neo Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 A workmate as just dropped off his sons samsung windows 8 laptop that doesnt boot. power on all i get is a samsung logo (guess its instead of the windows 8 logo) a few seconds later the "circle of dots" icon appears, goes off after a few seconds then just a black screen, you can hear the HD repeatedly trying to accessing the same file/files (same sounds) over and over again. cant use F8 or Shift+8 as nothing works, plus i dont have a windows 8 disc to try the recovery mode. Any ideas ??? and no octet he doesn't want anything apple related Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longsh07 Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 Might be a tad risky but if its not working its worth a crack anyway. When it goes to the circle of dots on screen switch it off as fast as possible (might be easiest to remove the battery then run it off the mains and whip out the cord as soon as you get the dots). Im hoping this will cause it to throw the "your pc wasn't shutdown properly" / "your pc didn't boot correctly" IF (and its a big if as ive not used Win 8 except for the pre-release preview version), it does then you can either go safe mode or recovery mode. There are some screenshots here that explain the rest and might help http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/how-to-boot-into-safe-mode-on-windows-8-the-easy-way/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSet Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 (edited) you can hear the HD repeatedly trying to accessing the same file/files (same sounds) over and over again. Well. the first thing I would do would be to rule out an HD problem. It could be that a bad sector has developed on a file required for booting or the disk itself is failing. You need to remove the HD and run a disk test on it in another machine, you'll need a 2.5" USB cage to do this or you could make a bootable USB stick with some disk utilities on it. There are other possible causes, bad memory stick, corrupt file(s), missing file(s) or a virus. Pete Edited September 17, 2013 by JetSet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jell36 Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 Has the owner changed anything in the BIOS by accident? The only time I've seen this problem was when I installed windows with my drive set to AHCI in the BIOS and then tried to boot the computer with the drive set to IDE in the bios. The drive configuration type in the BIOS must be the same as when windows was installed. Every other time I've had problems then holding F8 or something during boot brings up the safe mode option which you've already tried. Failing that then I would expect a dead hard drive. Also, often the recovery image is on a hard drive partition and it's just a case of pressing F something during start up, rare to need a disc these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSet Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 Also, often the recovery image is on a hard drive partition and it's just a case of pressing F something during start up, rare to need a disc these days. I believe that some manufacturers starting with Win 8 don't put a recovery image on now. Our Compaq laptop didn't have one, we had to buy a Compaq recovery disk. Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stutopia Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 What Pete said. See if you canget some utilities or maybe even a trial version of windows onto a USB and see if you can run bootrec (well that's what it was called in win 7) or if you have a "good" win 8 installation create a recovery USB. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/create-usb-recovery-drive You may need to enter BIOS at boot to make it boot from USB. Good luck, I spent Sunday arguing with a win 7 installation boot loader problem for my folks, I'm never going back to the dark side... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cragus Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 Tell him to buy a mac and use OSX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted September 17, 2013 Author Share Posted September 17, 2013 Thanks for all the suggestions, tried booting from various discs (linux/win7) but would not boot from either, tried all the F keys and only F2 did something (enter bios) and F10 which would only give the option to boot from the HD or enter the bios, fiddled with the few options that were in the bios to no avail. Safe mode by default is disabled in windows 8 hence the F8 didn't work, u need to enable it via msconfig first ( or so a google search reveals), guess microsoft thought their auto recovery would sort it all out. as the laptop was purchased this year they should really take it back to the shop they got it from Hate laptops, give me a bespoke tower PC any day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stutopia Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 Good effort, recovery partitions don't float my boat, when you need them they're probably already bust Give me a floppy with command line and some stuff to type in off the Internet any day! Why would they disable safe mode? Like you'll be able to use msconfig from windows when you're boot is lunched, great thinking MS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
squit Posted September 20, 2013 Share Posted September 20, 2013 Some times its the ram if it doesn't boot up, remove the ram and try a spare stick or if you it has two sticks of ram in the laptop take one out, see if it boots if not swap them and try again. The most likely thing is something has crashed and corrupted windows so it will need reinstalling. If you need to recover anything do what someone has already suggested and buy a usb to laptop harddrive connector and plug the harddrive in another pc to copy the files off before the installing windows on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo Posted September 20, 2013 Author Share Posted September 20, 2013 just a small update, i gave him the laptop back, phoned samsung went through all the basics that i had already tried, still no luck so they are picking it up within the next few days Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neilp Posted September 24, 2013 Share Posted September 24, 2013 My laptop done this when the ram burnt out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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