i went to restart and all i got was a blue screen and a F1 at the botton and a F10 at the bottom and then i locked up and could do nothing.. i took out the hard drive and put it in a enclosure kit and tryed to get the info off it but all it will say is the drive isnt formated.. i put it back in the coumper and it will try to start goes to the boot page and checks the memory and then goes to start in safe , safe with command prompt etc but when i pick one it just comes back right to the same place.. in a loop.. HELP Bob...

Dani AI

Generated

This looks like a classic failing hard drive. is correct to suspect drive failure, and 's detail that the disk was briefly readable in an enclosure but later showed as "not formatted" strongly points to an intermittent/physical problem. If the files matter, stop trying to boot or write to the drive — do not initialize or format it in Disk Management, and avoid running recovery operations that write to the disk.

Safe, stepwise approach:

  1. Verify whether the BIOS or another machine sees the drive, but decline any "initialize" prompts.
  2. Run read-only diagnostics first: use the drive maker's non-destructive tests (SeaTools for Seagate, WD Data Lifeguard for Western Digital) and check SMART attributes with a reader like CrystalDiskInfo to confirm reallocated sectors or other faults (SeaTools, WD Data Lifeguard, CrystalDiskInfo).
  3. If SMART/tests report problems or you need to recover files, create a Linux live USB and image the failing disk to a good drive with a block-copy tool that handles bad sectors (GNU ddrescue), then attempt file/partition recovery from the image with TestDisk/PhotoRec (Ubuntu live-USB guide, ddrescue, TestDisk).

If imaging/recovery fails or the drive has loud clicks, consider professional data recovery. If data is not needed, replacing the drive and reinstalling Windows is the reliable fix — formatting a dying disk often fails and wastes time.

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i took out the hard drive and put it in a enclosure kit and tryed to get the info off it but all it will say is the drive isnt formated../QUOTE] that the key to your problem ,the hard drive is gone bad

but the first time i put it in i could see the files and get the info on it.. but now i cant.. dose that mean i have to reformat it???

to me that means it going bad ,and formatting will likely fail also !

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