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#1
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Windows Xp crash
Wife's computer. She was using her mail reading program; wasn't happy
with how it was preforming; decided to re-boot. Did so; and than all **** happened. Message came up "Disk Boot failure.: Insert system disk and press enter" This I did with a installation disk that I have. It went through all the motions of re-loading windows; however; when it came to the part about where you want to load windows; a dialogue box indicated that all drives had no disk inserted. In other words; there was no place to re-install windows and it didn't give any other options. I than re-booted and tried the system recovery option; it didn't work. I re-booted and tried safe mode; it didn't work. I am now here; my last option! Don't know what happend. I know **** happens. If the hard drive crapped out, no big deal; there are more to be had. I do have a recent backup from two days ago. Just wondering if there are other "Options" that I don't know of. Some more info! Compaq Pressario computer running windows Xp. Two hard drives. One with windows Xp and the other that I use for backing up. I tried about a week ago to install Windows 7 on the second hard drive. ( It is a Sata 1 terabite) windows did install; however; it would not boot from the new hard drive; probably because I am using a card for the Sata connection. I had no problem with that. That's what happens when you cheap out. Now in all my wisdom; this past week; I deleted the Windows 7 installation. Me thinks that this is the first time that the computer has been rebooted since that deletion. Could it be??? |
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#3
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Windows Xp crash
Thanks for your prompt reply.
Before I read your message I decided to try one last thing. I booted into the Bios. A screen came up that I have never seen before. It is a screen with what appears to be a generic menu on it. Trying to do anything with this screen/menu fails. Nothing works. Can't move around the screen via the keyboard. The F keys do not work. Basically had to reboot in order to get out of it. Me thinks it could be the mother board. It is 3:00 A.M. here in Calgary; will see what other replies I get and later on I may try a reset of the mother board and see what happens. On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:23:26 -0500, Paul wrote: wrote: Wife's computer. She was using her mail reading program; wasn't happy with how it was preforming; decided to re-boot. Did so; and than all **** happened. Message came up "Disk Boot failure.: Insert system disk and press enter" This I did with a installation disk that I have. It went through all the motions of re-loading windows; however; when it came to the part about where you want to load windows; a dialogue box indicated that all drives had no disk inserted. In other words; there was no place to re-install windows and it didn't give any other options. I than re-booted and tried the system recovery option; it didn't work. I re-booted and tried safe mode; it didn't work. I am now here; my last option! Don't know what happend. I know **** happens. If the hard drive crapped out, no big deal; there are more to be had. I do have a recent backup from two days ago. Just wondering if there are other "Options" that I don't know of. Some more info! Compaq Pressario computer running windows Xp. Two hard drives. One with windows Xp and the other that I use for backing up. I tried about a week ago to install Windows 7 on the second hard drive. ( It is a Sata 1 terabite) windows did install; however; it would not boot from the new hard drive; probably because I am using a card for the Sata connection. I had no problem with that. That's what happens when you cheap out. Now in all my wisdom; this past week; I deleted the Windows 7 installation. Me thinks that this is the first time that the computer has been rebooted since that deletion. Could it be??? That is a very good guess on your part. Seems like, that this is the first reboot since you deleted it. Did you remember the "first rule of installs" ? Disconnect anything you cannot afford to lose, before starting an install. I have quite a bit of wear on my ribbon cable connectors, because of that rule. Part of the reasoning behind that rule, is you cannot guess what evil awaits, inside any OS installer. As far as the installer is concerned, any disk they can see, is part of their "domain". It doesn't matter that you said "please install on disk#1". They'll find a way to write where they please, on disk#2, disk#3 etc. I've even tried the trick, of disabling disks in the BIOS screen, and some installers will even re-enable all the disks when the installer is running, so they can get at them! The only guaranteed defense, is to disconnect them, since the BIOS controls appear to be insufficient to protect a disk. (Back in SCSI drive days, we'd simply insert the write protect jumper, and there'd be hardly any wear on the connectors... How I wish IDE supported that option. I'd have switches on the computer front panel, wired to those jumpers.) I disconnect disks for Linux installs. I do that for Windows too. Otherwise, the installer boot manager may attempt to out-guess your intentions, and write to disks other than the install disk. The installer thinks that every person doing an install, plans to manage them from just one boot manager ( *their* boot manager ). That means they can trash any other boot manager they might happen to find. Things I'd do: 1) Find something else to boot with, for some simple forensics. I have WinXP on one hard drive, Win2K on a second hard drive, and a small army of Linux LiveCDs. All of them can mount FAT32 or NTFS volumes. Using any of those approaches, I could have verified the WinXP C: partition is still there and readable (I could boot my Win2K disk and have a look). If all the files seem to be present, the damage could be small. 