Windows drive won't boot

[supton]

Couple months ago, my home laptop died. Think I had it for 10 years, and it was used, so I just tossed--kept the drive of course.

Finally get around to looking at my files. I can open the drive on my Linux machine, but, while I can find what I think was my docs (there's a music folder with stuff in it), I can't seem to find my files. I found files that are *.lnk files that look like the right date of last usage.

So I swap drives. Won't boot. Makes me wonder if I threw out a good laptop... (not really, bad battery, bad keyboard, memory was maxed at 8GB, bad hinges). Dug out another laptop, plugged it in. Won't boot there either.

Clearly I should have backed up more than the never that I did. Question is, is there any recourse? I was hoping I could a) just get to the files, or b) put into a machine and just boot up, and move files off it. Apparently once again my assumption made something of me and umption, once again. Am guessing that 4 digit PIN that I had to enter on booting up actually does do something on a hardware level?

 

[Dave Sherman]

The SSD on my laptop died last year, like it would not boot died. Tried booting off of USB with a Linux distro, and although Linux detected an NTFS partion, it couldn't read it. Figured it was a goner, but after buying a new drive and getting Windows re-installed, I bought a USB to nVme adapter, and on a whim tried Disk Genius. It actually worked, it was able to detect the partitions, and I was able to recover most of my files. I don't think Disk Genius was expensive either, maybe $60? I had some backups, but it had been a while since I had last backed it up.

 

[TheOilWizard]

So I swap drives. Won't boot. Makes me wonder if I threw out a good laptop... (not really, bad battery, bad keyboard, memory was maxed at 8GB, bad hinges). Dug out another laptop, plugged it in. Won't boot there either.

Normally you won't be able to swap drives between different hardware and boot from it. That is expected. Different chipset drivers, etc.

Like @Dave Sherman said, sounds like you need some type of data recovery software. I will warn you, most of them will show you the recoverable data, but they will want $ before actually restoring it. If the data is valuable to you, you should probably go this route.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Give windows the boot.

 

[Killer223]

will it boot in safe mode? you can always search the drive for *.mp3 or whatever format they were. a bootable windows repair cd or thumb drive would have the tools to repair boot.

 

[TheOilWizard]

On second thought, I would first try plugging your drive into a Windows machine (as a secondary, not booting from it) and see if you're able to read the files. The same process you went through on the Linux machine.

Trying safe mode as mentioned above is also worth a shot.

If still unable to read the files, proceed with the data recovery option mentioned previously.

 

[redhat]

I am assuming your laptop was running Windows 10, since you said PIN?

Do you recall your user profile's name or username on that PC? Your profile folder should be under that disk's "Users" folder. Do you see that profile name?

Since you had a PIN on that machine, your user profile directory has permissions via SAM that might be preventing you from accessing it or potentially viewing some subdirectories/child objects. The account that has permissions to that directory doesn't exist within your Linux OS so it doesn't have permission.

Are you pretty fluent in terminal? I'd start navigating through the drive via terminal and once I get to your user profile folder, run a chmod command to give your Linux machine's account access to the directories and child objects. If you just want to copy data off and don't plan to access it much nor care about security, you could just run "chmod -R 777" to the entire user profile and then you should be able to do anything and everything with all directories.

 

[Pew]

So the machine will still start up with the Windows drive installed, just not boot into Windows?

Modern computers should have no problems with swapping a drive into a different PC and booting off of it. It's not ideal but I have to do it sometimes. If it's Windows, it'll just use the default drivers until it downloads the new ones via Windows update.

It could have been "encrypted" because of a pin required on start-up but lots of bios/uefi support that. It could be a program like BitLocker but TPM chips are usually an extra cost in consumer computers. If it was BitLocker, it would tell you and I don't have much non-BitLocker knowledge and Ive never tried to access a drive from a pin-protected boot into a different machine. Plus you shouldn't have been able to access the drive with your Linux machine.

If it's just the PC not being able to boot into Windows, probably bad drive. Would make sense if you can't see anything in the user drives.

 

[supton]

The drive in question won't boot when I put it into my Linux box. Says no OS found. I didn't let it run too far into testing. Put into a laptop that I have, same issue. Both cases, I pulled the SSD out and swapped this SSD into its place, so same cables, same SATA port, etc.

