I'm running Windows 7 home premium and earlier this morning my pc crashed on me. I tried to boot it up but after getting past the Dell screen it would just sit there and the computer would make an annoying sound until i forced it to shut down. It would stay in that window. Because it didn't get far enough to even let me choose to hit f8 and boot in safe mode i hit f12 and made sure it was trying to boot from the harddrive, which it was. I than grabbed out my laptop and made myself a boot USB\Pen drive and told it to boot from the USB drive. It than begins like you wanted to install windows. I selected the option to repair your computer. It says "searching for windows installations..." Than comes back saying Windows found a problem with your computers startup options and to try asks if you want it to try and repair it and restart the computer. Two things happen when you try to repair it. One, it almost immediately shuts down or it says it's unable to fix it. If i cancel out of that there's a screen where, i suppose, my drives should be listed, or at least my OS. There are two options, one is, "Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting windows. Select an operating system to repair" but in the box below there are no OS's listed. below all that is another option that say "Restore your computer using a system imagine that you created earlier." If i try that option i get: "An internal error occurred. The fallowing information might help you resolve the error: The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)" Clicking ok on that takes you to the recovery tool, where if i try system restore (which is what i want to do) it says i most select an OS and if i try "system image recovery" i get the same message about not being able to find the file (0x80070002) there is an option to go into command prompt and i go in there and tried using the command, "sfc /scannow" and this is what i get. X:\Sources> sfc/scannow Beginning system scan. This process will take some time. There is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run sfc again. X:\Sources> Lastly, i have a Dell drivers and utilities cd that if i boot from takes me into an Alianwere diagnostic took and after a VERY long process of it checking EVERYTHING, it turns out my hardware is working fine and nothing is wrong. So, i'm out of ideas. Any help? I'd like to keep my files, what i was hoping was a system restore, or even a system repair, but i can't make either of those happen.

I think your systems disk is corrupted or has gone south. The data is gone so you can try to re-init it. If you can, you may attempt a new re-installation or you can attempt a restore from a systen image. Renee

Using this ISO http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso I used Windows 7 USB DVD Download tool to put it on my USB and when i try and restore from a system image i get the "The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)" error. I tried a new re-installation and it gave me the same error when i tried to use the recovery tool. Lastly, using the CD to boot, it won't boot into windows but it does take me into DOS.

if I understand correctly, you have a bootable usb\pen\flash drive that boots as the installation dvd. Did you also create an installation dvd? Where did you save the the complete pc system restore image that it says it cannot find? Do you know the manufacturer of the hard drive in the problem computer? It sure sounds like the drive physically failed the way you descibed the noise. You can download and burn a bootable disk tool (burns a cd) that will run a quick test on the drive from the manufacturer. Tell me who and I'll point you to it if you like.

Using a usb\pen\flash drive + an installation dvd i was able to install windows yet again on the harddrive and transfer all the stuff from "Windows Old" to the new OS. It wouldn't work with the flash alone or the dvd alone. Very strange. I'd still like to run a test on the hard drive if you could give me that link.

Using a usb\pen\flash drive + an installation dvd i was able to install windows yet again on the harddrive and transfer all the stuff from "Windows Old" to the new OS. It wouldn't work with the flash alone or the dvd alone. Very strange. I'd still like to run a test on the hard drive if you could give me that link. Click Start=>right-click Computer=>select manage=>select Device management=>click on the arrow for Disk Drives. Note the Manufaucturer's name and model of the drive. Visit the manufacturer's support site and locate the tools. You can also post it here and I'll assist if you wish.