Drive Where Windows is Installed is Locked

[alexdale94]

I upgraded to Windows 8.1 yesterday and I have been having trouble so I am trying to do a Refresh.
It says "the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again"
What is wrong? What do I do?

 

[Graff Spencer]

all else fails you can run repair commands to fix the boot record

with bootrec.exe

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

This was my fix, using the USB recovery disc. Nice and painless and thank you!!!

How long did it take you? I found this method to be the only one to do something. Just want to know how long it should take.

 

[hammer414]

you might want to run diskpart.exe as a admin
and see if your disk or partition has been marked as read only.

start cmd.exe as a admin
diskpart.exe
list disk
select disk 0 <----------- from the output of the previous command
attributes disk <-------- displays the attributes of that drive

see if it is marked as readonly
here is what mine shows:
DISKPART> attributes disk
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

if it is not marked readonly i would check the partition tables attrbutes

list volume
seclect volume 2 <-------- this is my windows drive
attributes volume <---------this will dump your volume info

here is what mine looks like:

DISKPART> attributes volume
Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No

again you are looking for it being marked as readonly.

if they are marked readonly you can clear the attribute

all else fails you can run repair commands to fix the boot record

with bootrec.exe

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

sorry if this seems complex, it is just a shame to have to wipe a drive for this problem

The DISKPART scenario worked fine. My initial SSD with Win8.1 was set to Read-Only. Now it's formatted.
Thanks.

Hi, this is what I got..
Virtual disk service error:
the object is not found

 

[Lanke5]

I had the same problem. What happened is that after a Windows Automatic Update, my hard drive got corrupted by the Update. The computer went into an automatic repair mode on the hard drive. After an hour I turned it off, which was a mistake. This process can take as much as six hours. I could do nothing with Refresh and Restore and was completely locked out of Windows. If it happens again I will leave the automatic repair on until it completes, but I will never Automatically Update Windows again.
I could find nothing useful on the internet to help and local computer repair people wanted as much as $150 to "diagnose it". Fortunately, I looked at an old computer repair book and it advised using the chkdsk /f command at the command prompt, which is available from the trouble shooting screen. This worked: it deleted the corrupt files and redirected the files that had lost threads caused by the update. Be aware that the process took about an hour on my 500 gigabyte hard drive. After this I was successfully able to use the Restore option that put my computer back to factory state. Keep in mind that this took six hours to do, I had to leave it on overnight. When I got up I had Windows 8 again.

 

[WhoisRNavi]

You want to know how I fixed it, since I had to completely whip my hard drive? This is an answer Microsoft will not give you, but it does work and works well, even with creating a recovery drive, recreating the missing partition and unlocking the hard drive. Crazy how one simple missing file can screw up a computer, https://www.winhelp.us/create-a-recovery-drive-in-windows-8.html

more specifically,

https://www.winhelp.us/restore-windows-re.html#recovery

It has to do with the Windows Recovery Environment.

Save you some time and money.

For the ISO depending on your software
Windows 8: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-8-enterprise
Windows 8.1: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-8-1-enterprise
Windows 10: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise

Here you go! There's the answer! Get to unlocking your hard drive.

 

[Mark Jhean]

I have the same problem I tried the steps given on command prompt ang I selected volume 2 and next I type attributes volume .it appears that virtual disk error:the object is not found.what should I do?

 

[virtual_man]

johnjbl - thanks man! My son's laptop was in real problems not booting up, but ater trying your 3 bootrec fixes, and then doing chkdsk, it was fixed. Brilliant!

 

[MMiha]

Hi all,

I am having the same problem with locked disk.

Comp:

Lenoyo Y50
I7
16 GB
Crucial SSD mx100 256 GB
Preinstalled win8 upgraded to win 10



I have been trying with :

Recovery usb :

I type c:\ in cmd it says Acces denied, when i try it again it says The disc is write protected 🙁

Tried Diskpart :


list volume :

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status
Volume 0 C RAW Partition 214 GB Healthy
Volume 1 RAW Partition 6174 MB Healthy
Volume 2 E RAW Partition 1000 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 3 System drv FAT32 Partition 260 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 4 F RAW Partition 15 GB Healthy Hidden
Volume 5 G OBNOVITEV FAT32 Removable 14 GB Healthy



All attibutes are : No. On disk and volume

Readonly : No
Bootdisk: no
Pagefile disk : No ...

