"The drive where Windows is installed is locked.Unlock the drive and try again."

Anonymous
2013-01-22T22:31:56+00:00

What to do when you get the following message on "the most stable", Windows 8, operating system?

"The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."

I got that message after the following:

I wanted to open a PDF file from my customer on OUTLOOK - a regular, every-hour procedure - and my computer froze. Nothing worked; therefore, only manually disconnecting my computer from the power source, I was able to shut it down.

After I restarted, I could not get passed the login screen - my computer used to enter the "blue background color and nothing else" mode. 

I decided to use USB Flash drive to repair Win8 but it failed. I wanted to refresh my Windows 8, but I got that message:

"The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."

Just 4 days ago, I did a "clean install" of Windows 8 OS.

What should I do besides another "clean install" of Windows 8?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2014-09-06T13:07:42+00:00

2 SSD drives one SATA HDD

win 8.1 on SSD #1

this is what I did:

  1. shutdown
  2. unhooked HDD
  3. restarted
  4. yay !!
  5. reconnected HDD
  6. restarted
  7. yay !!

cheers

Thank you.  Of all the proposed solutions this is the only one I tried and it worked perfectly.  My computer is back up and running.  Thank you so much!

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Anonymous
2013-04-16T06:32:07+00:00

I clean installed windows 8 on a second HD and then the original came up as an option.  the key is to disconnect the first hd with the good install on it. and then go into the bios and adjust your boot sequence.  

At least this worked for me.  As soon as this works you must defeat any options for fast start as that is likely where the trouble is.  This is outrageous as it is happening to customers across the world but yet the company is trying to pass it off as a virus.  I was told I would have to buy a second license to get the install to stabilize.  It is BS.

Good Luck

KC O'Dunn

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-12-02T02:17:02+00:00

    If you are using PCIE SSD this is the data recovery solution, because no other solution works. Tried so many, too many actually.

    1.) Insert a spare drive in your PC.

    2.) Run the clean installation of win 8 on that drive.

    3.) When logging into Win for the first time, install the PCIE SSD drivers.

    4.) Run "chkdsk F: /f". F: denotes your PCIE SSD drive after its driver installation. It could be another drive letter.

    5.) Now if you use Command Prompt you can see the files on the PCIE SSD. If you use Eplorer it will not be possible.  

    6.) Find a good recovery program to recover the data on the external drive. Or if you know DOS commands use those.

    7.) Clean install win 8 on PCIE SSD and format the old spare drive.

    Microsoft really did a "great" job. Yesterday my PC was working just fine. Today I turned it on I saw only the black screen with white cursor in the top left corner after the BIOS screen. F8 command did not work. Win 8 installation cd neither. It has lousy support for PCIE SSDs. Luckily I could get my data back, otherwise ...

    What is worse they are trying to disguise it as virus when it was the Win Update which shabanged everything.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-12-03T03:55:55+00:00

    Guys , this thing happened to me yesterday with my acer aspire M5 , and I could fix it after 12 hours of searching and doing non-sense things.

    at last, I did it with no need to download or insert any tools, disks, or any other thing

    for me, I just did the following :

    0- from the boot menu in the bios , made the HDD as the 1st boot device.

    1- booted up normally till I got to the login screen.

    2- went to the power button on the bottom right corner , clicked it , then pressed the shift button and restarted the laptop to get to the advanced boot screen, there , I chose the low resolution first to ensure that the graphic driver won't affect anything , restarted again and enabled the boot logging, finally I enabled safe mode.

    3- I was able to refresh my laptop. So I refreshed it to get the ability of backing my files up.

    4- reset my laptop to the factory defaults.

    Guys, it was a non-sense solution for me but at least my stupid solution got my problem fixed.

    So, if it wasn't helpful for you, try your ideas and don't fear getting things worse, cuz what doesn't work won't ever do ...

    Wishing u all the best

    Regards

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-11T13:05:10+00:00

    Here's what you do

    1. Delete Windows 8
    2. Install a decent operating system not one that tells you to unlock the hard drive but doesn't tell you how to do it. Phucking Ideats!

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