XP recovery CD can't find XP installation

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Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

A little background: A few days ago my hard drive turns off while the
rest of the computer was still running. It turns out the HD and CD will
only power on when they're disconnected from the IDE channel. CPU fan
still spun, USB ports didn't have power, and the monitor was getting
nothing from the video card. I decided to replace the ECS motherboard
with an Abit AN7 (Athlon 2100+ cpu). With the new mobo I was getting
erratic power problems so I swapped out the 350w PSU for a 430w Antec.
Now everything powered up, and I can get to POST. The Fedora boot loader
(just Linux/Fedora and XP SP 2 installed) loads up and starts XP which
failed and it rebooted.

I figure with the new mobo XP needs a repair. I boot from the XP CD but
it can't find the XP install, no "R" option. I figured the HD was toast,
so I connected a hard drive that I had been using until 4 months ago
that had XP SP 2 installed (dual booting fedora also). The CD did find
the installation on this hard drive, and I was able to repair the
install and get everything running.

Hoping the newer data from the other hard drive was still there I hooked
it up as a secondary drive and in fact all the data is there and I can
freely access it. I ran the error-checking tool (still scandisk?) from
XP on the drive which reported nothing wrong. After changing the cables
around so the bad HD is c: I went into Reconvery Console from the CD.
Typing "dir" gives me "an error occured during directory enumeration".
Bootcfg finds no Windows installation. chkdsk reports one or more
unrecoverable problems. Taking MVP Alex Nichol's suggestion of copying a
couple files from the CD and replacing boot.ini, the copy command
reports that they cannot be copied. The files are on the CD. And "attrib
-h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini" says the parameter is not valid.
Probably wouldn't help me because I can see boot.ini and the other files
on the "bad" HD anyway. boot.ini is exactly the same on both disks.

Think the HD is toast? It seems strange that I can get to all the files,
but XP doesn't recognize an OS on the disk. This probably isn't the
greatest test, but when I lightly shake the bad disk it sounds like the
platter(s) is moving around, or atleast the arm moving across the
platter. I tried this with about 6 other disks, most pretty ancient,
that I had laying around and no others did this. It's a 4 month old
160gb Seagate.

Any help would be great.
 

Brian

Distinguished
Sep 9, 2003
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Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Get Seatools and check the drive. I would also try to clone the drive using
Ghost or BootitNG while you still may have a chance to get the data.

Brian Pugh
A+, Network +, MCP


"Mark Lewis" <spam5s4@spam9f4.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d56fecb12897273989731@news.easynews.com...
> A little background: A few days ago my hard drive turns off while the
> rest of the computer was still running. It turns out the HD and CD will
> only power on when they're disconnected from the IDE channel. CPU fan
> still spun, USB ports didn't have power, and the monitor was getting
> nothing from the video card. I decided to replace the ECS motherboard
> with an Abit AN7 (Athlon 2100+ cpu). With the new mobo I was getting
> erratic power problems so I swapped out the 350w PSU for a 430w Antec.
> Now everything powered up, and I can get to POST. The Fedora boot loader
> (just Linux/Fedora and XP SP 2 installed) loads up and starts XP which
> failed and it rebooted.
>
> I figure with the new mobo XP needs a repair. I boot from the XP CD but
> it can't find the XP install, no "R" option. I figured the HD was toast,
> so I connected a hard drive that I had been using until 4 months ago
> that had XP SP 2 installed (dual booting fedora also). The CD did find
> the installation on this hard drive, and I was able to repair the
> install and get everything running.
>
> Hoping the newer data from the other hard drive was still there I hooked
> it up as a secondary drive and in fact all the data is there and I can
> freely access it. I ran the error-checking tool (still scandisk?) from
> XP on the drive which reported nothing wrong. After changing the cables
> around so the bad HD is c: I went into Reconvery Console from the CD.
> Typing "dir" gives me "an error occured during directory enumeration".
> Bootcfg finds no Windows installation. chkdsk reports one or more
> unrecoverable problems. Taking MVP Alex Nichol's suggestion of copying a
> couple files from the CD and replacing boot.ini, the copy command
> reports that they cannot be copied. The files are on the CD. And "attrib
> -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini" says the parameter is not valid.
> Probably wouldn't help me because I can see boot.ini and the other files
> on the "bad" HD anyway. boot.ini is exactly the same on both disks.
>
> Think the HD is toast? It seems strange that I can get to all the files,
> but XP doesn't recognize an OS on the disk. This probably isn't the
> greatest test, but when I lightly shake the bad disk it sounds like the
> platter(s) is moving around, or atleast the arm moving across the
> platter. I tried this with about 6 other disks, most pretty ancient,
> that I had laying around and no others did this. It's a 4 month old
> 160gb Seagate.
>
> Any help would be great.