Okay, I will try to explain this coherently but I’m sure it will be obvious I’m not a computer expert, despite what my computer-stupid family believes.
My laptop stopped working a while ago and I just got to messing around with it again and it was saying there was no hard drive (I ran the diagnostic tests and everything else passed). I took out the hard drive and put it back in, and now it’s recognizing it. Unfortunately I’d already erased it, so now it’s empty (I’m not really sure how I did that when it wasn’t recognizing it before?). I used the system restore CD to try to reinstall Windows Vista, and it will do the first step of copying the files, then it gets stuck in the second step of expanding the files (at either 0% or 44%), and eventually says this error message: “Windows cannot install required files. The file does not exist. Make sure all files required for installation are available and restart the installation. Error code: 0x80070003”
So I’ve googled the error code and related things, and I still can’t figure out what to do. It seems I need a driver of some kind, but I don’t know if I need a Windows one, or Dell (my laptop brand), or Hitachi (the hard drive brand), or something else entirely. I tried the Windows and Dell ones that I could find and they didn’t work, but I really don’t know what I’m doing.
Oh yeah, and my laptop has something called Media Direct where you can see your media files without starting Windows and everything, and that was working before I erased the whole thing. It’s a different partition on the same hard drive, so the hard drive wasn’t completely dead. Is my hard drive just messed up and I need to buy a new one, or what? I did try reformatting it btw.
Since it’s a Dell computer there’s a chance that there’s a backup partition still on your hard drive. Follow these instructions starting at Step 3 and maybe you can restore the laptop to factory settings. Worth a shot.
Nothing happens when I press F8. But my computer is from 2007 or 2008 and that page said that option started in 2009. I tried the system restore and repair options from the Windows installation menu though and they didn’t work.
Yeah, it does sound like you just need a new hard drive. Even if you keep trying to reinstall on it, and it works at some point, that drive probably won’t last very long.
Yeah, it does seem like it’s the hard drive. In Diagnostics I got an error code of 200-0146 and from googling that, it seems to be that the hard drive failed, although some people have said they got a new hard drive and it still didn’t work.
Can I just get any external hard drive or 2.5" internal hard drive? And this is probably a stupid question, but could I use a flash drive instead? I know they’re a lot smaller than a hard drive, but 32 or 64GB would be doable because I really don’t store much anyway.
Assuming the existing drive is a standard 2.5" SATA drive, you should be able to buy any one of a huge number of flash drives and install it instead. This will give you a noticeable speed bump.
I’m not sure if you think I mean an SSD. I mean a regular flash drive like this. Could you run Windows on one? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that which is why I assume it’s a stupid question, but other than size I don’t know the difference between the two.
Interesting question. Linux can run from a flash drive, and the net is full of instructions on how to make a Windows bootable Flash drive and how to install from it. I can’t think of a technical reason why not–if Linux can grasp all my hardware than Windows and its authentication routines should as well. Anyone?
You can indeed run Windows from a Flash drive (or other bootable media) - look at Windows Preinstallation Environment or BartPE. However, there are some major caveats…
WindowsPE is not intended as full windows environment, so there are limitations and restrictions.
Bootable Windows environments use lots of RAM for caching files, restricting available execution memory. On a memory-limited system, this can be a significant performance limit.
There is no Hardware filtering/optimisation on boot. Windows cannot make assumptions about the hardware environment, so it has to probe and test drivers on every boot - this slows up the boot process.
Your Flash will wear out faster due to excessive writes if the setup is not careful.
Older hardware does not always support Flash boot.
Bootable Flash media for Windows is great for recovery/troubleshooting situations - I do it all the time. It is less useful for running a live Windows OS.
It sounds to me like the entire drive has been erased, whether it is bad or not. For some reason, many OEMs put the actual recovery files on the hard drive, and the recovery CDs access those. If the drive is completely blank, the recovery CD won’t work.
Oh, and setting up BartPE or its Vista/7 equivalent requires a functioning copy of Windows to make, as it would be illegal to ship the CD completely created. And, in my experience, it’s a lot more work to get right than just downloading a Linux for use on a USB stick.
