Dropped netbook. Now freezing on Win7 startup screen

[JEDI]

google search says the hard drive is probably damaged and I need to do a chkdsk /f to find out.

but how do I boot to the cmd prompt?
it's a netbook so no cd drive.

 

[Torn Mind]

I actually have experience with this*. Your Windows partition is likely screwed and so is anything else in near that physical area of the drive. The rest of the drive might still be okay and open to partitioning but you must run a scan first to see the topology of the drive and where the damage is. I think ultimate boot cd can be used on USB sticks. You want to run Vivard and let it scan the drive(don't remap on the first scan. You might be able to save data with ddrescue, but you might not.

*My sister threw her netbook and the windows and one of the recovery patitions was borked. I was able to install Debian on a safe area of the drive and the drive still works.

 

[JEDI]

got to cmd line from win7 repair window.

did a chkdsk /r
" Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /f and /p). Unreadable data is lost. If CHKDSK cannot lock the volume, it offers to check it the next time the computer starts. "

boots to Win7 now!

got like 8megs worth of bad sectors, including the Win7 registry file.
I guess chkdsk /r managed to recover enuf data for the laptop to bootup.

 

[arandomguy]

Just be aware that even though you managed to recover there could be physical damage that will lead to premature failure or physical issues.

I would consider at the least backing up any important data at this point with the impression that any data on the drive could be unrecoverable without warning.