If it fails to boot I just repair W10 using its tools (using a W10 DVD/USB). If that fails, I wipe the drive and start fresh.
Problems with wife's laptop. It is a HP655, AMD E2-1800, 1700MHz processor, 4mb RAM running Win10 (upgrade from
.
It had been getting slower and slower, then wouldn't boot up at all. The Dell diagnostics said the HDD was failing DST.
I tried ages to get a boot CD or USB to work, but no go. Then, I bought a cable and removed the HDD and connected it to my desktop.
The desktop could see the drive and after running CHKDSK, I could see files. At this point, I backed up all her docs and photos.
Now, getting the HDD to boot up in the laptop is the bit I can't get working. It just says 'Install an operating system'.
All the files seem to be present and CHKDSK isn't reporting any errors. I can use the Win10 boot CD now, but the startup repair won't run. I've tried all the bootrec commands:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd
the last line gives me an error - 'the requested system device cannot be found'.
Ultimately, I could either buy a new HDD and re-install Win10, or re-format the existing HDD and re-install. It's just frustrating that I've managed to recover from the original error, can see all the files, but can't get it to boot up.
Any advice?

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