Laptop stuck booting

Hi there,

Yesterday out of the blue (though i suspect it was after a Nov 22 update), my laptop shut down suddenly. Afterwards, multiple programs like Chrome and Firefox were not working properly. I checked windows event viewer, and there were multiple bad block errors. I used CrystalDiskInfo which advised Caution but nothing was seriously wrong. I then ran a chkdsk test which then asked me to restart. Upon restarting, it worked fine for a while and then froze hard which forced me to shut down. Subsequent attempts to log on worked but only to be greeted by a black screen with a cursor and slowly at that. I got on the Automatic Repair page and tried a system restore which failed saying I have a corrupt C drive. Then tried System reinstall of windows which failed. This is alongside multiple long 'Scanning and repairing C drive or //?/systempartiton' and 'Diagnosing your PC' which doesn't fix it. I tried booting into safe mode which doesnt work.

I also wanted to try sfc scannow on a cmd from Automatic Repair but now the laptop stays on the Lenovo logo and a spinning circle - force shutting down isnt making the Repair process appear Sometimes the logo just appears on its own for a while till the circle appears.

It seems that I will need to buy another harddrive, but I would still like to try installing Windows through a usb.

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks!

Laptop is a Lenovo Ideapad Z500.

Hi, if your disk is failing, there's really no point, unless you want to familiarise yourself with the installation procedure and prepare a bootable disk. For that you need a working PC of course- or at least one you can boot with an external bootable disk.

You may wish to try to recover some data from it first, if you've not got everything backed up.

Of course, if you have been using disk imaging as we constantly recommend, when you get your new disk you will just need to restore your disk image to that disk and you'll be up and running exactly as your were (E.g. Macrium reflect (free) + external storage for disk image sets).

Here's the clean install procedure:
Get an iso:
Download Windows 10 ISO File
create bootable disk: (or you could burn a DVD if you have a DVD drive)
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
how to do a clean install:
Clean Install Windows 10


Please feel free to search the extensive tutorials:
Windows 10 Tutorial Index Tutorials