Another one of my business customers called me up today saying their Windows 7 laptop was coming up with a strange error and not booting in to Windows. The error was “Boot device inaccessible” with the error code 0xc000000f. As the laptop was around 6 or 7 years old I had my suspicions that the hard disk may be dying so I began my testing. Unfortunately hard disk repairs weren’t possible using the normal Windows setup DVD repair methods so I had to resort to using Linux instead. I didn’t get much further with Linux either so my next port of call was to remove the hard disk and plug it into my work PC using a USB adapter. I had a bit more success with this method and after a few tricks I was able to at least see the partitions on the drive and start pulling the data off. Once all of the data was safely copied to my work PC I ran a few repair tasks on the drive but it didn’t respond favourably to any of these unfortunately. The bad news is the hard disk is definitely dying and needs to be replaced with a new one – the good news is that I was able to get all of my customers data off of the dying hard disk so basically they just need a new hard disk (preferably a high speed SSD), Windows reinstalled and their data copied over and they’re good to go!
Mark JANSEN
DIGITAL INSITE
Adelaide Onsite Computers + Support
Mobile : 0404 110 526
Office : (08) 8387 9023
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