The friend is experiencing difficulties and requires assistance.
The friend is experiencing difficulties and requires assistance.
In short, his computer isn’t functioning properly. It restarts several times yet nothing appears. It seems like a hard drive issue, but it doesn’t make sense. The main issues are: when he opens Task Manager, it shows a black screen; he claims his files are missing; and he can’t access the control panel, Steam, or settings. I’m not sure what to say anymore—any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, vK
It seems the hard drive is not functioning properly. Advise him to cease using it immediately, purchase a replacement, and bring it to a data recovery specialist or store. They should attempt to salvage any usable information from the damaged unit and transfer it to the new drive.
Tell him to cease using his PC right away. Keeping that hard drive in this condition might cause irreversible harm, making the data permanently lost. The more he relies on it, the greater the damage becomes.
Tell him to attempt "sfc/scannow" via the elevated command prompt (unless it doesn't work on Windows 10). His system appears corrupted—possibly due to a damaged hard drive or malware. Immediately back up as much data as you can from the drive.
If it is indeed a hard drive failure, sorry but you're friend is probably screwed by now. However, if it's the OS that's failing, there's still hope. Download a live OS on a usb and plug it to the computer (when off, of course). Then, when booting the pc again, make sure to enter the 'boot menu' (usually done pressing F12) and choose the USB in the bios menu you'll be given. When the live OS has booted, tell him to look on his hard drive (via this live os) and see if everything's ok. If it is, grab everything he values and store it on another external hard drive / usb and proceed to hard format that hard drive. P.S.: make sure you make a "full shutdown" of windows before trying to boot the usb live OS, or it won't be able to access any of the data in the hard drive. This can be done pressing "Shift" while turning it off or by restarting the computer; in this case you have to plug the usb while Windows is shutting down.