Hard drive corrupt after a WinXP install

[tricard]

I have been having troubles with my computer for about the last month,
so this morning I decided it was time for a reformat (which is
something I typically do once a year). The reinstallation of WinXP went
fine, but when I was getting all of the security updates from Windows
update the computer just turned off and reset without any warning. When
I rebooted, the computer reset again right after WinXP bootup. This
happened about three times, then I decided to boot up in safe mode. It
completed installing some hardware then after another reboot it started
up fine.

Next, I had to reformat one of my partitions, but it stopped at the
very end of formatting and never completed. So I manually reset the
computer, then upon reboot "boot.ini not found" error occurred; it has
been all down hill from there. I tried reinstalling XP, but to no
avail. When I was in the blue screen setup for XP my other two partions
read as being completely empty and unformatted.

I have three partions on a 120GB hard disk of which C: held the WinXP
OS, D: held all my program files and E: held all my data (i.e.
documents, saves, source code etc.) I did this in such a way so I
wouldn't run into a problem with backing up if I had to reformat the
booted partition, however now the E: drive which was not touched or
reformatted is reading as 0MB and unformatted. I tried the hard drive
on another computer in the house and C:\ has a few Windows install
files that managed to copy over during the second install, and D:\ and
E:\ are both being read as unformatted with 0MB/0MB used hard drive
sapce.

I don't care if I have to buy a new hard drive (though I think the
computer itself is likely screwed), but I do need to know if there is a
way to get the data off of the E:\ drive since I have alot of
school/career/personal information on there that cannot be 100%
replaced. I thought maybe Partition Magic or some other SW suite;
anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the help (and sorry for the long message)

Tim

specs:
1.6AMHz Pentium IV
120GB Mator hard drive
MSI SiS (can't remember chipset) mother board (478 pin socket)
512MB RAM
WinXP Pro (bought version, not cracked, hacked or burned in any way)

sorry for the cross post, but I though both groups seemed reasonable.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have been having troubles with my computer for about the last
month, so this morning I decided it was time for a reformat (which
is something I typically do once a year). The reinstallation of
WinXP went fine, but when I was getting all of the security updates
from Windows update the computer just turned off and reset without
any warning. When I rebooted, the computer reset again right after
WinXP bootup. This happened about three times, then I decided to
boot up in safe mode. It completed installing some hardware then
after another reboot it started up fine.

Next, I had to reformat one of my partitions, but it stopped at the
very end of formatting and never completed. So I manually reset the
computer, then upon reboot "boot.ini not found" error occurred; it
has been all down hill from there. I tried reinstalling XP, but to
no avail. When I was in the blue screen setup for XP my other two
partions read as being completely empty and unformatted.

I have three partions on a 120GB hard disk of which C: held the
WinXP OS, D: held all my program files and E: held all my data (i.e.
documents, saves, source code etc.) I did this in such a way so I
wouldn't run into a problem with backing up if I had to reformat the
booted partition, however now the E: drive which was not touched or
reformatted is reading as 0MB and unformatted. I tried the hard
drive on another computer in the house and C:\ has a few Windows
install files that managed to copy over during the second install,
and D:\ and E:\ are both being read as unformatted with 0MB/0MB
used hard drive sapce.

I don't care if I have to buy a new hard drive (though I think the
computer itself is likely screwed), but I do need to know if there
is a way to get the data off of the E:\ drive since I have alot of
school/career/personal information on there that cannot be 100%
replaced. I thought maybe Partition Magic or some other SW suite;
anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the help (and sorry for the long message)

Tim

specs:
1.6AMHz Pentium IV
120GB Mator hard drive
MSI SiS (can't remember chipset) mother board (478 pin socket)
512MB RAM
WinXP Pro (bought version, not cracked, hacked or burned in any way)

sorry for the cross post, but I though both groups seemed
reasonable.

So - what you are saying is that you have hardware that has possibly gone
bad and your backups are far from current?

It almost sounds like your partition table may have been somewhat scrambled.
You may want to look into a WinPE (BartPE actually) CD to boot from and see
if you can even see the drives any longer through a Windows environment or
if you are looking at getting some third party recovery tools.

You might even be able to image using something like GHOST or TRUEIMAGE and
then read the files you wantr off the image.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have been having troubles with my computer for about the last month,
so this morning I decided it was time for a reformat (which is
something I typically do once a year). The reinstallation of WinXP went
fine, but when I was getting all of the security updates from Windows
update the computer just turned off and reset without any warning. When
I rebooted, the computer reset again right after WinXP bootup. This
happened about three times, then I decided to boot up in safe mode. It
completed installing some hardware then after another reboot it started
up fine.

Next, I had to reformat one of my partitions, but it stopped at the
very end of formatting and never completed. So I manually reset the
computer, then upon reboot "boot.ini not found" error occurred; it has
been all down hill from there. I tried reinstalling XP, but to no
avail. When I was in the blue screen setup for XP my other two partions
read as being completely empty and unformatted.

I have three partions on a 120GB hard disk of which C: held the WinXP
OS, D: held all my program files and E: held all my data (i.e.
documents, saves, source code etc.) I did this in such a way so I
wouldn't run into a problem with backing up if I had to reformat the
booted partition, however now the E: drive which was not touched or
reformatted is reading as 0MB and unformatted. I tried the hard drive
on another computer in the house and C:\ has a few Windows install
files that managed to copy over during the second install, and D:\ and
E:\ are both being read as unformatted with 0MB/0MB used hard drive
sapce.

I don't care if I have to buy a new hard drive (though I think the
computer itself is likely screwed), but I do need to know if there is a
way to get the data off of the E:\ drive since I have alot of
school/career/personal information on there that cannot be 100%
replaced. I thought maybe Partition Magic or some other SW suite;
anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the help (and sorry for the long message)

Tim

specs:
1.6AMHz Pentium IV
120GB Mator hard drive
MSI SiS (can't remember chipset) mother board (478 pin socket)
512MB RAM
WinXP Pro (bought version, not cracked, hacked or burned in any way)

sorry for the cross post, but I though both groups seemed reasonable.

If you want to recover data from the drive, stop using it and remove it from
the system. Install XP to a new or different hard disk, install the old
drive as a secondary or external disk, then use data recovery software to
see what you can dredge from it.

If you encounter problems during the install to the new drive, you can
consider that there are other issues, for example damaged memory, that could
prevent you from successfully recovering data from your old drive.

HTH
-pk

 

[tricard]

Thank you for the help Patrick and Shenan.

PE Builder is more of a hassel than anything else, as it is unable to
create from any of my XP versions (mine, my wife's or my roommate's).

What is a good data recovery software?

Tim