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Thread: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    11

    Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    Hey guys, i have a very serious problem and need an urgent help from you all. I have a Sony VAIO laptop running with Windows 8. I bought this about 8 months ago and was working fine. Saturday evening i was out somewhere with my laptop and forgot the charger cable at home. While working with the system the battery got drained completely and turned off. Thats fine, i put my laptop back in the bag.

    Yesterday morning i fully charged the laptop before turning it On. Once charged, i started the system but instead of booting properly it took me to a screen having just 2 options, either TURN OFF or Troubleshoot. Well i clicked simply on Troubleshoot which took me to Automatic Repair screen. I click to repair the system, process started and did some fixes and restarted. After restart it took me to another screen saying

    "Automatic Repair Couldn't repair your PC"

    I then manually restarted the system which gave me another error message saying "The System cannot find the file specified (0x80070002)". I dont know what is it but i simply clicked on OK button. Then system restarted and gave me another message saying

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

    Damn, what is meant by this. I mean i haven't set any password for my hard drive. How can i unlock it? Please help.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    23

    Re: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    I have been through this critical problem couple of months ago with my windows 8 desktop. Just like my system was stuck in startup loop and no Automatic repair was able to fix it. After spending couple of hours on web in search of solution finally i landed on a page that helped me out to fix the problem. In such cases where no troubleshooting neither the Automatic Repair helps, it is your Win8installation Disc that helps you to boot into windows and make it work again.

    So you have the same, if yes, insert it and boot from CD. Apart from this you can also make some changes from Motherboard BIOS that will help the Windows to boot such as changing your disk controller mode from SATA mode or RAID mode to Standard IDE or SATA or even Legacy instead of AHCI or RAID. By doing so we make windows know which drivers to use for booting from the system drive. Just try this and let me know if still you facing the problem.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    10

    Re: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    Even I am struggling with the same problem since past two days. It is a desktop with two hard drives. First the primary HDD where Windows is installed and the second where all my data is saved. I turned off the computer day before yesterday night until the system was working great but yesterday morning when I booted it up again, it stuck in restart loop. I tried Troubleshooting and Automatic repair but it says the drive is locked. There is no way I am able to boot windows. Why did MS removed the Safe Mode? Atleast that was the option to enter the system and fix it in earlier version of windows. Any help please?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    78

    Re: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    When you have multiple drives connected to the system it happens many times when windows don’t know the proper drive to boot due to some conflict. In such cases you should turn off the computer, disconnect the second hard drive from the system and boot. Windows will boot properly now. Once it is on, you can turn it off again and connect the second drive back where it was.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Posts
    11

    Re: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    Thank you very much for the helps guys, but none of these procedures helped me to get rid of that annoying error or to boot into windows. Note, I haven’t tried the installation disc so far. I will try it out tonight and let you know the results.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Posts
    673

    Re: Hard drive locked and unable to boot in Windows 8

    Are you sure you haven’t protected the hard drive using Bitlocker? If yes, then just try out this:
    • Insert Windows 8 Installation CD
    • Boot from CD/DVD
    • Select Repair your computer
    • Select Troubleshoot
    • Select Advanced Options
    • Select MS-DOS mode by choosing Command Prompt
    • Type the following followed by Enter:

    BCDboot c:\windows /s c: /l en-us

    Let the system do it work. After reboot if still you get the same error than you have no choice left other than formatting the C drive and installing Windows 8 again.

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