I hate Windows 8

driller

driller

El Presidente
Long story short, I bought a new laptop to use in the garage and take to the track back in late spring. After installing the SCT software and drivers to get the tuning and data logging duties in order it has hardly been used.

Then a few weeks ago when I had it on for no special reason I noticed an alert box saying something about Windows needed to restart to finish installing updates. No biggie, click "OK" and wait for the reboot.

It never booted back up but went into diagnostic mode. Many attempts later I could not get it to do anything. After much googling and trying a Windows 'repair' with a USB stick I have given up. No restore would work, no reset would work and diagnostics of the hardware indicate bad sectors on the HDD (which I find hard to believe given the low hours on the machine). :(

I am resolved to do a clean install of windows but I haven't been able to get the system to boot from the USB stick (which works on any other machine I've tried). I'm about to just give up and buy an SSD and swap the HDD out or take a day off to spend with tech support.

Any ideas? FWIW, it's a Lenovo X240.

As if I needed another reason to hate Windows 8. :(
 
C

chris2523

New member
is the USB drive bootable? if so, how'd you do it?
are you hitting the "bios key" on startup?
can you get to the bios?
is the "boot manager" enabled in the bios?

dang i'm trying to remember what i did.
i fought my cousins lenovo hard with this.
i reinstalled windows 7 on his laptop.
it was an asinine process to say the least.
keep googling, i know it can be done.
 
tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
Based upon your analysis, the thing is screaming (perhaps literally) for a new hard drive.. This would certainly explain why none of the restore efforts have worked. Is it still under warranty? (likely only a year for OEM stuff these days, I'm afraid..)

If the thing doesn't already have an SSD in it, this is a great excuse to upgrade. The performance is incredible, and 250g drives have slipped into the $120 range recently.

The down-side to that is that you likely don't have restore media..

In the off chance that it is not the hard drive, I have noticed that a few of the windows 8 devices I've seen so far have some "more clever than average" restore partitions built into them. Often there's either some 2-3 key combination to whack repeatedly on startup, or on the tablet devices, I believe holding the "volume up" key upon boot was the trigger. Still, I'm quite certain that these are all hard drive dependent. You'll either need to clone an identical lenovo drive onto the new one, or harass lenovo for some kind of restore DVD.

As for the drive cloning, there's a free product called "clonezilla" that allows you to boot from a CD, and make an identical copy of one drive in a PC to a second drive in the same PC. It's handy. I only mention this because I feel there's a chance that this is (or is at least similar to) the laptops your company uses?

Once you're back up and running, google up and download "Classic Shell" if you don't have it already. It'll get you back your start menu, and solve a few other minor windows 8 frustrations.. :)
 
budpytko

budpytko

Super Senior Associate
Bet it doesn't even have a built-in DVD drive! Prob a USB DVD drive. Levono is a China manufacturer.....good luck on ANY warranty. But there's GOTTA be SOME way to get into the restore software! I've been fighting a neighbors ASUS laptop. Gave up, his kid tripped over the power cord and now (even with the connector unsoldered from the motherboard) shows a direct short. It is now all dismembered and will be listing all it's innards on auction sites. Another brand I won't advise anyone to buy.

Oh yeah....WIN 8 sucks!
 
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chris2523

New member
he should not need a hard drive at all to boot from a USB disk.
the bios that handles that is all contained on the mother board. just need memory.

the Lenovo had some sort of button trick.
i like to think i had to HOLD the bios hot key, f12 or del or whatever, BEFORE hitting the power button.
if hit the bios key after, it didn't do what i needed.
 
Ford nut

Ford nut

New member
tixer said:
Based upon your analysis, the thing is screaming (perhaps literally) for a new hard drive.. This would certainly explain why none of the restore efforts have worked. Is it still under warranty? (likely only a year for OEM stuff these days, I'm afraid..)

If the thing doesn't already have an SSD in it, this is a great excuse to upgrade. The performance is incredible, and 250g drives have slipped into the $120 range recently.

The down-side to that is that you likely don't have restore media..

In the off chance that it is not the hard drive, I have noticed that a few of the windows 8 devices I've seen so far have some "more clever than average" restore partitions built into them. Often there's either some 2-3 key combination to whack repeatedly on startup, or on the tablet devices, I believe holding the "volume up" key upon boot was the trigger. Still, I'm quite certain that these are all hard drive dependent. You'll either need to clone an identical lenovo drive onto the new one, or harass lenovo for some kind of restore DVD.

As for the drive cloning, there's a free product called "clonezilla" that allows you to boot from a CD, and make an identical copy of one drive in a PC to a second drive in the same PC. It's handy. I only mention this because I feel there's a chance that this is (or is at least similar to) the laptops your company uses?

Once you're back up and running, google up and download "Classic Shell" if you don't have it already. It'll get you back your start menu, and solve a few other minor windows 8 frustrations.. :)
Click to expand...
My newer Toshiba did the same thing, wont boot to anything, not BIOS nothing.
Jason gave me a new HD...I installed it, I couldn't get the dam thing to boot to the dvd drive to install the OS.....:love-it:
It was explained to me newer laptops have a mini drive that "or flash drive" it boots from first to have the OS boot up faster odds are that is what is wrong with this Toshiba Satellite.
Its tossing a grand out the window....because of course its out of warranty.
JP....can you boot to BIOS?
Safe mode?
I also hate windows 8 ...there is a Registry change you can make to have 8 act just like 7.
 
M

M Darrah

New member
I know this doesn't help you with your current issue, but when I bought my laptop which came with Windows 8, I bought a copy of Windows 7 at the same time. As soon as I got it unpacked I formatted the drive and installed 7. Not only do you get a working OS, but you eliminate all the crapware they install for "free" that slows the system to a crawl. Seriously, F Windows 8!
 
driller

driller

El Presidente
I can get to BIOS but even when forcing the USB thumb drive to the top of the boot list... nothing. The thumb drive boots as it should in another Lenova machine. Our IT department set up the thumb drive to specifically 'repair' Windows 8 installations but they are stumped as am I.

I turned it over to the IT department at work today even though it's my personal laptop. I gave them liberty to put in a 256GB SSD drive with a fresh install of Windows 8.1 if that's what it takes to get it back up and running.

I've been an SSD fanatic for quite some time. My work laptop has two 500GB SSD drives mirrored Raid 1.
 
Mike P

Mike P

c:enter
Staff member
did you try kicking it? I find kicking things makes them work better, just saying :thumbsup:
 
M

MaddShadez

New member
Probably too little too late but starting with the "40" models, such as the T540s we use at work, in order to boot from USB the BIOS needs to have secure boot disabled as well as the "UEFI/Legacy" boot switched to Legacy only. PITA when you have to image dozens of computers at a time like i do :(
 
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