occasional boot failures

Bad sectors on HDD (defective HDD, so need a diagnostic) or malware activity. Either way, I bet for the clean install solution.

 

eventvwr.msc then click windows>system. now right side filter and check error and warning. now show us errors.

had a cust other day with a gateway 2012 or so pc.. had to load bios defaults and it fixed that.

then click clear and save them and clear then.. reboot till u get error and check error logs again.

i bet for the remove a bunch of old programs. then run windows repair tool in safemode with net from tweaking.com . the portable zip. run default repairs takes about 50 min unless ssd then 15 to 20.
when done reboot and see if it happens

if it does:
try reupgrade with mediacreation tool. (after win repair tool and uninstalling old softs especially old printers)

check device manager view> show hidden. any unknown in list ? sometimes old hp printers do show

unplug any usb devices besides keyboard and mouse unless its wireless dongle
(some do cause issues after yrs) try switching usb slots for mouse keyboard to non usb3 or hub

 

Try testdisk. It might fix the drive geometry problem that you are having.
It may only be a bad cable corrupting the drive's data, or a dying drive. Either way, the drive geometry is changing from a usable state to an unusable one which can only be caused by data corruption. You may need to back it up and "write zeroes to the drive" with the drive manufacturers software which will tell you if the drive is good. You may get by with just clearing the first 64 sectors which is where the boot and geometry data is and do a clean reinstall, but if you're going to do all that anyway, run the manufacturers utility instead and do it right and hopefully be done with it. What kind of hard drive is it?

 

If he has defective sectors, a clean install is not a solution. In general a clean install is not a "solution", it's just a way to skip a problem instead of solving it.

The OP should instead do a full scandisk with chkdsk C: /F /R, then eventually do a malwarescan. then eventually do the inplace upgrade, then eventually try to install a clean system on a VHD or a different partition to see if a clean installation is a solution before trashing old system.

Only if after all those steps are followed the clean installation should be evaluated, personally is something that I had to do just a couple of time since XP was released, and very few times before, on hundreds of installations

But in the specific user case the chckdsk alone should be enough to fix the problem or to detect a dyeing HDD/SSD

 

It's a matter of perspectives. For me a clean install is a solution and for many. Not for you? Well fair enough.
In this case I would fix bad sectors otherwise swap HDD for a new one, then do a clean install.

 

IF the culprit is the HDD where's the point of a clean install? Just clone the old one, and do an inplace upgrade to be sure that any system filt that may have been corrupted will be replaced by a working one

What would be your reaction if your pediatric would say "your son is sick", better to kill him and make a new baby?

 

A 'bad' sector isn't a 'defective' sector:

• bad sector = soft errors on a sector, means could be solved
• defective sector = hard error, means could not be solved

If a defective sector exists, it could be marked as unusable and the HDD could still be used. in the 'old' days (8086/88 etc.) most HDD's came with quite a bit of defective sectors and even up to 10% defective drive were sold legally! That isn't any more possible for quite some years now! Still, in some countries, up to 2% of the drives capacity could be classified as OK!

Personally, I would firstly use HDD Regenerator for to check the HDD for existences of bad and/or defective, and even slow sectors. For just a Scan, HDD Regenerator could be used, just it would try to be 'repair' only the first bad sector found, it would list ALL available bad sectors. HDDRegenerator is Payware, but the trial has also the Bootable version for USB/DVD/CD which Drevitalize didn't has, which is also Payware!

The good thing using those apps, are that it could be used with no affecting any of the existing data on the checked drive! It gives a clear view of the stage of the checked drive, and even maybe could get those drive back to normal work!

I use to check all of my drives every 3-4 month using the above apps! Although use it for years for to get HDD's with soft error's back to normal work.

 

If someone wants to waste days of their time using a tool that does NOTHING and can repair NOTHING (because that's not how the HDDs have worked for some past ~20 years or so), just go ahead.

 

Seems to be that you didn't have a clue what testing the reality is meaning! (That's simply also shown in the smiley's you're used in your post!)

The reality in this means: Is the HDD good or not?! It's any way up to the user to do what he/she want's or not!

 

Sir, I'd suggest doing a quick Google search on "HDD bad sector remapping". Since obviously it's you who has no clue whatsoever. Stop marketing snake oil (Spinrite, HDD Regenerator etc.) here. At best, they repair nothing, they do nothing else than what the HDD microcontroller's firmware already does on it's own: remap the faulty unfixable sectors to spare ones. No data is recovered -- and, more importantly, the data is not recoverable any more because it's been remapped. At worst, they cause complete data loss on an already faulty drive by pretending they are going to "fix" something, instead of focusing on offloading the remaining data from the faulty drive before you ditch the broken drive. As noted e.g. here: recoveryforce.com/spinrite-a-data-recovery-program

Yes, of course. I'm just providing additional information to them so that they can make an informed decision.

 

Now is a matter of BAD analogy. You can't compare my son to a damn machine, especially a PC. Different worlds, totally.
And again also is a matter of perspectives: There are scientists looking for perfect organ cloning, remove the dying one and replace with a working one. Btw it reminds me about cloning software, a very successful industry these days.
Sometimes isn't worth, for a myriad of reasons, to waste time and efforts trying to find the specific problem causing malfunction. And yes, for others, it's worth dissecting to the last molecule and find the real culprit.

Note: if I don't reply anymore to your comments doesn't mean you won the "debate", it's just simply I feel

 

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I don't know what really you've for experiences, maybe they're quite bad! But, and that applies to anybody else too, you're not perfect and others may be having experiences which are totally different from yours, the opposite to tell!

In this case, I simply was telling to use such software for to check the HDD's and also clearly told that, if anything could be 'repaired', that would be so-called Soft-Error's only and NOT Hard-Error's! There wasn't any says from 'Recovery', moving of data and so on, I say told that the 'defective' (hard-error) sectors could be remapped, expecting, that's logic to know, that data from such places couldn't be saved!

So, don't turn my words please and add something I haven't said!

I just suggest, that users, who're interested in such 'work', take the time and check it out on the Internet, instead of listening to forum members, who opposite everything, which didn't suit's their personal thinking or, even worse, who like to oppose whatever is possible, and like to accuse other's they have their eye's on!

Have a nice weekend!

 

Yeah, they could. Without the snake oil utilities as well. That's what the HDD does. Itself. No snake oil "repair" utilities needed. Without those snake oil utilities, the data actually not be permanently lost due to the forced "repair" remapping. So, executive summary:

- If you need to recover data, avoid snake oil "repairs".
- If you don't need to recover data, avoid snake oil as well since you are just wasting time.
- If your HDD is faulty, replace it. Invest money into replacement drive, not snake oil.