2) The Recovery Console has things like "fixmbr", for fixing the boot code in the master boot record (sector 0 of the disk). The bootable partition, your WinXP C:, also has primary and backup boot sectors in it. So there is a second bit of stuff used for the boot sequence. It can be fixed via "fixboot" if it got erased (I've managed to do that :-) ). 3) Operating systems usually have script-like information, that also affects boot operation. Things like boot.ini, contain path information (ARC). If you move things around, use a partition manager that reorders entries in the partition table (64 bytes in sector 0), it can upset the veracity of the information in places like boot.ini. Using the options in (1), you can edit boot.ini and see what is in there. Linux can have similar issues, and I've had to use the editor in Grub, to correct the path to the boot volume. I have one Partition Management tool, that likes to reorder entries in the partition table. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot.ini -- WinXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcdedit...iguration_Data -- Win7/Vista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD (alternate to bcdedit) So you had plenty of options, before reinstalling anything. Since I'm an amateur, I've only dealt with a small number of "accidents". I realize, when someone else is breathing down your neck, expecting a quick repair, you'll reach for the first hammer you can find. If at all possible, take your time, and you may be able to fix it. Obviously, restoring from backup is also a "fix", but 1) You're not learning anything from the experience (except about the importance of having backups). 2) The restore may fail, leaving you with nothing. You'd be surprised how many places I've worked, where the backups they had were bad, and someone looks like an idiot because they have stacks of unusable backup media (Imagine you're the person explaining to them what a cleaning tape is, for tape drives :-) The look on their faces was priceless). I even worked in a place, where they wrote their own backup program -- you guessed it, when they really needed it, the restore capability didn't work. The highest level of safety, might come from restoring to a spare hard drive, leaving the drive with the problem for later, when you have time to work on it. Your wife could use the spare drive, with the restore loaded onto it, while you keep the original drive for a quiet time when you can work on it. I have about three drives I could grab right now, for emergencies such as this. ******* You can install the Recovery Console on your WinXP disk, using the example here. Apparently, that puts an extra entry in the boot.ini, offering you the ability to select the Recovery Console during boot. Since your bootup is currently ruined, I expect that option would not be working (i.e. you might have installed it, only to be deprived of being able to use it). A second way of using the Recovery Console, is with a real WinXP CD, but people with Dell/HP/whatever may not have that option. I can't do everything I need to do from Linux, and things like fixboot/fixmbr, need the Recovery Console. So there is some value in having a copy of a Windows CD, even if you never plan on doing an install from it. http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/lo...hp?t19528.html Come to think of it, someone mentioned a separate recovery console, which they were offering to download from their web space. I found a download of a similar name here. I'd be much happier about offering this to you, if I knew where the original image came from. I haven't tested this one, but it is sitting in my download collection for later. http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip Inside that, I found an ISO9660 file (suitable for preparing a bootable CD). The structure shows I386 SYSTEM32 NTDLL.DLL SMSS.EXE (222 other files, many compressed, drivers and the like ?) (A couple other small things) So that appears to be an attempt to provide a Recovery Console, if you can find a copy you trust. You'd prepare the bootable CD, using a burning program like Nero, to convert the ISO9660 file into a bootable CD. And then boot the CD, to be able to issue the Recovery Console commands. Recovery Console is very limited, in terms of what you can do, but some of the commands in there, aren't that easy to duplicate (without a lot of advanced planning). The above is not a recipe - at this point, I don't know what got broken. "FixMBR" from a WinXP Recovery Console, would likely put back a WinXP boot code for the MBR. That may be enough to get it going again. I don't really know how the BCD stuff works, as I have neither Vista or Win7 here to experiment with. Sector 0 of your disk, contains a total of 512 bytes. 446 or so bytes, are MBR boot code. 64 bytes represent the four primary partitions of the disk (four 16 byte entries). The last two bytes are a signature, used to indicate to other tools, that a valid MBR is presumably loaded in there. If the signature was 0x0000 for example, some installers would feel more comfortable overwriting the MBR. "FixMBR" overwrites the first 446 or so bytes, without touching the 64 bytes of partition info. So FixMBR should not damage the partition information, which must be preserved in order for any tools to know where C: starts on the disk. Good luck, Paul |
