SpinRite won’t run on win7-64

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Hello – all,
Here’s one for the windows geeks!!! I’ ve had grc.com steve gibson’s spinrite maintenance utility for years.
It runs fine on my xp machines even win8. But on my Dell xps8100 , it refuses to run. Just by passes the cd and on to windows.
Grc. tech support tells me perhaps, I need to change in the bios settings to reflect (( compatibility )) mode? I have no idea what that should look like?? I don’t see anything in the bios set up an option to use that mode.

I’ve made many iso’s for linux and they all work fine. My bios is set to boot from the cd if necessary.
Grc. tells me it shouldn’t matter that my original CD was made on my xp machine..I’ve made several copies on my win7 and it still refuses to recognize the cd?
Any help greatly appreciated.
John in Dallas

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Chances are that SpinRite can’t access the hard drive because the BIOS is set to ACPI mode. Is there an option in your BIOS to change the hard drive mode to IDE, which is also called ‘compatibility mode’ by some manufacturers?

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SpinRite is in serious need of an version update by GRC’s Steve Gibson.

Yes, if you wish to run spinrite on a new system with AHCI mode, you will have to boot to BIOS and change the controller to IDE mode before
spinrite will work. Even doing that may potentially cause problems, as I have recently discovered myself.
You will also need to ensure that spinrite is not run on a solid state drive. It might just kill it.

Remember to boot back to BIOS once spinrite is done and change the drive controllers mode back to AHCI.

PS
My original SpinRite ISO boot thumb drive was made in the era of Windows XP and it works just fine on W8 too. Heed the above.

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The problem must be some local phenomenon, because I just ran it on my own Windows 7 Home Premium, 1TB Samsung, SATA II, hard drive with narry a problem.

I guess I’d have to check on those BIOS settings.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor

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Hi,

I wanted to run SpinRite V6 on Window 8.1 (lenovo i5). Despite changing the startup from CD-ROM, it doesn’t see SpinRite and reverts to the normal startup. How did you, or anyone for that matter managed to run SpinRite from Window 8 (8.1)?
This would be very useful as the Window 8 system is here to stay.

I would greatly appreciate any enlightenment on this.:rolleyes:

Thanks

animall

Hello – all,
Here’s one for the windows geeks!!! I’ ve had grc.com steve gibson’s spinrite maintenance utility for years.
It runs fine on my xp machines even win8. But on my Dell xps8100 , it refuses to run. Just by passes the cd and on to windows.
Grc. tech support tells me perhaps, I need to change in the bios settings to reflect (( compatibility )) mode? I have no idea what that should look like?? I don’t see anything in the bios set up an option to use that mode.

I’ve made many iso’s for linux and they all work fine. My bios is set to boot from the cd if necessary.
Grc. tells me it shouldn’t matter that my original CD was made on my xp machine..I’ve made several copies on my win7 and it still refuses to recognize the cd?
Any help greatly appreciated.
John in Dallas

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In Windows 8 or 8.1 Fast Startup must be turned off.

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I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop which I’ve converted to UEFI/GPT. Fast Start is disabled. To boot SpinRite, I go into Boot options and select Legacy CD/DVD Drive. I recently used it to check a disk in an eSATA drive dock plugged into an eSATA port on the laptop. It boots and works fine. It worked the same way in Windows 8.

On a BIOS motherboard, one must get out of AHCI and use ‘Legacy’, ‘IDE’, ‘ATA’, or something similar.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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