On a USB cable, I can surf around in the drive, find all sorts of folders. Found the music folder in what I think is the right user profile, plenty of files, looks legit. But all the stuff I had under Documents (or My Documents?) seems missing.

I had never planned to let it upgrade to Win10 but one day it did. Oh well, Win10 actually ran ok on it.

Not fluent in computers at all. Not my thing, I just use 'em.

Will play with the chmod idea later.

 

[javacontour]

Couple months ago, my home laptop died. Think I had it for 10 years, and it was used, so I just tossed--kept the drive of course.

Finally get around to looking at my files. I can open the drive on my Linux machine, but, while I can find what I think was my docs (there's a music folder with stuff in it), I can't seem to find my files. I found files that are *.lnk files that look like the right date of last usage.

So I swap drives. Won't boot. Makes me wonder if I threw out a good laptop... (not really, bad battery, bad keyboard, memory was maxed at 8GB, bad hinges). Dug out another laptop, plugged it in. Won't boot there either.

Clearly I should have backed up more than the never that I did. Question is, is there any recourse? I was hoping I could a) just get to the files, or b) put into a machine and just boot up, and move files off it. Apparently once again my assumption made something of me and umption, once again. Am guessing that 4 digit PIN that I had to enter on booting up actually does do something on a hardware level?

The .lnk files are quick links that likely point elsewhere. Unless they pointed to another drive, the files (at least some of them if you have readable files in your Music folder) are somewhere.

If you have it connected to a linux machine, can you just search for .doc or .docx or whatever the files are.

Or, maybe search for the filename.

I.E. if you have something called ImportantDocument.lnk do a search for ImportantDocument* on that drive and see what turns up.

There is a chances the documents or files you seek are there.

If you know some filenames, let the computer do what it does best and search for the files.

 

[supton]

The .lnk files are quick links that likely point elsewhere. Unless they pointed to another drive, the files (at least some of them if you have readable files in your Music folder) are somewhere.

If you have it connected to a linux machine, can you just search for .doc or .docx or whatever the files are.

Or, maybe search for the filename.

I.E. if you have something called ImportantDocument.lnk do a search for ImportantDocument* on that drive and see what turns up.

There is a chances the documents or files you seek are there.

If you know some filenames, let the computer do what it does best and search for the files.

Not a bad idea, didn't think to search by file name of one of the link files, see where that heads off to. I did think of a file name that I wanted to go look for, tried to search for that, but didn't find it, which was surprising.

Mostly I'm just trying to find my pictures folder and a few other things.

I wonder if OneDrive might have a copy, now that I think of it, that's a Windows thing, maybe I have a backup and don't realize it? I should check that.

 

[javacontour]

Not a bad idea, didn't think to search by file name of one of the link files, see where that heads off to. I did think of a file name that I wanted to go look for, tried to search for that, but didn't find it, which was surprising.

Mostly I'm just trying to find my pictures folder and a few other things.

I wonder if OneDrive might have a copy, now that I think of it, that's a Windows thing, maybe I have a backup and don't realize it? I should check that.

You may be right, it's elsewhere. If you can attach the drive to a Windows machine via USB, then perhaps you can get details of those link files.

Thanks for the reminder. It's been a few weeks since I attached one of my backup drives to backup my files.


Short answer, if you don't have three copies of something with at least one "off-site" you don't have it at all

Time to update my "on-site" copies.

 

[Pew]

I wonder if OneDrive might have a copy, now that I think of it, that's a Windows thing, maybe I have a backup and don't realize it? I should check that.

Yes, if you had OneDrive installed, they had an update that enabled the online backup of your document/downloads/desktop sometime last year but they didn't tell you. It would move them online and leave links in-place (exactly what you're seeing with lnk.) Check OneDrive online to see.

 

[supton]

Looks like OneDrive to the rescue. Was able to log in and see the files I was after. [Ironically the music folders are not there.] 3.8GB of stuff, will have to make a copy to an actual backup, for once (although maybe I can use OneDrive for really critical stuff? 5GB free and all).

Thanks for the help.

 

[javacontour]

Looks like OneDrive to the rescue. Was able to log in and see the files I was after. [Ironically the music folders are not there.] 3.8GB of stuff, will have to make a copy to an actual backup, for once (although maybe I can use OneDrive for really critical stuff? 5GB free and all).

Thanks for the help.

Happy to hear you located your digital treasures.