#4
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Windows Xp crash
Managed to get into the regular Bios screen. Just beat away on the
keys. The "Esc" key finally did it. The Bios is not showing any hard drives. Doing a detect does nothing. Will open the case and try a different cable; if that doesn't work I will remove the hard drives and check in another computer. I also have a old 40 gig that I can try in the affected computer. On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:10:06 GMT, wrote: Thanks for your prompt reply. Before I read your message I decided to try one last thing. I booted into the Bios. A screen came up that I have never seen before. It is a screen with what appears to be a generic menu on it. Trying to do anything with this screen/menu fails. Nothing works. Can't move around the screen via the keyboard. The F keys do not work. Basically had to reboot in order to get out of it. Me thinks it could be the mother board. It is 3:00 A.M. here in Calgary; will see what other replies I get and later on I may try a reset of the mother board and see what happens. On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:23:26 -0500, Paul wrote: wrote: Wife's computer. She was using her mail reading program; wasn't happy with how it was preforming; decided to re-boot. Did so; and than all **** happened. Message came up "Disk Boot failure.: Insert system disk and press enter" This I did with a installation disk that I have. It went through all the motions of re-loading windows; however; when it came to the part about where you want to load windows; a dialogue box indicated that all drives had no disk inserted. In other words; there was no place to re-install windows and it didn't give any other options. I than re-booted and tried the system recovery option; it didn't work. I re-booted and tried safe mode; it didn't work. I am now here; my last option! Don't know what happend. I know **** happens. If the hard drive crapped out, no big deal; there are more to be had. I do have a recent backup from two days ago. Just wondering if there are other "Options" that I don't know of. Some more info! Compaq Pressario computer running windows Xp. Two hard drives. One with windows Xp and the other that I use for backing up. I tried about a week ago to install Windows 7 on the second hard drive. ( It is a Sata 1 terabite) windows did install; however; it would not boot from the new hard drive; probably because I am using a card for the Sata connection. I had no problem with that. That's what happens when you cheap out. Now in all my wisdom; this past week; I deleted the Windows 7 installation. Me thinks that this is the first time that the computer has been rebooted since that deletion. Could it be??? That is a very good guess on your part. Seems like, that this is the first reboot since you deleted it. Did you remember the "first rule of installs" ? Disconnect anything you cannot afford to lose, before starting an install. I have quite a bit of wear on my ribbon cable connectors, because of that rule. Part of the reasoning behind that rule, is you cannot guess what evil awaits, inside any OS installer. As far as the installer is concerned, any disk they can see, is part of their "domain". It doesn't matter that you said "please install on disk#1". They'll find a way to write where they please, on disk#2, disk#3 etc. I've even tried the trick, of disabling disks in the BIOS screen, and some installers will even re-enable all the disks when the installer is running, so they can get at them! The only guaranteed defense, is to disconnect them, since the BIOS controls appear to be insufficient to protect a disk. (Back in SCSI drive days, we'd simply insert the write protect jumper, and there'd be hardly any wear on the connectors... How I wish IDE supported that option. I'd have switches on the computer front panel, wired to those jumpers.) I disconnect disks for Linux installs. I do that for Windows too. Otherwise, the installer boot manager may attempt to out-guess your intentions, and write to disks other than the install disk. The installer thinks that every person doing an install, plans to manage them from just one boot manager ( *their* boot manager ). That means they can trash any other boot manager they might happen to find. Things I'd do: 1) Find something else to boot with, for some simple forensics. I have WinXP on one hard drive, Win2K on a second hard drive, and a small army of Linux LiveCDs. All of them can mount FAT32 or NTFS volumes. Using any of those approaches, I could have verified the WinXP C: partition is still there and readable (I could boot my Win2K disk and have a look). If all the files seem to be present, the damage could be small. 2) The Recovery Console has things like "fixmbr", for fixing the boot code in the master boot record (sector 0 of the disk). The bootable partition, your WinXP C:, also has primary and backup boot sectors in it. So there is a second bit of stuff used for the boot sequence. It can be fixed via "fixboot" if it got erased (I've managed to do that :-) ). 