Laptop will not boot up after new battery fitted.

[RBS]

Hi there. After my Assus laptop battery stopped accepting a charge (wouldn't even work when plugged in) I abandoned it and bought a new laptop. As there is stuff on there I would like to keep I eventually bought a new battery for it which now holds a charge ok.
Problem now is when I start it up I get the following message:
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem.
1, Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer ( windows came pre installed so can't do that)
Next stage needs the above done first.
Next instruction is, If you do not have this disc contact your system administrator (that's me?) or manufacturer for assistance.
Status Oxc0000185 Info: An unexpected error has occurred.

When I first fitted the battery I did manage to get to the start screen a couple of times but no further and now just get a black screen with the Windows Boot Manager message as above.

Any ideas please? Thanks.

 

[jimscreechy]

Most probably the boot sector of the disk in your Asus is damaged. You will need to repair it to be able to boot from it, or reinstall windows.

Since you want some data off this Asus laptop, I'd get these files first before attempting any boot repair. The easiest way to do it is to boot from a USB drive, and copy the stuff you need from the laptop to this, or another USB connected drive.

Once you have got the stuff you want off, you can decide if you want to bother with repair process, reinstall, give it to someone to fix or take it to the dump.

There are plenty of software applications that you can use to make a USB drive to boot from. Some are easier to use than others. I'm sure the members will submit their suggestions following this post, though I tend to use and recommend @active boot disk from LSoft Technologies. It's free to use without functional restrictions for 7days, which means you don't have to buy it to rescue your data, and its quite easy to navigate.

Make a boot disk using the software (and use a USB drive big enough to hold the data you need to save... unless you have another external drive you can use to copy stuff to)
Boot from the USB disk you've made. Use the computer explorer to navigate to the internal drive on your Asus, find the files/directories you want and copy them to the USB drive or another connected USB drive.

You will need to go into the BIOS of your Asus at startup, and tell it to boot from USB since by default it will try to boot from its internal drive. Sometimes you will get a startup menu if a bootable removable drive is detected, so you could just try pluging the drive in an seeing what pops up first.

Hope this helps.

 

[DavidG1]

I would recommend hirens bootCD PE, it’s free. This boots into a mini windows environment live off the USB and you should be able to copy off your files to an external hard drive that way

Hiren's BootCD PE

Either follow the USB booting tab on the hirens link or use something like rufus.ie to make a bootable USB

 

[RBS]

Thanks for the info Jim and David. I'll have a look at doing what you suggest but I think I will end up getting somebody to do it for me.