Strangest Xp error of them all

[Guest]

Ok I have
Amd xp 3000+
200gb wd hd
1 gig of ram

windows xp pro

Ok now heres my problem, I can click shutdown and restart or hit the reset
button on my pc and xp boots up fine. When i hit shutdown however and try to
boot up i get unmountable boot error. Now if i boot off anohter device like
my westerdigital utility floppy or windows xp cd, then restart windows loads
fine. However if i go into the repair consule after a shutdown instead of
having my 4 main partitions i have 1 partition thats not the right size.
Also it wont let me run chkdsk /r because it says theres errors, and ive
tryed fixboot but that ruined my c partition and i had to format again, but i
still have same problem. Also i cannot type dir to view the C partition
either. So im at a loss. It has to be something with the shutdown in xp
professional thats changing my master boot table, but I have no clue

Any Ideas?

 

[Kerry Brown]

Ok I have
Amd xp 3000+
200gb wd hd
1 gig of ram

windows xp pro

Ok now heres my problem, I can click shutdown and restart or hit the reset
button on my pc and xp boots up fine. When i hit shutdown however and try
to
boot up i get unmountable boot error. Now if i boot off anohter device
like
my westerdigital utility floppy or windows xp cd, then restart windows
loads
fine. However if i go into the repair consule after a shutdown instead of
having my 4 main partitions i have 1 partition thats not the right size.
Also it wont let me run chkdsk /r because it says theres errors, and ive
tryed fixboot but that ruined my c partition and i had to format again,
but i
still have same problem. Also i cannot type dir to view the C partition
either. So im at a loss. It has to be something with the shutdown in xp
professional thats changing my master boot table, but I have no clue

Any Ideas?

Does your XP CD have SP1 or SP2? If it doesn't then it won't work properly
with drives larger than 137 GB. Also if your motherboard doesn't support 48
bit LBA and you used the Western Digital utility to install the hard drive
then you must either boot from the hard drive or the WD utility so the
relevant BIOS code will be replaced with the WD software. What motherboard
do you have? See this link for info on 48 bit LBA.

http://www.48bitlba.com/

Kerry

 

[Guest]

I have SP2 and I used the WD utility to set up the drive and the windows
version to enable 137gb+ drive

I have a k7vme

 

[Kerry Brown]

I have SP2 and I used the WD utility to set up the drive and the windows
version to enable 137gb+ drive

I have a k7vme

A quick google search and checking the Soyo web site I can't find out if
that motherboard supports 48 bit lba. If you used the WD utility to set up
the drive and the motherboard doesn't support drives that large then you are
not able to boot from the Windows XP CD and access the drive properly. The
WD utility inserts some code in the MBR to replace the BIOS routines for
hard drive access. You can only boot from the hard drive or the WD utility
disc if this is the case. This means you can't use the recovery console by
booting from the CD. You may be able to install the recovery console on your
hard drive and access it that way. There are instructions for installing the
recovery console here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/vinson1.mspx

As to your other problem about the unmountable boot error I suspect it is
related but don't have enough information to be sure. I've never installed
the WD utility for large hard drives and I've never used that motherboard. I
don't recommend installing large drives unless they are fully supported by
the motherboard or a 3rd party controller card is used. If that motherboard
does support large hard drives then you could reinstall Windows without the
WD utility but you would loose all your data and programs.

You don't say how SP2 was installed. Was it included on the Windows CD or
did you install it later? If the Windows CD doesn't have at leat SP1
included then it doesn't matter what you do you won't be able to access the
full size of the hard drive by booting from the CD to the recovery console.

Kerry

 

[Guest]

Ok that makes sense in the wd utility it has a chkmark if your useing SP1, I
assumed it was that you installed SP1 sometime on your system not that it had
to be incorporated on the install cd, I checked yes because the first thing i
do is download it. But still ive done it that way befor and its actually
worked just fine, thanks for the help