3) Operating systems usually have script-like information, that also affects boot operation. Things like boot.ini, contain path information (ARC). If you move things around, use a partition manager that reorders entries in the partition table (64 bytes in sector 0), it can upset the veracity of the information in places like boot.ini. Using the options in (1), you can edit boot.ini and see what is in there. Linux can have similar issues, and I've had to use the editor in Grub, to correct the path to the boot volume. I have one Partition Management tool, that likes to reorder entries in the partition table. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot.ini -- WinXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcdedit...iguration_Data -- Win7/Vista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD (alternate to bcdedit) So you had plenty of options, before reinstalling anything. Since I'm an amateur, I've only dealt with a small number of "accidents". I realize, when someone else is breathing down your neck, expecting a quick repair, you'll reach for the first hammer you can find. If at all possible, take your time, and you may be able to fix it. Obviously, restoring from backup is also a "fix", but 1) You're not learning anything from the experience (except about the importance of having backups). 2) The restore may fail, leaving you with nothing. You'd be surprised how many places I've worked, where the backups they had were bad, and someone looks like an idiot because they have stacks of unusable backup media (Imagine you're the person explaining to them what a cleaning tape is, for tape drives :-) The look on their faces was priceless). I even worked in a place, where they wrote their own backup program -- you guessed it, when they really needed it, the restore capability didn't work. The highest level of safety, might come from restoring to a spare hard drive, leaving the drive with the problem for later, when you have time to work on it. Your wife could use the spare drive, with the restore loaded onto it, while you keep the original drive for a quiet time when you can work on it. I have about three drives I could grab right now, for emergencies such as this. ******* You can install the Recovery Console on your WinXP disk, using the example here. Apparently, that puts an extra entry in the boot.ini, offering you the ability to select the Recovery Console during boot. Since your bootup is currently ruined, I expect that option would not be working (i.e. you might have installed it, only to be deprived of being able to use it). A second way of using the Recovery Console, is with a real WinXP CD, but people with Dell/HP/whatever may not have that option. I can't do everything I need to do from Linux, and things like fixboot/fixmbr, need the Recovery Console. So there is some value in having a copy of a Windows CD, even if you never plan on doing an install from it. http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/lo...hp?t19528.html Come to think of it, someone mentioned a separate recovery console, which they were offering to download from their web space. I found a download of a similar name here. I'd be much happier about offering this to you, if I knew where the original image came from. I haven't tested this one, but it is sitting in my download collection for later. http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip Inside that, I found an ISO9660 file (suitable for preparing a bootable CD). The structure shows I386 SYSTEM32 NTDLL.DLL SMSS.EXE (222 other files, many compressed, drivers and the like ?) (A couple other small things) So that appears to be an attempt to provide a Recovery Console, if you can find a copy you trust. You'd prepare the bootable CD, using a burning program like Nero, to convert the ISO9660 file into a bootable CD. And then boot the CD, to be able to issue the Recovery Console commands. Recovery Console is very limited, in terms of what you can do, but some of the commands in there, aren't that easy to duplicate (without a lot of advanced planning). The above is not a recipe - at this point, I don't know what got broken. "FixMBR" from a WinXP Recovery Console, would likely put back a WinXP boot code for the MBR. That may be enough to get it going again. I don't really know how the BCD stuff works, as I have neither Vista or Win7 here to experiment with. Sector 0 of your disk, contains a total of 512 bytes. 446 or so bytes, are MBR boot code. 64 bytes represent the four primary partitions of the disk (four 16 byte entries). The last two bytes are a signature, used to indicate to other tools, that a valid MBR is presumably loaded in there. If the signature was 0x0000 for example, some installers would feel more comfortable overwriting the MBR. "FixMBR" overwrites the first 446 or so bytes, without touching the 64 bytes of partition info. So FixMBR should not damage the partition information, which must be preserved in order for any tools to know where C: starts on the disk. Good luck, Paul |
#5
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Windows Xp crash
Problem solved! Loose power connection to the System drive. Noticed it
