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Thread ID: 15644	2002-02-12 22:59:00	Hard drive nightmare	Guest (0)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
35468	2002-02-12 22:59:00	Arrgghhh! Help! Yesterday arvo my Windows XP Pro PC locked up tight....couldnt even CTRL ALT DEL to reboot so I reset it. Now all it does is go into an endless boot up loop....just after all the post messages etc finish it reboots itself. A message pops up for about a nanosecond that is too fast to read...I think it says something about boot.ini not found? I could be wrong on that one. I booted up with the XP CD to get to the recovery console to see if I could do anything from there...I ran CHKDSK and it said some vague message about there being an unrecoverable error on one of my harddrives. At a loss I booted up with a Win98 boot disk and ran scan disk (which I may or may not have been a good thing?)...it found about 5 errors and 'fixed' them....but didnt fix the problem when I tried booting from the drive again. Anyway....I have a second drive complete with OS so I plugged my dead drive (partitoned as C and D) in as a slave to see what it showed up as. The 'C' partition now shows up as unformatted while my D partition is still there in perfect condition. Its all FAT 32 if that helps. Thats where Im up to.....help.....	Guest (0)
35469	2002-02-13 02:23:00	Hi R2, what you describe sounds like your master boot record is corrupted. The only answer is to reformat and reload, thats if the surface is not damaged and therebye unwritable. You could try using FDISK to rewrite the MBR. Check out this link first support.microsoft.com It's worth a try but please don't hold me responsible for the outcome use it as a last resort in an attempt to avoid reformat. HTH PC	Guest (0)
35470	2002-02-13 03:19:00	I think you might have 'an unrecoverable error on one of your hard drives'. How important is the data on the disk? If the survival of a company depends on it, STOP NOW. There are 'expensive' ways to attempt recovery. If it's just your highest scores, a few downloaded pictures, and the emails you have been meaning to delete anyway ... then let's see. It does not look like a corrupted MBR, but you could try 'FDISK /MBR'.(do that from a floppy with that as the only hard disk). This is unlikely to make things worse. But I don't think it will fix it either. We probably need a bit more information. What does 'FDISK /STATUS' give. I understand your last paragraph as saying that both partitions are recognised but one is not formatted. What does 'DIR c:' give? Have you got Norton's Utilities? How old is the machine? Under guarantee?	Guest (0)
35471	2002-02-13 10:18:00	I agree that it sounds like master boot record corruption. You could try format/mbr as other have already suggested. If that doesn't work you MIGHT get away with booting up from a Win 95/98 boot disc and using a the disc editor from a DOS version of Norton Utilities to repair the mbr. I emphasise MIGHT because XP	Guest (0)
35472	2002-02-13 10:34:00	My message continued! I bumped the send button by mistake. I emphasise MIGHT because XP may have a diferent structure for its mbr than those for DOS suporting Windows versions. For info about using Norton Utilities see my 2 postings in reply to 'Hard drive problem', Peter Hancock, 12/02/02. But be warned, Norton Utilities may not be compatible with XP!	Guest (0)
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