Linux) on a live disk to access the hard drive. These steps work best before you reinstall Windows, but they are worth a shot if the data is important to you.

 

If you have any questions about these suggestions or if any of them resolve the issue (you could help other users with the same issue), please let me know. I'll keep an eye out for your reply.