Can't boot into windows 8,hard drive locked, can't refresh

[WizCaloifa]

I also have this problem And My laptop is only like 8 months old. Are there really no solutions for this problem?

 

[Saltgrass]

As far as I know, nothing in the thread ever explains exactly what was locking the drive. So if you know, WizCaloifa, what is locking yours, please advise.

But this comes directly for the help section of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology utility. There is a Note with the quote that mentions if you fail to unlock, after 5 tries you will have to turn the power off to your system to reset the counter. It also mentions if you did not set a password, that you need to contact the drive manufacturer, or whomever may have set up a password.

Unlocking Password-Protected Disks
You can unlock a password-protected disk by entering the password which allows you to access data or use that disk to create a volume. The password is usually set up through the system BIOS. Locked disks can be identified with the lock icon appended to them and display a ‘Locked’ status in the disk properties.
1. Under ‘Status’ or ‘Manage’, in the Storage System View, click the disk you want to unlock. The disk properties are now displayed on the left.
2. Click ‘Unlock’.
3. Enter the password, and then click 'Unlock'.

 

[WizCaloifa]

@Saltgrass

I don't know what was locking the drive. My cousin was just playing Minecraft, then after a while, my system blacked out. Then when I turned it on, it won't get past the boot screen. I tried everything like resetting, using CMD commands which I don't understand, automatic repair, nothing works. Refreshing only results to the " The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again." error. Please help Multibooted to Windows 7, but could not access the OS selection screen.

PS: If there are any solutions where there is no need for reformatting my system, I would really appreciate it.

 

[pjhutch]

The best option is to download and boot off a Linux Live DVD and burn the live CD/DVD to disk and boot off that, then you can access the hard drive, run any apps off the live CD/DVD and finish off your work. No installation or formatting required.

See Main Page - Linux Mint or Home | Ubuntu.

 

[pjhutch]

See this thread on how to 'unlock' the drive: locked out of C: drive please help

 

[WizCaloifa]

Ubuntu Live is now working. But I can't mount the Windows 8 partition. Other partitions can be mounted. What do I do now?




EDIT: I think I now understand why I can't access the hard drive. According to this,

You're running Ubuntu and try to access the hard drive which contains the Windows 8 installation, correct?
If so, the problem lies with Windows 8's policy of not shutting down properly.

I made a theory. Maybe because Windows 8 isn't fully shut down that is why we can't boot to it. And the system thinks that we are still running Windows 8. Because my system has Fast Startup enabled. When my system was still working, it crashed while my cousin was playing minecraft. Sooo, I PUSHED the power button. Not hold. But when I started it again, the situation came.

EDIT: Here is screenie of Ubuntu running Disk Analyzer:

 

[WizCaloifa]

Please help me School's going to be back next week and I need to access my thesis paper. Thank you

 

[rtorretti]

My sons HP ENVY had this problem and I found this thread. Just thought I'd post what we experienced. All the same symptoms, we had not added Safe Mode to the menu so this was not an option. Figured this may have been an overheating issue so left the PC overnight, still wouldn't boot past the just "advanced options BS menu"
I decided to break out the Win 7 DVD and scrap Win 8. After booting I decided to see if system restore would work knowing full well it was a different OS and should not. It threw an error stating a restore point had not been created was I sure I wanted to perform a system restore point to an earlier time anyway. I said yes, it black screened and rebooted. Upon rebooting Win 8 came up fine.
Added the safe mode and turned on System restore adding a restore point. Thing are working now. Thanks for all the help and hopefully this helps someone else. I suspect what is happening is a poor shutdown of 8 is leaving the drive locked. Booting to an OS unlocks the drive if shutdown correctly. Hopefully we don't see this error again!

 

[cgio]

A solution for HP Envy

My sons HP ENVY had this problem and I found this thread. Just thought I'd post what we experienced. All the same symptoms, we had not added Safe Mode to the menu so this was not an option. Figured this may have been an overheating issue so left the PC overnight, still wouldn't boot past the just "advanced options BS menu"
I decided to break out the Win 7 DVD and scrap Win 8. After booting I decided to see if system restore would work knowing full well it was a different OS and should not. It threw an error stating a restore point had not been created was I sure I wanted to perform a system restore point to an earlier time anyway. I said yes, it black screened and rebooted. Upon rebooting Win 8 came up fine.
Added the safe mode and turned on System restore adding a restore point. Thing are working now. Thanks for all the help and hopefully this helps someone else. I suspect what is happening is a poor shutdown of 8 is leaving the drive locked. Booting to an OS unlocks the drive if shutdown correctly. Hopefully we don't see this error again!

A solution similar to this one worked for me on an HP Envy 6 with the C: drive locked and no start-up possible. I pressed ESC during startup to go to the hp start-up menu. I selected to boot recovery. That starts a windows 7 instance and gives some options, without actually need to re-install windows 7 or 8. I have selected recovery and then cancelled, not recovering anything and restarted. It worked, so the above quote seems to have merit. If you have a recovery partition from your vendor, log in there and restart not doing anything. It might work, that simply, as it did for us.

