windows crashed -- cannot read hard drive

[Jeetu]

Hi guys,
Somebody please guide.

My friend did not make Emergency Repair disk floppy for
his Win2000 O/S. The O/S crashed while downloading
software from areputable site. Now on starting the machine
the error repeats -

Windows could not start because the following file is
missing or corrupt: \winnt\system32\config\SYSTEMced

Please refer Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 269075

Did the suggested and reached the Repair Console.
Also loaded Adaptec SCSI driver controllers from floppy
with Winnt setup cd rom.

But the hard drives are not read in the repair console C:\
prompt.
Also we cannot see the disk partitions if we want to do
the reinstall. shows unknown.

Experts on phone have told us that the mbr is gone. We
tried running Fixmbr and Fixboot in the repair console
also.

Hardware diagnostics report no hardware failure at all.

Is there anyway we can read the data. How can we save/
recover the data? Any third party solutions. anything
which works.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hardware diagnostics report no hardware failure at all.

Which hardware diagnostics? Who makes it and what version is it? How did
you boot to it, and what settings did you set?

If this is a SCSI disk on an Adaptec, have you gone into the Adaptec
BIOS to see if the Verify function is working?

Have you downloaded tools from the hard disk manufacturer's web site and
run tests with them?