Tried to clear readonly anyway : Diskpart failed to clear disk attributes.

Tried to set readonly just in case : Diskpart failed to set disk attributes.

Chkdsk Cannot write as disk is locked:

bootrec - cannot do anything as the disk is still locked.


Have been trying every solution, that I have found online, but the drive still appears locked.

Please help, as I have 14 hours of work - not backuped .

Thak you all.

Miha

 

[kike__]

I did try all the above, nothing worked.

Finally found my solution with TestDisk (running it from LMint live cd).

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

My problem was that I did messed up the partition table. TestDisk can either fix it or help you to recover your important files.

Hope it helps.
beloved patriot

 

[Nick92885]

I had this problem, too. At first, I thought, oh no! Turns out my issue wasn't as serious some; and here's what I found. I followed some steps outlined in this thread, then stopped because nothing was helping. I gave some thought to this, and asked myself what could have changed in my system? Since the drive was "locked" and also being seen as RAW, this just made no sense whatsoever. I rebooted, immediately hit F12, checked my BIOS, and discovered that my RAID array was turned off! What? I checked the battery. Duh! It was dead, and the BIOS simply forgot the settings. I installed a new battery, I turned the RAID array back on, and BOOM! Everything works! The point of my response is to help remind everyone to stop and think things through before you panic and try a lot of potentially unnecessary steps. When in doubt, start with the basics! Hopefully, you too will experience a simple solution for your system!

 

[srf058]

I had the same problem after what I think was a Microsoft forced update over night. This morning the screen showed something about an i/o error. When I tried to reboot it brought me to a screen with 10 or so options for rebooting. Interestingly the instructions at the beginning and end were in English but the description of each option was in Italian! Go figure.

Anyway, I tried a bunch of suggestion from various posts to no avail. I decided to check, again, that the machine was booting from the correct drive. There were two listed but the descriptions were cryptic. I looked them up using another computer and found that some how the bios had been changed to boot from a drive that is only used as storage. I switched them back so it would boot from the proper drive.

On restarting the computer went through some "updating: messages then booted correctly.

I have not idea how the drives got switched. Yesterday was Christmas and I was gone all day and no one was on the machine. The fact that the machine "updated" after starting makes me think it was a Microsoft update.

Hope this helps

Dan

 

[godspunisher]

Hope someone can help me. Here is my issue with W8. I was going to use a bootable W7 flash drive but I wans't able to boot it. So, I went into the BIOS and just changed the UEFI to CSM boot and rebooted. Now it keeps saying PXE-M0F, please insert bookable media or dvd. It seems the flash drive image was corrupted. Now, I have pushed esc, f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6,f7,f8,f9,f10,f11,f12,del to try and access the BIOS again, but neither key works. Also, neither key gives me the option to choose the boot order or access the advanced options. I am pulling my hair trying to revert it back to UEFI boot, but not working. It is a toshiba P855-S5321with W8. Any help would be appreciated, please!

 

[xxtraccxx]

I upgraded to Windows 8.1 yesterday and I have been having trouble so I am trying to do a Refresh.
It says "the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again"
What is wrong? What do I do?

hi have you tried taking hard drive out and starting laptop with any usb stick or dvd? It will say no os found put hard drive back and try starting it up. This worked for me after 3 days of messing around with bootrec etc.

 

[xxtraccxx]

without any usb or dvd i meant

 

[xxtraccxx]

I had the same problem. After working fine for months, Windows 8 (on an SSD) would not boot. I booted the machine from Win 8 CD; automatic repair and refresh did not work, diskpart and bootrec suggestions did not work. A simple solution that I did not expect to work actually worked: I put the SSD into an external USB sata disk cradle, and plugged that into another Windows 8 machine. The SSD and its volume was recognized and I was able to copy all of the data off of it.

Hi all,

I am having the same problem with locked disk.