right away when I went to try the spare 40 gig that I have. The Bios does not recogonize the 1 Terabite as it is hooked up via a Sata card! On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:11:08 GMT, wrote: Managed to get into the regular Bios screen. Just beat away on the keys. The "Esc" key finally did it. The Bios is not showing any hard drives. Doing a detect does nothing. Will open the case and try a different cable; if that doesn't work I will remove the hard drives and check in another computer. I also have a old 40 gig that I can try in the affected computer. On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:10:06 GMT, wrote: Thanks for your prompt reply. Before I read your message I decided to try one last thing. I booted into the Bios. A screen came up that I have never seen before. It is a screen with what appears to be a generic menu on it. Trying to do anything with this screen/menu fails. Nothing works. Can't move around the screen via the keyboard. The F keys do not work. Basically had to reboot in order to get out of it. Me thinks it could be the mother board. It is 3:00 A.M. here in Calgary; will see what other replies I get and later on I may try a reset of the mother board and see what happens. On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:23:26 -0500, Paul wrote: wrote: Wife's computer. She was using her mail reading program; wasn't happy with how it was preforming; decided to re-boot. Did so; and than all **** happened. Message came up "Disk Boot failure.: Insert system disk and press enter" This I did with a installation disk that I have. It went through all the motions of re-loading windows; however; when it came to the part about where you want to load windows; a dialogue box indicated that all drives had no disk inserted. In other words; there was no place to re-install windows and it didn't give any other options. I than re-booted and tried the system recovery option; it didn't work. I re-booted and tried safe mode; it didn't work. I am now here; my last option! Don't know what happend. I know **** happens. If the hard drive crapped out, no big deal; there are more to be had. I do have a recent backup from two days ago. Just wondering if there are other "Options" that I don't know of. Some more info! Compaq Pressario computer running windows Xp. Two hard drives. One with windows Xp and the other that I use for backing up. I tried about a week ago to install Windows 7 on the second hard drive. ( It is a Sata 1 terabite) windows did install; however; it would not boot from the new hard drive; probably because I am using a card for the Sata connection. I had no problem with that. That's what happens when you cheap out. Now in all my wisdom; this past week; I deleted the Windows 7 installation. Me thinks that this is the first time that the computer has been rebooted since that deletion. Could it be??? That is a very good guess on your part. Seems like, that this is the first reboot since you deleted it. Did you remember the "first rule of installs" ? Disconnect anything you cannot afford to lose, before starting an install. I have quite a bit of wear on my ribbon cable connectors, because of that rule. Part of the reasoning behind that rule, is you cannot guess what evil awaits, inside any OS installer. As far as the installer is concerned, any disk they can see, is part of their "domain". It doesn't matter that you said "please install on disk#1". They'll find a way to write where they please, on disk#2, disk#3 etc. I've even tried the trick, of disabling disks in the BIOS screen, and some installers will even re-enable all the disks when the installer is running, so they can get at them! The only guaranteed defense, is to disconnect them, since the BIOS controls appear to be insufficient to protect a disk. (Back in SCSI drive days, we'd simply insert the write protect jumper, and there'd be hardly any wear on the connectors... How I wish IDE supported that option. I'd have switches on the computer front panel, wired to those jumpers.) I disconnect disks for Linux installs. I do that for Windows too. Otherwise, the installer boot manager may attempt to out-guess your intentions, and write to disks other than the install disk. The installer thinks that every person doing an install, plans to manage them from just one boot manager ( *their* boot manager ). That means they can trash any other boot manager they might happen to find. Things I'd do: 1) Find something else to boot with, for some simple forensics. I have WinXP on one hard drive, Win2K on a second hard drive, and a small army of Linux LiveCDs. All of them can mount FAT32 or NTFS volumes. Using any of those approaches, I could have verified the WinXP C: partition is still there and readable (I could boot my Win2K disk and have a look). If all the files seem to be present, the damage could be small. 2) The Recovery Console has things like "fixmbr", for fixing the boot code in the master boot record (sector 0 of the disk). The bootable partition, your WinXP C:, also has primary and backup boot sectors in it. So there is a second bit of stuff used for the boot sequence. It can be fixed via "fixboot" if it got erased (I've managed to do that :-) ). 3) Operating systems usually have script-like information, that also affects boot operation. Things like boot.ini, contain path information (ARC). If you move things around, use a partition manager that reorders entries in the partition table (64 bytes in sector 0), it can upset the veracity of the information in places like boot.ini. Using the options in (1), you can edit boot.ini and see what is in there. Linux can have similar issues, and I've had to use the editor in Grub, to correct the path to the boot volume. I have one Partition Management tool, that likes to reorder entries in the partition table. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot.ini -- WinXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcdedit...iguration_Data -- Win7/Vista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD (alternate to bcdedit) So you had plenty of options, before reinstalling anything. Since I'm an amateur, I've only dealt with a small number of "accidents". I realize, when someone else is breathing down your neck, expecting a quick repair, you'll reach for the first hammer you can find. If at all possible, take your time, and you may be able to fix it. Obviously, restoring from backup is also a "fix", but 1) You're not learning anything from the experience (except about the importance of having backups). 2) The restore may fail, leaving you with nothing. You'd be surprised how many places I've worked, where the backups they had were bad, and someone looks like an idiot because they have stacks of unusable backup media (Imagine you're the person explaining to them what a cleaning tape is, for tape drives :-) The look on their faces was priceless). I even worked in a place, where they wrote their own backup program -- you guessed it, when they really needed it, the restore capability didn't work. The highest level of safety, might come from restoring to a spare hard drive, leaving the drive with the problem for later, when you have time to work on it. Your wife could use the spare drive, with the restore loaded onto it, while you keep the original drive for a quiet time when you can work on it. I have about three drives I could grab right now, for emergencies such as this. ******* You can install the Recovery Console on your WinXP disk, using the example here. Apparently, that puts an extra entry in the boot.ini, offering you the ability to select the Recovery Console during boot. Since your bootup is currently ruined, I expect that option would not be working (i.e. you might have installed it, only to be deprived of being able to use it). A second way of using the Recovery Console, is with a real WinXP CD, but people with Dell/HP/whatever may not have that option. I can't do everything I need to do from Linux, and things like fixboot/fixmbr, need the Recovery Console. So there is some value in having a copy of a Windows CD, even if you never plan on doing an install from it. http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/lo...hp?t19528.html Come to think of it, someone mentioned a separate recovery console, which they were offering to download from their web space. I found a download of a similar name here. I'd be much happier about offering this to you, if I knew where the original image came from. I haven't tested this one, but it is sitting in my download collection for later. http://web.archive.org/*/http://www....xp_rec_con.zip Inside that, I found an ISO9660 file (suitable for preparing a bootable CD). The structure shows I386 SYSTEM32 NTDLL.DLL SMSS.EXE (222 other files, many compressed, drivers and the like ?) (A couple other small things) So that appears to be an attempt to provide a Recovery Console, if you can find a copy you trust. You'd prepare the bootable CD, using a burning program like Nero, to convert the ISO9660 file into a bootable CD. And then boot the CD, to be able to issue the Recovery Console commands. Recovery Console is very limited, in terms of what you can do, but some of the commands in there, aren't that easy to duplicate (without a lot of advanced planning). The above is not a recipe - at this point, I don't know what got broken. "FixMBR" from a WinXP Recovery Console, would likely put back a WinXP boot code for the MBR. That may be enough to get it going again. I don't really know how the BCD stuff works, as I have neither Vista or Win7 here to experiment with. Sector 0 of your disk, contains a total of 512 bytes. 446 or so bytes, are MBR boot code. 64 bytes represent the four primary partitions of the disk (four 16 byte entries). The last two bytes are a signature, used to indicate to other tools, that a valid MBR is presumably loaded in there. If the signature was 0x0000 for example, some installers would feel more comfortable overwriting the MBR. "FixMBR" overwrites the first 446 or so bytes, without touching the 64 bytes of partition info. So FixMBR should not damage the partition information, which must be preserved in order for any tools to know where C: starts on the disk. Good luck, Paul |
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Windows Xp crash
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Windows Xp crash
I agree with you! Usually one has to yank and pull on both the ribbon
cable and the power cable in order to disconnect. For some reason; both cables on this drive are what one could consider "Loose"! On Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:32:35 -0500, Paul wrote: wrote: Problem solved! Loose power connection to the System drive. Noticed it right away when I went to try the spare 40 gig that I have. The Bios does not recogonize the 1 Terabite as it is hooked up via a Sata card! I've never had a Molex fall out here. It wouldn't be something I'd be looking for, normally. Usually, the problem is them being stuck too well in the drive... Paul |
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