HP TouchSmart 600-1215xt not booting up. I've tried some troubleshooting but none of them fixed it.

[smartojus]

Hi Hewlett Packard Support

,

I'm Ojus, I've been tasked by my father to fix his desktop because there are some important files on it, so let me tell you what he told me happened. On Thursday night, my dad was using his HP TouchSmart 600-1215xt to print documents for passport and visa stuff. After his work was done, he shutdown the computer and went to sleep and came back the next day and booted it up. He found out that the computer wasn't booting up, so he decided to go to system recovery and that wasn't booting up either. He decided to ask for my help, so I have researched some things about the computer, troubleshooted, and here is what I have found. I don't have an idea as to what has happened, and it is important that we either fix the computer or get the hard drive out so the important files are safe. Let me discuss what I have found.

Before I discuss, Here is an imgur link, it has pictures of the stuff I found on the desktop awhile troubleshooting: https://imgur.com/a/0beIUuV

Troubleshooting: Booting Menu Options

I did unplug everything and plugged it back in to see if that would fix it, and it unfortunately didn't fix the problem.

Regular booting ended up just going to a black screen for a few minutes, and then it would go to windows error recovery. I would select launch start-up repair and then it would just be on a black screen.

So when the computer boots, you always get a screen with the manufacturers logo and then options to press certain function keys to boot certain files up, this is where I started.

1. F11 System Recovery- Since the system wasn't booting, I thought that system recovery is the best option, so I go there. The problem is, none of the system recovery options are showing up, all that shows up is the cursor and the blue background screensaver.(This is in the Imgur link). So System Recovery isn't booting up either.

2. F8 Safe Mode- This was my second thought, is to see if I can at least access the computer through safe mode so that we can at least get to the files. This ends up bringing Windows Error Recovery and the same thing happens as when trying to normally boot, it goes to a black screen.

3. F10 BIOS Setup- This is working, but I have literally no clue what the information there means and how it can help with this.

4. ESC Boot Menu- This is also working.

5. F12 Booting from LAN- This one is also working.

6. F9 System Diagnostics- This also works and it shows that every thing has passed the test.(This is in Imgur Link). The Hard Drive Test, Boot Test, CPU Test, S.M.A.R.T. Test, and Memory Test all passed.

This is what I found was and wasn't working from the boot menu screen, now onto the information I found out about the computer to make it easier for you people to figure it out.

Computer Information

1. I was able to figure out the Desktop is an HP TouchSmart 600-1215xt.

2. It has an Intel core i5, but I don't know the generation. I'm having trouble finding the specs for it online, and the CPU is all I know since there's a sticker for it on the desktop.

3. It is running Windows 7 Professional.

4. I took pics of the specifications on the computer, they are all in the Imgur link I provided earlier.

One more thing, every time I would turn the computer on and troubleshoot, I would hear a tick noise every few seconds, could this be the hard drive? Does this mean it might be failing or is close to failing and that's why its not booting? It could also be the fan, but I honestly have no clue.

This is what I have been able to do with my knowledge of computers, If you have any ideas or need me to do things on the computer let me know and I will test it out and report the findings back.

All your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks. 😄

[WAWood]

@smartojus 

Even though the diagnostics pass, the tick noise you're describing is very similar to the sound heard when a hard drive has "seek" errors and keeps trying to read a sector over and over again, and keeps failing.  So, I'm at a lost to understand why the diagnostics did not report this.

If this were my PC, I would focus on doing data recovery.  

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the hard drive from the old PC
2) Purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit (like the one illustrated below)

3) Connect the old drive to a working PC using that adapter
4) Try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free http://www.file-recovery.com/