Help!! Partition, drive

[R. L.]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. My question is that is there any freeware tool
I can use to solve this problem?

Do I need to re-partition the drive? My friend told me that
he does not have any important things in the disk so anything
can be wipe off. However, my problem is that if the system
cannot see the drive, I can do neither reformat nor reinstall.
Is there any freeware tool out there I can use for this?

On a seperate note, will running an XP installion work?

Thank you!!!




--
RL
My freeware page here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringomei/
********************************
Pricelessware:
http://www.pricelessware.org,
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org,

 

[Sparky]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. My question is that is there any freeware tool
I can use to solve this problem?

Do I need to re-partition the drive? My friend told me that
he does not have any important things in the disk so anything
can be wipe off. However, my problem is that if the system
cannot see the drive, I can do neither reformat nor reinstall.
Is there any freeware tool out there I can use for this?

On a seperate note, will running an XP installion work?

Thank you!!!

1) If your friend has the WinME install disk, I would try that first.
It'll have a repair function at some point in the beginning of the process.

2) If you have a WinXP *upgrade CD,* it'll prompt you for the WinME CD
at a certain point (don't know when).

3) If you have a WinXP "full install," during the install it'll show any
partitions it finds which you can then save (while continuing w/the
install of XP).

hth,
-Sparky

 

[Gabriele Neukam]

On that special day, R. L., (ingomeinew@_hot_mail_.YOU_KNOW_THE_REST)
said...

Do I need to re-partition the drive? My friend told me that
he does not have any important things in the disk so anything
can be wipe off.

You might be able to re-create the original partitions with a Linux tool
(guesspart) or DOS based Ranish Partition Manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/


Gabriele Neukam

(e-mail address removed)

 

[MLC]

_R. L._, venerdì 18/feb/2005:

I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. My question is that is there any freeware tool
I can use to solve this problem?

If the system doesn't see the HD, I fear that the HD is broken (I mean the
hardware).

 

[Larry Sabo]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. [snip]

Have you entered the BIOS setup and checked that the drive is
detected? You can try running the Autodetect Hard Drives function in
the BIOS if it has one. Also verify that the boot order is correct,
i.e. CD-ROM as first boot device. If it won't even detect, it's
probably toast.

I've had some luck freezing a drive (in a sealed plastic bag) for 24
hrs, then cloning it to another. If you are able to detect it after
freezing it, get whatever data off as quickly as possible, because it
won't last long. However, since your friend said there is no data
worth saving, he may just be looking for a new hard drive.

If the system has simply forgotten the drive architecture, I'd replace
the CMOS battery and then restore default or safe BIOS settings.

Larry

 

[Laurent Herve]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. [snip]

Have you entered the BIOS setup and checked that the drive is
detected? You can try running the Autodetect Hard Drives function in
the BIOS if it has one. Also verify that the boot order is correct,
i.e. CD-ROM as first boot device. If it won't even detect, it's
probably toast.

I've had some luck freezing a drive (in a sealed plastic bag) for 24
hrs, then cloning it to another. If you are able to detect it after
freezing it, get whatever data off as quickly as possible, because it
won't last long. However, since your friend said there is no data
worth saving, he may just be looking for a new hard drive.

If the system has simply forgotten the drive architecture, I'd replace
the CMOS battery and then restore default or safe BIOS settings.

Larry

All are wrong, except you (sorry, but really when OP says
the HDD is not detected, one cannot hope that a sofware will reach it
like the win me install disk, etc)
In fact, the OP should check the IDE cables, then go to the BIOS setup
and enable automtical recognition for the disk, not user defined.
Eventually try to enable/disable LBA. If the Bios battery is dead,
you will simply lost all your bios seting at each reboot, so on
my PC for example with a cheap mobo, i'm prompted for going
to setup.
He could check basically if the jumpers are well setted (master/
slave), he could set it lonly at master IDE 1, without any other device.

Good luck,

laurent

 

[deacon]

If the Bios battery is dead,

you will simply lost all your bios seting at each reboot

Hmm, is that really true?

