I know this isn't /computerproblems/ but I've been completely stumped on this issue for a few days, maybe someone here can help me out.
My friend let his special needs brother use his thinkpad (windows 10) and when he got it back it won't boot. He doesn't know what the brother did. The automatic repair/system recovery tools wouldn't work so I tried a factory reset, but that kept getting hung at 50% so I wiped the drive and tried to reinstall. That didn't work either, it would finish the installation process but then give the unspecified error of "the operating system could not be loaded because a required installation file is missing or contains errors." I know it's not the installation media, but I tried it with the disc and with a USB drive loaded with 2 different isos and got the same error every time.
I tried putting my hard drive (same drive from my thinkpad, a 500gb seagate) into his computer and it boots and runs fine. So I know it's not the cable, memory or anything else besides his hard drive. Then I tried cloning my drive onto an external drive, and from there onto his, so now the two drives should be exact copies of each other but his computer still won't boot with his drive in it. In fact, windows won't even load, it just gets past the thinkpad splash screen and goes to the black screen with the blinking cursor and stays there. I checked his drive with chkdisk and HD Tune and both return no errors or bad blocks, so I don't think there is any physical damage. However he is sure the brother didn't drop or damage the computer in any way because he was in the same room with him the whole time, so I was doubtful of that in the first place.
I'm at a complete loss now. Anyone else have any ideas? Pic related.
weird, I thought special needs people were usually really at home with thinkpads
>>55239144
Yep, I actually encouraged him to get one because he's careless and they're so hard to break. Looks like that backfired on me because now I have to watch a thinkpad die.
Check the boot order in the BIOS, if it's set properly, then the drive is indeed fucked
>>55239090
Install Gentoo
Of it boys with your hdd but not his ilk give you a guess what it is. Figured it out? Critical thinking is important here the special guy dropped the pc wrecking the hdd it's why it kinda works and will install but be missing files the arm got bent or the platters are fucked
>>55239278
Fucking phone messed that up good if it boots are the first 3 anything else is easy enough to get
>>55239230
>>55239278
If the drive is fucked, why don't any disk check utilities tell me so? Also when I boot with mini xp from a flash drive I am able to access the drive and check out all the files. If the arm was bent or the platters were fucked why would it work fine except when booting from it
>>55239347
Because drive has these things called sectors to write on sometimes these can be within acceptable loss. That loss doesn't account for say a long scratch across all platters rendering any data written In segments useless but it's within acceptable loss aka no smart error
>>55239347
Also if the arm is bent it will write on random spots instead of where it needs to be so when the computer goes top access those files they are not there again ain't throw a smart error unless the arm is majorly bent best way to tell is just listen to the drive if it has any rhythmic click it's dead
>>55239405
>>55239442
Well, that's gay.
>>55239405
You can use a utility tool by seagate to test the integrity of the hdd.. basically, if you have bad sectors, your drive is failing. Either that or you can get a usb to sata adapter and go from there to troubleshoot on his thinkpad. It's a ~15 dolla investment
>>55239090
I had a situation years ago where I had similar problem and with all the remove parts until it works strategy to figure out what's wrong. Came down to the processor. Something happened that crippled the processor it would run DOS and Win3 but not Win9x or WinXP. Swapped the processor and it was working again.
>>55239090
>Thinkpad
>Win 10
No thank you.
