Recovering from crash

[Bob Hoffman]

I have had this computer for just over a year, and
everything has been fine, then a few days ago, when I shut
down my computer, it came to the blue Windows log out
screen and just hung there. I waited for a long time for
something to happen, but nothing did, so I turned it off
with the switch. The next time I tried to turn the
computer on, the hard drive would not boot at all.
Naturally, I had not made a backup of my files.

When I tried to boot from my XP Pro disc, I get the
message "Searching for Boot Record from CDROM..Not found".
I was able to boot from the 3.5" drive using the XP rescue
disc set from the Microsoft site and get into the Recovery
Console. From the Recovery Console I was able to copy the
NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the CD to the hard
drive, and then I did a FIXBOOT on the hard drive. I then
get the message that the FIXBOOT was successful. When I go
back and reset the BIOS options to boot from the hard
drive first then the CDROM I get the following messages.
First I get "Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK",
then it goes to a new line and says "NTLDR missing" then
tries to boot from the CDROM with the XP disc in it. When
it tries to do that, it says "Searching for Boot Record
from CDROM..Not found". I don't understand why I'm getting
these messages, because I know the NTLDR file is on the
hard drive. I was able to do a directory listing on the
drive and it shows that it and the NTDETECT.com file are
both there. And I don't understand why it can't boot from
the XP disc either.

Do anyone have any suggestions for what I can do next?

If I do a new install of XP thru the Recovery Console,
will I lose all of my programs and associated files that I
created in those programs, like documents and pictures?
What about my emails?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

Regards,
Bob Hoffman

 

[Malke]

I have had this computer for just over a year, and
everything has been fine, then a few days ago, when I shut
down my computer, it came to the blue Windows log out
screen and just hung there. I waited for a long time for
something to happen, but nothing did, so I turned it off
with the switch. The next time I tried to turn the
computer on, the hard drive would not boot at all.
Naturally, I had not made a backup of my files.

When I tried to boot from my XP Pro disc, I get the
message "Searching for Boot Record from CDROM..Not found".
I was able to boot from the 3.5" drive using the XP rescue
disc set from the Microsoft site and get into the Recovery
Console. From the Recovery Console I was able to copy the
NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the CD to the hard
drive, and then I did a FIXBOOT on the hard drive. I then
get the message that the FIXBOOT was successful. When I go
back and reset the BIOS options to boot from the hard
drive first then the CDROM I get the following messages.
First I get "Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK",
then it goes to a new line and says "NTLDR missing" then
tries to boot from the CDROM with the XP disc in it. When
it tries to do that, it says "Searching for Boot Record
from CDROM..Not found". I don't understand why I'm getting
these messages, because I know the NTLDR file is on the
hard drive. I was able to do a directory listing on the
drive and it shows that it and the NTDETECT.com file are
both there. And I don't understand why it can't boot from
the XP disc either.

Do anyone have any suggestions for what I can do next?

If I do a new install of XP thru the Recovery Console,
will I lose all of my programs and associated files that I
created in those programs, like documents and pictures?
What about my emails?

You could very well have a hardware problem, not a software problem. If
you are computer-savvy and have other boxen available, remove the hard
drive and slave it in another computer with a CD-burner, copy your
data. Then return the drive to the original machine and start
troubleshooting hardware. If this is too much, then take the box to a
local computer repair shop (one that will try and rescue your data,
*not* a CompUSA or BestBuy type store).

Good luck,

Malke

 

[Bob Hoffman]

-----Original Message-----


You could very well have a hardware problem, not a software problem. If
you are computer-savvy and have other boxen available, remove the hard
drive and slave it in another computer with a CD-burner, copy your
data. Then return the drive to the original machine and start
troubleshooting hardware. If this is too much, then take the box to a
local computer repair shop (one that will try and rescue your data,
*not* a CompUSA or BestBuy type store).

Good luck,

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!
.

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to find a way to just
work with the failed drive and try to recover from the
crash, but it's not looking promising. I just didn't want
to have to tear the computer apart any more than necessary.

Since I don't have a suitable second computer available to
me, I am probably going to do something similar to what
you suggested. I still have the old hard drive that the
new failed drive replaced. I'm going to reconfigure the
drives so the old drive will be the primary, and the
failed drive will be the slave. I'll then reload my old
copy of Win98SE onto the old drive and install a new virus
scan program just to be safe. then install the failed
drive, do a virus scan on it, and then do an image from
the failed drive onto the old drive. Hopefully I can
recover most of the files that were on the failed drive.

Can you see any reason why this won't work?

Thanks.

Regards,
Bob

 

[Malke]

Bob Hoffman wrote:

(snippage)

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to find a way to just
work with the failed drive and try to recover from the
crash, but it's not looking promising. I just didn't want
to have to tear the computer apart any more than necessary.

Since I don't have a suitable second computer available to
me, I am probably going to do something similar to what
you suggested. I still have the old hard drive that the
new failed drive replaced. I'm going to reconfigure the
drives so the old drive will be the primary, and the
failed drive will be the slave. I'll then reload my old
copy of Win98SE onto the old drive and install a new virus
scan program just to be safe. then install the failed
drive, do a virus scan on it, and then do an image from
the failed drive onto the old drive. Hopefully I can
recover most of the files that were on the failed drive.

Can you see any reason why this won't work?

As I understand it, what you're going to do is basically rebuild a Win98
box. This in itself is fine and a good stopgap til you buy a new hard
drive for XP (if that is what you want to do). The only problem I
foresee is if your XP hard drive was formatted using ntfs instead of
FAT32. Win98SE uses FAT32 and cannot see files under ntfs and therefore
slaving it and trying to recover files using Win98 won't work. If XP
was FAT32, no problem. But unless you really want to install operating
systems twice, why not just go buy a new hard drive, install XP, and
slave the old drive then and copy files? Or spend $45 and have the
computer shop do it for you ;-).

HTH,

Malke