 

[Sparky]

Hmm, is that really true?

Hmmm;

Yes. Are you for real? Larry and Laurent's combined diagonstic posting
is the best by far. You'd do yourself a favor to reread them.

-Sparky.

 

[deacon]

Hmmm;

Yes. Are you for real? Larry and Laurent's combined diagonstic posting
is the best by far. You'd do yourself a favor to reread them.

-Sparky.

It makes sense, but I've never heard it before. Nor have I ever run into a dead
mb battery...

 

[Larry Sabo]

Also verify that the boot order is correct,
i.e. CD-ROM as first boot device.

Oops! I meant HDD-0, of course, not CD-ROM.

Larry

 

[Larry Sabo]

Hmm, is that really true?

The modified BIOS settings are stored in CMOS, which is volatile
memory -- i.e., it loses it's contents when the backup battery dies
and the system is powered off. The BIOS will revert to it's default
state, which may or may not allow operation of the system. Some
mainboards autodetect the hard drives and others need it to be
detected using the Autodetect Hard Drives funcion of the BIOS. The
default values might not be set to recognize USB, floppy drives, etc.
One givaway that the backup battery is dead, is the cpu clock loses
its value if you unplug the system.

Cheers,
Larry

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. My question is that is there any freeware tool
I can use to solve this problem?

Besides verifying your hardware setup (cable and/or jumpers) and the
Bios boot device and HD settings, as others have suggested, you might
give TestDisk a try:
<http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Besides verifying your hardware setup (cable and/or jumpers) and the
Bios boot device and HD settings, as others have suggested, you might
give TestDisk a try:
<http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html>

example of use/help - see fx:

Using the TestDisk Recovery Utility to Recover a FAT32 'Lost'
Partition <http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/testdisk.html>

Recover Partitions with TestDisk
<http://www.pcquest.com/content/handson/2004/104093003.asp>

TESTDISK, The Holy Grail
<http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1139&page=8>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[Roger Hunt]

Oops! I meant HDD-0, of course, not CD-ROM.

I always keep HDD-0 second in line - Floppy first, for those times of
need.

 

[R. L.]

"Larry Sabo" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le
message de (e-mail address removed)...

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot
disk to boot up the system but the system does not see
the hard dirve anymore. [snip]

Have you entered the BIOS setup and checked that the drive
is detected? You can try running the Autodetect Hard
Drives function in the BIOS if it has one. Also verify
that the boot order is correct, i.e. CD-ROM as first boot
device. If it won't even detect, it's probably toast.

If the system has simply forgotten the drive architecture,
I'd replace the CMOS battery and then restore default or
safe BIOS settings.

All are wrong, except you (sorry, but really when OP
says the HDD is not detected, one cannot hope that a
sofware will reach it like the win me install disk, etc)
In fact, the OP should check the IDE cables, then go to the
BIOS setup and enable automtical recognition for the disk,
not user defined. Eventually try to enable/disable LBA. If
the Bios battery is dead, you will simply lost all your
bios seting at each reboot, so on my PC for example with a
cheap mobo, i'm prompted for going to setup.
He could check basically if the jumpers are well setted
(master/ slave), he could set it lonly at master IDE 1,
without any other device.

Hi, thanks for the help. Here are some more information
regarding my situation:

*Immediate cause:*

First, I suspect that it might not hardware problem because it
failed to boot after WinMe scandisk *fixed* the disk "by
accident" - My friend often did not shut down the system
properly due to spyware problem. The drive failed after the
system started scandisk automatically and the scandisk somehow
*fixed* the disk (I'd have never let that happen except that I
forgot to "supervise" the boot that time - I just want to beat
myself up for this afterwards).

Before this incident, it often gave messages saying that some
data cannot be found in c:, after Windows started.

*Afterwards:*

It does detect the CD drive and the Floppy boot works (with a
winme bootdisk). But the harddrive cannot be detected - even
after the successful floppy boot.

