Windows crash - Refresh - Hard drive locked, unlock hard drive

Anonymous
2013-02-09T21:56:17+00:00

Hi

I have recently purchased a new pc and installed windows 8 with no problem.  Then booting it up a week later it gave an error message, which i can’t remember now what it said but I chose default setting and then the pc reset. Now windows won’t start up at all. It says please identify the boot able drive or insert a boot able media. None of the option from the windows 8 dvd help. When i try reset it states my hard drive is locked please unlock hard drive first. I have tried googling on how to unlock the hard drive but have found nothing. Also when i try doing a fresh install it can’t find a hard drive. My pc is only 2 weeks old so don’t think it’s the hardware. There are settings in the bios which I think could be causing the issue but don’t know anything about them. Also bios can see my hard drive.

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

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Anonymous
2013-10-12T11:15:49+00:00

Hi everyone. I had this issue happen twice now. I got a blue screen of death during PC use and then when I reboot I get a blue screen saying \Windows\system32\winload.exe is missing.

The first time I was unable to work out how to unlock my SSD so done clean install losing all data.(Thankfully I had a backup on a server of important stuff) I have the Windows 8 DVD but it was unable to recover, reset or auto resolve. The problem seems my hard drive was locked. I believe the master boot record or something was corrupted during the crash and the drive is locked by windows. Hence I am unable to mount the disk unless I define it as a new volume which is essentially wiping it.

Here's what I done to unlock:

I booted from the win 8 DVD

Went into a command prompt and ran a few bootrec commands:

Bootrec /fixMBR

bootrec /fixBoot

bootrec /rebuildBCD

I then went back into the win 8 auto repair and it seemed to work.

I have no idea why windows 8 has now had 2 fatal crashes. My PC is ~6 years old and previously ran Vista with no issues. Bought a new SSD with windows 8 back in April and had it fail twice!!

Motherboard Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

CPU: Intel Q6600

MSI Geforce 8800GT

Creative SoundBlaster XFi Extreme Fidelity

4 gig Corsair MSRX2 RAM

Sandisk 128Gb SSD

I'm wondering if it's because my PC is old and got some driver incompatibility with win 8. Hence just turned on windows driver verifier today and will leave running for a week to check. I've never overclocked my PC. Might bite the bullet and upgrade my PC fully to a core i7, new mobo etc but no idea if this will solve the issue. I am less than impressed with windows 8 because of this.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-05-29T16:23:38+00:00

    Hi, I had a slightly different problem. I had my system running in "Windows To Go" on an external drive. This made it difficult to do a direct reinstall, as others propose. So if Reinstall is not an option. I have discovered a way to recover the files without reinstall. I used EaseUS partition master. First I did a repair of the drive to correct errors. but, that only repaired the drive and it was still not accessible. I continued receiving the locked error when entering the drive. I tried a number of different things to correct the error non worked.

    Then I thought of creating a good Partition to the side of the corrupted one, and then merging the drives to the new drive. Using EaseUS partition master I Shrank the drive that was corrupted. Then Created A new Drive in the un-allocated space. Then had EaseUS Merge both drives to the newly created drives.

    this worked well. however I did have to run this process a number of times before the entire partition was recovered. because when EaseUS hits the error in the partition, it stops. However after running the Shrink Original Drive, Expand New Drive, and Merge about 3 times I was able to recover the entire drive.

    As I have just successfully finished recovering my drive I have not attempted to see if the windows to go is still operational. In the merge process EaseUS puts everything into a separate file on each Merge. I now need to move everything from the files to the base partition and see if it works. This however was not my primary concern as I was mostly worried about my files, pics and videos.

    EaseUS URL:

    http://www.easeus.com/thankyou/install-partition-master-free.htm

    -

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-30T20:57:02+00:00

    Thank you for sharing that with everyone. I have a question about my laptop. It's only about 3-4 years old and was upgraded to windows 8. My daughter used it until one day she came to me and said it crashed & now it won't restart. 

    I have a flash drive I made for another computer, and by hitting F12 at start up I've been able to get the menu with the blue window that allows me several options. Reset, repair, system restore and the advanced opens gives me the ability to use the command box to try to fix it. I tried the reset option but it says the hard drive where Windows is stored is locked and I need to unlock it &try again. The problem is it won't boot up in any mode. It was my 1st laptop so if course I did make a recovery  CD <the laptop didn't come with one> but it won't run it. It acts like its running the drive but no menu pops up. I must have done it incorrectly. 

    My question is can I use the command box to try to reset the computer? & if so what are the commands? I know nothing about this stuff but I can follow directions to the letter and have great reading comprehension! Please can you help?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-31T15:13:29+00:00

    Hi,

    Do you see any error message if you start-up the computer? You can create an installation media using this link. Windows 8.1 also applies to Windows 8, after that you may use the CD to perform automatic repair. Follow the steps below:

    1. Insert the installation disk into DVD Drive while the computer is restarting, keep pressing F12.
    2. Once the Windows Setup window appears click Next.
    3. Click on Repair your computer.
    4. Click on Troubleshoot and then select Advanced Options.
    5. Click on Automatic repair.
    6. Follow the on-screen instructions and finish the repair.

    Let us know how it goes.

    Regards**.**

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