# Solved: Can't repair Windows 8.1, hard drive locked.



## pyxidium (Jun 24, 2007)

Dear TSG

I'm using a Lenovo Ideacentre B340 running windows 8.1 with the following spec:

Intel Pentium CPU G645 @ 2.90GHz
DDR3 SDRAM
Lenovo Mahobay motherboard
440GB Hard Drive

My system crashed yesterday during a windows update. I can't boot to safe mode or use system restore.

I tried a "refresh" but it says "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again. I do not have a back up disk.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards

Pyxidium


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## CompGeek2014 (Jan 25, 2014)

Hi, I have run into this issue myself. Unfortunately the only thing you can do is attempt to get whatever data you can off of the drive, then fresh clean install windows. The reason for this is because windows 8 uses a special hibernate file that enables it to shutdown quickly and boot up much faster when you start up. The only way that i have seen to turn this off is while windows 8 is running cleanly and its very hard to find. You can do a google search for disabling windows 8 fast boot for a procedure. Im afraid without a full backup, the only option is to try to recover any pertinent data and format then re-install. Make sure you wipe the windows C drive partition as well as the smaller boot partition from the drive.


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## pyxidium (Jun 24, 2007)

Hi 

Thanks for your reply. I can access the c:\ prompt. Do you know if there's anything I can do from there before I admit defeat and install windows 7?


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## CompGeek2014 (Jan 25, 2014)

Your welcome. I was able to get there myself. I tried deleting the hibernation file, I tried everything i could possibly think of. I even tried to recover from a backup that i had made with clonezilla. The problem was that hibernation file. Essentially it freezes some information windows uses like drivers and the kernel such as if you had turned off a laptop and placed it into hibernate mode so when you were to turn it back on everything was there quicker without a full boot process and waiting for everything to load. This is a built-in to windows 8 meant to speed booting on a system using a UEFI-enabled motherboard as opposed to BIOS. Im getting ahead of the question but basically there is nothing you can do unless you had a windows made full disk backup image which Microsoft very cleverly hid in windows 8, replacing it with File History and storage spaces.

My suggestion is, if you can, to install windows on to a different hard drive fresh, if you have the ability to do so, and then put the "crashed" one back in as a secondary or via a USB adapter if you know there is data you need to get off there.

Once you are done installing programs and the like, be sure to back up your data and you can find lots of software to do this. Even if you dont make a full system image that you can use to restore from bare metal as they say, you can at least have your critical information and multimedia backed up. Flash drives are so cheap nowadays.

Wish I could have been of more help.


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## pyxidium (Jun 24, 2007)

Hi

Thanks for all your help. 

Under diagnostics, it turns out the hard drive is knackered. Luckily, the warranty ran out the day after the diagnostic tests.

Cheers.


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