I successfully went to the Bios setting. The default setting
is "automatic detect". I tried set it to specific drive - it
gave back message as drive boot failure.

I used a Knoppix CD to boot the system sucessfully (I hence
suspect the drive should still be usable although not don't
know if it is entirely healthy - yet it is a relatively new
(Sony VAIO) system - just a couple years I guess). And my
guess is that it could be partition table corruption because
it had two partitions before.

*Need a solution:*

Now, my problem is not that I need to restore any data from
that lost drive because nothing is essential there. I need to
be able to "install" a new system in that computer. However,
without access to that drive - how can I do it (floppy works,
CD rom works, just can't see the harddrive)? Will the
freeware problem Partition Logic help in this case?

Lot of thanks!!!




--
RL
My freeware page here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringomei/
********************************
Pricelessware:
http://www.pricelessware.org,
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org,

 

[R. L.]

On that special day, R. L.,
(ingomeinew@_hot_mail_.YOU_KNOW_THE_REST) said...

You might be able to re-create the original partitions with
a Linux tool (guesspart) or DOS based Ranish Partition
Manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/

Thanks, downloading it, will give this one a try


--
RL
My freeware page here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringomei/
********************************
Pricelessware:
http://www.pricelessware.org,
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org,

 

[Laurent Herve]

"Larry Sabo" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le
message de (e-mail address removed)...

"R. L."
<(removethis)ringomeinew@_hot_mail_.YOU_KNOW_THE_REST>
wrote:


Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot
disk to boot up the system but the system does not see
the hard dirve anymore. [snip]
Have you entered the BIOS setup and checked that the drive
is detected? You can try running the Autodetect Hard
Drives function in the BIOS if it has one. Also verify
that the boot order is correct, i.e. CD-ROM as first boot
device. If it won't even detect, it's probably toast.

If the system has simply forgotten the drive architecture,
I'd replace the CMOS battery and then restore default or
safe BIOS settings.

All are wrong, except you (sorry, but really when OP
says the HDD is not detected, one cannot hope that a
sofware will reach it like the win me install disk, etc)
In fact, the OP should check the IDE cables, then go to the
BIOS setup and enable automtical recognition for the disk,
not user defined. Eventually try to enable/disable LBA. If
the Bios battery is dead, you will simply lost all your
bios seting at each reboot, so on my PC for example with a
cheap mobo, i'm prompted for going to setup.
He could check basically if the jumpers are well setted
(master/ slave), he could set it lonly at master IDE 1,
without any other device.

Hi, thanks for the help. Here are some more information
regarding my situation:

*Immediate cause:*

First, I suspect that it might not hardware problem because it
failed to boot after WinMe scandisk *fixed* the disk "by
accident" - My friend often did not shut down the system
properly due to spyware problem. The drive failed after the
system started scandisk automatically and the scandisk somehow
*fixed* the disk (I'd have never let that happen except that I
forgot to "supervise" the boot that time - I just want to beat
myself up for this afterwards).

Before this incident, it often gave messages saying that some
data cannot be found in c:, after Windows started.

*Afterwards:*

It does detect the CD drive and the Floppy boot works (with a
winme bootdisk). But the harddrive cannot be detected - even
after the successful floppy boot.

I successfully went to the Bios setting. The default setting
is "automatic detect". I tried set it to specific drive - it
gave back message as drive boot failure.

I used a Knoppix CD to boot the system sucessfully (I hence
suspect the drive should still be usable although not don't
know if it is entirely healthy - yet it is a relatively new
(Sony VAIO) system - just a couple years I guess). And my
guess is that it could be partition table corruption because
it had two partitions before.

*Need a solution:*

Now, my problem is not that I need to restore any data from
that lost drive because nothing is essential there. I need to
be able to "install" a new system in that computer. However,
without access to that drive - how can I do it (floppy works,
CD rom works, just can't see the harddrive)? Will the
freeware problem Partition Logic help in this case?

Lot of thanks!!!

So if it is only partition table corruption, knoppix should see the drive.

