Windows 10: Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair

Discus and support Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware to solve the problem; I have an ASUS laptop which came with Win 8, upgraded to Win 8.1 then upgraded to Win 10. Had a problem of rebooting unexpectedly. Restore did not... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware' started by 2bretired, Aug 15, 2016.

  1. 2bretired Win User

    Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair


    I have an ASUS laptop which came with Win 8, upgraded to Win 8.1 then upgraded to Win 10. Had a problem of rebooting unexpectedly. Restore did not help. Having problems getting a rescue disk to boot up ( ASUS bios is a bit odd to set up for CD/DVD boot ) so decided to do a repair as I have an original Win 10 usb installation stick and when it booted up I tried to do a repair. But it came back as unable to do a repair as hard drive is locked! what does this mean.

    I have run a program that has given me my activation code and was wondering if I reinstalled Win 10 do I use this activation code or just reinstall and bypass activation code!

    Thanks Bob

    :)
     
    2bretired, Aug 15, 2016
    #1

  2. hard drive locked windows 10

    There is no switch on a hard drive or other method that physically locks it. Any error received that the drive is locked is generated because it is viewed as locked by Windows. But Windows has absolutely no say over what you can do with the hard drive
    from Boot Mode, hence fixes given for a "Locked Drive" include to boot into repair media to run

    Startup Repair,
    a full
    Disk Check
    , manually run the bootrec/bootsect repair commands (automated in Startup Repair), try further repairs using web fixes such as

    Fix - The drive where Windows is installed is locked,



    unlock hard drive - Windows 10 Forums



    Windows crash - Refresh - Hard drive locked, unlock hard drive - Microsoft Community,

    The drive where Windows is installed is locked Windows 10

    Solved Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair - Windows 10 Forums or to just wipe all partitions to

    Clean Install Windows 10
    .

    More discussion about this is here at
    Drive Where Windows is Installed is Locked - Windows - Off-Topic / General Discussion


    Since the OP had the Upgrade I was giving him the shortest likely method to recover it by wiping the drive to

    Clean Install Windows 10
    which clears the boot sector at issue in the error while providing a much better install than the Upgrade. The Clean Install in the link has been done by tens of thousands of consumers here without a single complaint, while we
    still get problems posted about Upgrade and factory installs every few minutes.

    Additional repair options are here including everything possible for
    Troubleshooting Windows 8 and 10 Failure to Start - Microsoft Community.
    One of these repairs almost always works for locked drives because the drive is not really physically locked.

    As both Wiki's explain one can also at any time rescue files which are not properly backed up using bootable media following

    Rescue Files when Windows Won't Start.


    I hope this helps clarify this better for those who find this issue in searches.
     
    Greg Carmack - Windows MVP, Aug 15, 2016
    #2
  3. Windows 10 won't reinstall

    Start in Windows 10 safemode. Save all your data to a usb. When you format a hard drive it erases all data.

    As mentioned earlier consider letting the hard drive mfg's repair software repair the hard drive.

    Then reinstall with Win 10 formatting also.
     
    Andrew P Jones, Aug 15, 2016
    #3
  4. simrick Win User

    Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair

    Hi.
    Once W10 has been installed and activated on a machine, it can be clean-installed as often as you like/need, and it will auto-activate based on the signature on the MS servers, so no key needed.

    The issue of the "locked" HDD may be due to Fast Startup being enabled.

    I'm not sure if there is any way to get into a system that won't boot, and turn Fast Startup off, so a clean install is probably your best bet. Being as how your machine was upgraded a couple of times, it probably has a lot of partitions on there leftover from the previous installations. I would recommend clean installing to an unallocated drive, so you can get rid of the partition mess.

    Select Custom Install (see step 10) and delete all your partitions.

    Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

    I would also get a copy of the latest install media from MS, if you have access to another computer (but it's not absolutely necessary).

    Hope that helps.

    p.s. - Once the new installation is complete, turn off Fast Startup and turn on System Restore. *Wink
     
    simrick, Aug 16, 2016
    #4
  5. 2bretired Win User
    Thanks, Now I am waiting for Win 10 anniversary to install, another set of bugs to iron out!

    Thanks again Bob
     
    2bretired, Aug 16, 2016
    #5
  6. simrick Win User
    Quite welcome. Once you're up and running, you can mark the thread as solved. Cheers!
     
    simrick, Apr 5, 2018
    #6
Thema:

Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair

Loading...
  1. Hard drive locked trying a Win 10 repair - Similar Threads - Hard drive locked

  2. my hard drive is not repairing

    in Windows 10 Software and Apps
    my hard drive is not repairing: When I plug in my hard drive, the scanning and repair notification pops up so I press repair. The green loading bar gets finishes in about 2-3 minutes but it stays like that. I let it sit like that for a couple hours because I assumed I had a lot on my hard drive so it needed...
  3. my hard drive is not repairing

    in Windows 10 Gaming
    my hard drive is not repairing: When I plug in my hard drive, the scanning and repair notification pops up so I press repair. The green loading bar gets finishes in about 2-3 minutes but it stays like that. I let it sit like that for a couple hours because I assumed I had a lot on my hard drive so it needed...
  4. hard drive is locked

    in Windows 10 BSOD Crashes and Debugging
    hard drive is locked: After the last win update my hard drive with the operating system is locked. How can I unlock the hard drive? I've tried in Command Prompt. It didn't work. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/hard-drive-is-locked/fdb8b2a1-fd87-4b1e-b499-3fe365d30e4b
  5. Create Win 10 repair drive on USB hard drive?

    in Windows 10 Installation and Upgrade
    Create Win 10 repair drive on USB hard drive?: On my new Win10 laptop with separate OS and Data drives, I want to create recovery / repair on a FAT32? hard drive partition rather than on a USB stick, and then store individual PC OS images in NTFS partitions on the same hard drive. I have created a FAT32 32GB partition...
  6. hard drive/ Win 10

    in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware
    hard drive/ Win 10: I have an HP touch screen laptop with a bad hard drive and wanted to install a hard drive froma Toshiba with problems but a good hard drive. I want to remove everything that has to do with Toshiba from the hard drive and load Windows 10. I had tried the Toshiba hard drive and...
  7. How to repair a Hard drive

    in Windows 10 Drivers and Hardware
    How to repair a Hard drive: Hi i have a 2 TB Seagate internal HDD, I am unsure what happened, it’s not very old and has always been fitted inside a PC case, so hasn’t been knocked. Windows refuses to boot up with it connected. I unplugged the Sata data lead, allowed windows to boot then reconnected...
  8. Lock Hard Drive

    in Windows 10 Ask Insider
    Lock Hard Drive: Hello fellow redditors. My laptop has a 32GB SSD and 500GB Hard Drive. I've installed windows on the SSD and now I want to lock in order to not install anything else on it and allow only Windows stuff to go in it. Thanks. submitted by /u/galaxytl [link] [comments]...
  9. Win 10 installs and locks my hard drive, error: 0x490

    in Windows 10 Support
    Win 10 installs and locks my hard drive, error: 0x490: I lost everything that wasn't backed up a loooong time ago. I had to Boot & Nuke with Darik's software. Then reinstall Win 7. Then I thought maybe Win 10 would work, nope, locked again after installing! So just give up? Try Linux? How does anyone talk to MS? How has...
  10. Hard Drive Locked

    in Windows 10 Support
    Hard Drive Locked: Hello so before this problem occurred I attempted to transfer my main drive with Windows 10 on it to a larger drive using the western digital software. After this my computer restarted, and when I tried signed in I would get a flickering screen/black screen with cursor. I...