Thank you to all in the thread for providing clues. This was a very tricky one and can lead to data, installation loss if not treated correctly and going for the brute-force re-installation, refresh etc as suggested by Repair.

 

[dobri]

I have the same problem with the "locked" drive.
can't refresh, repair or anything else..
then I tried new fresh installation of win8 or win7 .. and I couldn't do it!
It's totally LOCKED! Like.. there is no drive!



PLS HELP!

 

[theog]

Try removing all power from the PC for 10 mins.

 

[dobri]

I already tried that... and nothing happened. :/ the strange thng is that the only thing I can see is System Reserved Partition (100MB).... and my 1TB partition (with Windows installation) is missing!! (aka Locked)?

 

[authorandrew]

Hi all,
I have the same probem -- my drive is locked. I absolutely cannot reformat this computer -- as far as time and resources go, I absolutely cannot. I'm confident this problem can be fixed without doing so, but I've only managed to find bits and pieces around the internet about how to do so.

Here's the deal:
My PC was taking a long time to boot up and I know that some times that happens when the computer is trying to log in online but the network is down. Our connection can be funky, so I pressed the network button on my computer, and, sure enough, Windows 8 booted. Great. Just peachy so far.

Except then the network adapter had vanished from Windows. I've since found out that I disabled a bios setting, probably because of the point in boot at which I pressed the network button. Either way, that problem is the least of my worries now. I force shut off the computer a few times, trying to get the wireless network back up.

Apparently the Intel hard drive manager (I wasn't able to find an exact name for this) locks the drive up after 5 forced shut downs. I didn't know this, but now the drive is locked up and I don't know how to get it back. My PC gives me the error 'The drive where windows is installed is locked.'

I've tried running chkdsk from the advanced repair options, and chkdsk returns errors but won't let me fix them. In addition, chkdsk doesn't recognize my main disk at all, but only a 3,086 KB 'disk' which I guess is the recovery environment. Same thing with DISKPART: it recognizes no fixed disks.

The hard drive is there, I know it is -- somehow it's just locked up. I've read through this thread and tried various solutions and none of them have worked. I need a solution for this as soon as possible, though. Any help at all that can be given would be much appreciated.

EDIT: For anyone with the same problem, here is what resolved it for me:
I booted into the pre-boot menu and ran my recovery tools from the Recovery partition: this is a Win7 system I've upgraded to Windows 8. From here, I clicked system restore. This is a Windows 7 system restore, and I have no restore points created for it, so it can't really restore anything. But I clicked 'restore,' it threw me an error about no restore points. I clicked 'Cancel' and the computer rebooted and worked. I have no idea why, but there it is. Hopefully that will help anyone else.

Andrew

 

[larslars]

I had a lot of problems on my Samsung series 5 touch switching from the original 500 HDD to a new 256 SSD


Using different cloning and partition tools - and boot fixing software brought me no-where! I downloaded a new trial version of windows 8 and copied it to a USB stick - and that wouldn't install either! (Installation could not find partition). I did however learn a lot about GPT drives and using diskpart. After 2 days of trying to make my cloned disk work I started from scratch with new software - and thistime it did work like a charm. So some cloning software does not clone the disk the right way and gives boot errors.


Step 1: I reduced the c: drive partition on the 500 HDD so that the whole disk could fit on the new 256 SDD using EaseUS Partition Master 9.2.1 Home Edition.


Step 2: Using EaseUS Todo Backup Free from the same software company I cloned the HDD to the SSD via an USB cable.


Step 3: Replaced the disks and booted without the issues I had experienced before. Succes!

 

[theog]

I had a lot of problems on my Samsung series 5 touch switching from the original 500 HDD to a new 256 SSD


Using different cloning and partition tools - and boot fixing software brought me no-where! I downloaded a new trial version of windows 8 and copied it to a USB stick - and that wouldn't install either! (Installation could not find partition). I did however learn a lot about GPT drives and using diskpart. After 2 days of trying to make my cloned disk work I started from scratch with new software - and thistime it did work like a charm. So some cloning software does not clone the disk the right way and gives boot errors.


Step 1: I reduced the c: drive partition on the 500 HDD so that the whole disk could fit on the new 256 SDD using EaseUS Partition Master 9.2.1 Home Edition.


Step 2: Using EaseUS Todo Backup Free from the same software company I cloned the HDD to the SSD via an USB cable.


Step 3: Replaced the disks and booted without the issues I had experienced before. Succes!

Welcome to EightForums.

Your post is of topic.

http://www.eightforums.com/installation-setup/17083-how-migrate-os-new-hard-disk.html

 

[Xjay100]

I've experienced this a couple of times since upgrading to Win8. Microsoft and HP tech support were sadly useless. I gave up a couple of times and reinstalled 7 as none of the options to refresh or restore worked. I re-ugraded to 8 about 30 days ago and all as been fine... until yesterday, I experienced the hard disk locked and the refresh / restore options - same issue, no options worked to repair to refresh / to restore.