Comp:

Lenoyo Y50
I7
16 GB
Crucial SSD mx100 256 GB
Preinstalled win8 upgraded to win 10



I have been trying with :

Recovery usb :

I type c:\ in cmd it says Acces denied, when i try it again it says The disc is write protected 🙁

Tried Diskpart :


list volume :

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status
Volume 0 C RAW Partition 214 GB Healthy
Volume 1 RAW Partition 6174 MB Healthy
Volume 2 E RAW Partition 1000 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 3 System drv FAT32 Partition 260 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 4 F RAW Partition 15 GB Healthy Hidden
Volume 5 G OBNOVITEV FAT32 Removable 14 GB Healthy



All attibutes are : No. On disk and volume

Readonly : No
Bootdisk: no
Pagefile disk : No ...

Tried to clear readonly anyway : Diskpart failed to clear disk attributes.

Tried to set readonly just in case : Diskpart failed to set disk attributes.

Chkdsk Cannot write as disk is locked:

bootrec - cannot do anything as the disk is still locked.


Have been trying every solution, that I have found online, but the drive still appears locked.

Please help, as I have 14 hours of work - not backuped .

Thak you all.

Miha

 

[xxtraccxx]

try this solution for saving your data. From your recovery usb go into cmd prompt type notepad.exe it will open notepad. next press ctrl and O keys, a window should appear which says save as. Where it says file name make sure it is blank and where it says save as type make sure it says all files. you should be able to have option to send files( right click on selected file) to dvd or another usb drive or external device.

 

[Omer_6]

from my understanding, a lot of people have had this problem.
following the steps in this link should fix it, if not, let us know.

http://www.boyans.net/RepairWindows/The_drive_where_Windows_is_installed_is_locked.html

 

[Advo96]

I believe a big reason for "locked SSDs" is basically data corruption due to an unexpected power loss for the SSD.
All consumer-grade SSDs are subject to the risk of data loss when they suddenly lose power. The computer is supposed to send the SSD a signal "standby_immediate" to prevent that, but Windows 10 appears to not send that signal as often as it should.
Since I upgraded to Windows 10 I had frequent problems where the SSD had to run some kind of internal reconstruction routine when I booted it up - that happened for example every time I tried to put the PC into hibernation.
Just recently, after the battery on my laptop ran out, the drive got locked and I couldn't restore it, I was just able to pull all the important data from it using testdisk.

 

[drums2metal]

Hope someone can help me. Here is my issue with W8. I was going to use a bootable W7 flash drive but I wans't able to boot it. So, I went into the BIOS and just changed the UEFI to CSM boot and rebooted. Now it keeps saying PXE-M0F, please insert bookable media or dvd. It seems the flash drive image was corrupted. Now, I have pushed esc, f1,f2,f3,f4,f5,f6,f7,f8,f9,f10,f11,f12,del to try and access the BIOS again, but neither key works. Also, neither key gives me the option to choose the boot order or access the advanced options. I am pulling my hair trying to revert it back to UEFI boot, but not working. It is a toshiba P855-S5321with W8. Any help would be appreciated, please!

sometimes when taking the machine out of uefi mode, u stop all usb ports from functioning. you literally need to go to an old thrift shop or goodwill and buy the old key/mouse that have the old school green and purple ps/2 jacks. i just did this same thing myself. i have the same issue as the OP but i did the same thing you did this week and it messed me all up. ll luckily my dad is a pretty good go to person for these simple screw ups and i got back to where i was

 

[dogday911]

I had the same locked drive problem in windows 10. Using windows 10 install on a USB stick to boot the computer went into repair options and under advanced selected command prompt. I also found that 5 minutes doing the following worked. Note: my usb stick was x: and windows was identified on e: so when it came time to run bootrec.exe /RebuildBCD it found windows on e: and asked me to confirm that it was my windows partition, I selected 'Y' and on next boot windows 10 started up.

all else fails you can run repair commands to fix the boot record

with bootrec.exe

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

sorry if this seems complex, it is just a shame to have to wipe a drive for this problem

 

[adelskyb]

I upgraded to Windows 8.1 yesterday and I have been having trouble so I am trying to do a Refresh.
It says "the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again"
What is wrong? What do I do?