Even fdisk (type "fdisk" from a DOS prompt - > dos floppy boot)
should tell you in what state is your hdd, i mean if only
the table is corrupted you should be told by fdisk at least
that the disk exist... althought fdisk may not be able to
fix the problem because fdisk is very basic.
So again, if you think it is only a partition table corruption,
boot in knoppix, open the root shell, do

dd in=/dev/null out=/dev/hda

i dunno how long it will take, sereval minutes.

that will "zeroing" the entire disk, nothing will survive, even
errors. After that, re-create a partition table with fdisk,

hope this help.

lh

 

[Laurent Herve]

dd in=/dev/null out=/dev/hda

Sorry, it is

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda

I'm a bit away from linux now

lh

 

[Larry Sabo]

[snip]

It does detect the CD drive and the Floppy boot works (with a
winme bootdisk). But the harddrive cannot be detected - even
after the successful floppy boot.

If the BIOS won't detect the drive, no software is going to fix that
problem. I have had drives fail in situations like yours, due to a
physical failure of the drive. The drive errors were forewarnings that
the system was having problems reliably reading from the drive, just
before it gave up the ghost.

I successfully went to the Bios setting. The default setting
is "automatic detect". I tried set it to specific drive - it
gave back message as drive boot failure.

In addition to Auto for the drive, you may have to run the Autodetect
Hard drives funcion in the BIOS, if there is one. "Auto" by itself
doesn't cause the drive to be detected, in my experience, if the BIOS
has a Autodected Hard Drives function in the BIOS. Newer maniboards do
truly auto-detect, and don't have a "Autodected Hard Drives" function.

I used a Knoppix CD to boot the system sucessfully (I hence
suspect the drive should still be usable although not don't
know if it is entirely healthy - yet it is a relatively new
(Sony VAIO) system - just a couple years I guess). And my
guess is that it could be partition table corruption because
it had two partitions before.

Doesn't prove anything. You can run Knoppix with no drives installed.
I take it Knoppix didn't see the drive either?

*Need a solution:*

Now, my problem is not that I need to restore any data from
that lost drive because nothing is essential there. I need to
be able to "install" a new system in that computer. However,
without access to that drive - how can I do it (floppy works,
CD rom works, just can't see the harddrive)? Will the
freeware problem Partition Logic help in this case?

If the drive can be detected by the BIOS (after doing the Autodetect
Hard Drives), you can try booting from a boot floppy and running...

FDISK /MBR

Until the BIOS can see the drive, however, that is not an option. Your
only choice may be to replace the hard drive. When the new drive is
installed, run FDISK to set up whatever partitions are desired,
reboot, format them, then install Windows and the drivers for your
mainboard, audio, video, etc. You may require a technician to do that
for you, as it's a fair bit of work to determine what drivers are
required for that specific computer. Sorry it's not an easy answer.

If you have the System Restore disks that came with the system, run it
after installing and initiallizing the new hard drive.

Larry

 

[El Gee]

Hi there, I am fixing a friend's Winme pc.
Yet, it seems that the disk is corrupted (it had two
partition, but now it doesn't boot). I used a clean boot disk
to boot up the system but the system does not see the hard
dirve anymore. My question is that is there any freeware tool
I can use to solve this problem?

Do I need to re-partition the drive? My friend told me that
he does not have any important things in the disk so anything
can be wipe off. However, my problem is that if the system
cannot see the drive, I can do neither reformat nor reinstall.
Is there any freeware tool out there I can use for this?

On a seperate note, will running an XP installion work?

Thank you!!!

IF Knoppix and/or fdisk see the disk, you can download "restoration"
from snapfiles.com and run it from a floppy. You will need a spare hard
drive to copy the data to. Restoratin works very well.

If Knoppix nor fdisk see the hard drive and it is connected and set
properly, it is dead and the data on it can only be retrived via
expensive data reconvery methods (over $1000 USD to do this).


--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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No Christ, No Peace

Remove yourhat to reply
Home Page - www.mistergeek.com
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