I took a shot at a different approach. I hard shut down the computer and during tart up, I banged away on f9 key to try to confirm startup drive. I selected harddrive. Computer rebooted and all is good again. I think the bios is defaulting to EUI drive for startup.

maybe that helps - sadly no one advised me of this work about, I simply tried it as I had nothing to lose.

Good luck

 

[Triangle64]

Hi,
I had this problem and went to this thread for advice with no luck. I managed to get this problem fixed, I have no idea how it happened and really how what I did fixed it but it did with all my files and setting back, exactly as it was before. I had the exact same errors as OP including the mysterious "locking" of the HDD. I would post screens but I have literally have no idea how I would get this problem again.

Heres how I fixed it:

First, get a live version of Linux Ubuntu 12.10, Download Ubuntu Desktop | Ubuntu make sure its not the LTS version and make sure you either burn it to disk or mount to a USB, I mounted to a USB using http://www.linuxliveusb.com/

Once you have booted into the live desktop (dont install it remember!) open up GParted (top icon on the left side, search for gparted) and you should notice a key next to your windows partition. If you don't then I don't know if this will help you.

If you see the key (or if you dont, you could try it anyway) open up terminal (same top icon search for terminal) and run the command "sudo umount -a" and hit enter. It should come up with some errors but that's ok. close down terminal.

Next go back to GParted. One of the top icons in GParted lets you refresh the drive (i cant remember which, sorry) hit that and it should refresh the drives status. Now you should see a red explanation mark next to your drive (instead of a key). If you right click your drive and press information, it should come up with lots of error, including one that says something like: try running chkdsk in windows to fix this error, this is good because thats what comes next.

Now of course we haven't got windows to run chkdsk but now if you boot, you should get a different error from the one you did before. dont do a system restore, grab your windows 8 installation disk and load that up. choose your language, then click "repair my pc" go though the settings until you get the command line. you should still get the "X: Sources" thing but thats ok. Run the command "CHKDSK C: /F" Mine came up with no errors so then I ran "CHKDSK D: /F" and that had similar results with no errors.

At first I thought it hadn't worked because of no errors, so I restarted my pc and it booted straight into windows like it did before! I literally have no idea why but it did, its worth ago!

Sorry for the lack of accuracy, I'm not at the PC that had the error right now, otherwise I would give more info. Let me know if this worked for you and if you have any advances.

Cheers,

Tom


tl;dr: Just read it, it might save your PC!

 

[Geezanansa]

It is frustrating losing time and data. Some things I have learned regarding the unrecoverable locked drive scenario may prove as handy for others as it has for I. - regarding data recovery at least ... this might be worth checking out... (all credit to Sammy How to tell if windows 7 installer boot in EFI or BIOS? - Super User)
Booting from your windows installation media and then once at "keyboard currency" screen simply press shift+F10 to give command prompt. Enter "notepad" - you can now use the "file" menu option to navigate your attached drives/files and back them up or cut'n'paste to where you want.(anywhere other than the messed up gpt drive!)

atb

 

[PCcrusader]

Possible solution

Hi,

for anyone encountering the problem of a locked hdd at startup this might be a quick fix to get the computer to boot up again. Mind you, this is for pc only (as i guess with laptop it is much harder). One day while i was working on my computer all programs froze and i had to reboot. On startup i encountered a problem, i got an error saying that the hdd with system files could not be found. Using the windows 8 recovery disc i could not refresh or repair due to a locked hdd. So i turned of my pc, opened the casing and removed the power- and Sata cable from my hdd. With my hdd disconnected i booted up the computer. after a few seconds i shut the pc down again and reinstalled the hdd (putting back the cables connected to it). I booted up again and my hdd was found and windows 8 started up as normal. I guess that by disconnecting the hdd and booting up the computer the CMOS-Ram configuration is altered (removing locked drive) and afterwards by installing again it is able to configure a newly found unlocked hdd with windows 8. The only question i have is why the hdd is locked in the first place, maybe a problem in the windows 8 software during a freeze up of the system that configures the CMOS in an unexpected way causing the hdd to be locked? Hope this helps anybody.

 

[MistaMac]

So I had the same error on a pc running Win8, which I upgraded from Vista. So after pulling my hear out and many hours reading forums and nothing worked. I switched the pc of and just leave it for the night while I try to figure out a better way of getting windows 8 to start.

So this morning it hit me. Vista, Win7 and Win8 uses the same MBR (or so i was told), so I popped in my Vista cd and booted to it. Select the Language and Currency settings > and click on "Repair this computer" so it comes up with this window that picks up all the OS's on your pc but it will not pick up Win8 (don't stress about it) Click on "Next" and click on "Start up Repair" after that is done Click OK to restart your pc and let it boot normaly. Windows 8 should boot up now.

Hope this help