Windows 8

[Mephistopheles]

I had that exact same message about two weeks ago it happened because I didn't shut the computer down and fell asleep I woke up and just switched off by holding the power button for a few seconds this is called a hard shutdown and shouldn't cause any problems but this time it did, possibly because the computer was in the middle doing updates at the time.

How I fixed it

I entered the bios set up and looked at the boot priority I have two hard drives but only one was showing and the one showing was not the boot drive so I went into advanced setting where I could see a list of all the drives some of which were not part of the system from here I deleted all the drives apart my boot drive and set it as priority one, exit and save and bobs your uncle.

Also ExtremeNinja even if you don't try to fix it you should still be able to start your laptop by pressing F8 when you hear the beep this will bring up a list of drives and partitions (It only does this when the bootmgr is missing otherwise it brings up a start menu.) use the down arrow key to highlight your boot drive and press enter this won't fix the problem you would have to do this every time you started your lap top.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Thanks Mephistopheles. This isn't working for me. There is only one bootdrive, F8 does nothing but I have options of F2 for setup and F4 for recovery. The recovery Samsng thing doesn't work as described above and F2 gives me my boot priority order which is as follows:

1. SATA HDD: Sandisk SSD U100 128GB
2. USB CD
3. USB FDD
4. USB HDD
5. Network

I don't have a bootable copy of Windows on either CDROM or Flashdrive as Samsung are trying to be clever. Their "cleverness"leaves me with no alternatives when their own software fails, though.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Well that is definitely in the correct order the boot partition is on the SSD and so sounds as if it has been corrupted and you are correct they do not give you a separate CDROM with a windows image on it for recovery that is actually stored on the hard drive in a hidden partition there are ways to unhide it but your best bet from here is throwing it back a Samsung and telling them you do not want to loose any personal files...

 

[Mephistopheles]

ExtremeNinja did you know you can create a bootable flash drive this is a good thing to do as if you do come across this problem again and you don't want to loose data due to a factory reset as you will be able to boot from the flash drive by changing the boot priority and once running you can copy all your files from the SSD to another drive say an external hard drive plugged into usb port and then do a factory reset.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Thankfully all my personal files are on Google Drive and most of my applications are also in Cloud subscriptions. I'm not fearful of losing anything. Cheers both for all your help. I'm sure I'll be glad when all is sorted. Just hope the guys here in Sao Paulo don't have a problem with my machine being a UK model. Just printed out all of my proof of purchase and pulled out my "English Punch". That's what they call knuckle-dusters over here.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

I'll give them a Flash drive and they can do this for me. Cheers again.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Get them to update to 8.1 and do all the 8.1 updates before they give the laptop back to you...

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Absolutely!

 

[Mephistopheles]

And I do hope that your computer does not come back installed with the Portuguese language...

 

[Greenlantern101]

I would like to do a clean install of windows 8. I have instructions for how to do it off USB stick but my problem is I don't seem to have the product key. Its not in the paperwork that came with my lap top, its not on a sticker stuck to my lap top. I wasn't given a disk or anything windows 8 related, it just came preinstalled on my HP ultrabook.

Any ideas how I can find this out. I don't really want to buy windows 8 when I already have it.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Right click on My Computer click on properties and your product id will be at the bottom of the page just write it down...

 

[Greenlantern101]

You're a wonderful person, I don't care what other people say.

 

[Greenlantern101]

Actually that didn't work. The code shown is the Product ID not the Product KEY and it doesn't work. Any other ideas?

 

[canis]

Fortunately for you the key is held within the registry, you can either search for it manually or use a program such as http://pcsupport.about.com/od/system-security/fr/belarc-advisor-review.htm to retrieve it for you

 

[Mephistopheles]

Ah yes I forgot about belarc a damn useful program I must say, and sorry about the misinformation I was replying only 2 minutes before the start of the race.

If Belarc doesn't work for you try the windows product key viewer it does what it says on the tin..

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/3329197/windows-8-product-key-viewer-147d/

 

[sushifiesta]

Have you looked at the various options Windows 8 has built in to clean things up/reinstall Windows. I'm not sure but it's feasible that reinstalling Windows in that way wouldn't require you to put in the key again. See here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/restore-refresh-reset-pc

EDIT: If it's a laptop that came pre-installed with Windows I think the "Remove everything and reinstall Windows" option on the link I sent should do what you want without requiring a key (or even a disc/USB stick), based on a bit of browsing around, but I can't guarantee it.

 

[Greenlantern101]

Just to conclude this little reinstall issue. I have now done it. I didn't need the install code.

The way I did it was, go to the search function. Pointer to top right corner, click the search, type in 'refresh'

You then get 2 options which run from windows.
Really easy.

Thanks for everyone's help

 

[Greenlantern101]

I need advice.

My uncle died recently and his laptop has been passed on to my dad.

The laptop has malware on it, Muvic tool bar. I reinstalled windows from the recovery partition and it is still there.

Can a recovery partition become infected? If I made a recover USB stick and formatted the hard drive,would this solveit?
The recovery USB drive is I think made by copying the recovery drive on the computer.

I have no other disks. I don't really want to ask Toshiba for disks as they would charge me I think. Is there a way to get rid of this malware.

HELP.

 

[Brogan]

It is possible the malware is installed in the boot sector, in which case doing a basic recovery won't work.

A Google search for 'Muvic tool bar' results in lots of hits which claim how to successfully remove it.

 

[Bill Boddy]

My experiences with malware suggest that there will be a lot of free solutions, none of which will work, and many solutions which claim to be free until you have done the download; they then want to charge you with no guarantee that their solution will work.

Have you space to load Linux? That would allow you to work on the boot partition.