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| Thread ID: 89550 | 2008-05-03 23:20:00 | Hard drive problem | bones (10257) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 665598 | 2008-05-03 23:20:00 | I have an acer laptop (XP) that I was using Partition Magic on to resize a partition. Part way thru it came up with an error. Now I have nothing! This is not a total disaster as I have an external backup drive with a copy from last month. BUT my hard drive is inacessable. I've tried various programs to see what the problem is. If they get to work at all, I get messages about "drive not initialised" " mbr missing" or similar. I'm posting this from the laptop using a Linux Mandriva CD which grudgingly starts, it brings up a lot of ide errors ( 0xea is the code) I'm pretty sure the drive is screwed up software wise rather than physically, anybody help? :badpc: |
bones (10257) | ||
| 665599 | 2008-05-03 23:24:00 | I forgot to say, I have recovery CD,s for the laptop as well but they won't work either. They run and seem to complete but laptop won't boot(error loading operating system) |
bones (10257) | ||
| 665600 | 2008-05-03 23:30:00 | When you say recovery CD's are these complete recovery CD's as supplied by Acer or ones you made yourself ? if its the MBR that s damaged, you can replace it if you have a Windows CD, Heres how: ( copied from another site, easier than writing it all out) Restart your computer with the Windows XP Setup disk in the CDROM drive. If you are prompted to press a key to start the computer from CDROM, do so quickly. Otherwise it may try to boot from the hard drive. After a few minutes, you'll see a prompt to press the R key to start the Recovery Console. When Recovery Console starts, it will prompt you to enter a number corresponding to the Windows XP installation that you need to repair. In most cases, you'll enter "1" (which will be the only choice). If you press ENTER without typing a number, Recovery Console will quit and restart your computer. Enter your Administrator password. If you don't enter the correct password, you cannot continue. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type fixmbr and then verify that you want to proceed. If that doesn't work do the above again, but this time type in fixboot If you are getting IDE errors, there could also be a connection / Drive problem. When you run the Lappie from the Linux CD are you able to access the drives contents? |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 665601 | 2008-05-03 23:33:00 | They are the Acer Rovery CDs. So I don't have an actual XP CD to boot from. | bones (10257) | ||
| 665602 | 2008-05-03 23:36:00 | Sorry for previous typo's. Linux brings up this The "diskdrake" program has crashed with the following error: current_hd called but $current_kind is not an hd at /usr/lib/libDrakX/diskdrake/hd_gtk.pm line 333. ...propagated at /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive.pm line 297. standalone::bug_handler() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive.pm:297 interactive::ask_from_listf_raw_no_check() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive.pm:218 interactive::ask_warn_() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/interactive.pm:205 interactive::ask_warn() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/diskdrake/hd_gtk.pm:263 diskdrake::hd_gtk::create_automatic_notebooks() called from /usr/lib/libDrakX/diskdrake/hd_gtk.pm:84 diskdrake::hd_gtk::main() called from /usr/sbin/diskdrake:93 |
bones (10257) | ||
| 665603 | 2008-05-04 00:16:00 | I forgot to say, I have recovery CD,s for the laptop as well but they won't work either. They run and seem to complete but laptop won't boot(error loading operating system) Hmmm Okay thats not to good - looking at the other posting, while I'm not that clued on linux crash codes it looks to me that the drives not reading correctly. All of the below requires a working PC: If you want to try this - download the XP Recovery CD (www.webtree.ca) - It is the first part of the Windows XP CD that allows you to boot into the recovery Console, its a zipped ISO file that once unzipped needs to have the ISO burnt to a CD, use something like Image burn (http://www.imgburn.com/) - you may need to run that and see if it detects the drive OK or lets you use the console. There is a possibility you have a drive failure in the form of bad sectors. To test if it is you can download HDD Regenerator (http://www.dposoft.net/) This needs to be installed on a working PC and a bootable CD made, it checks your drive for failed sectors. From experience, if a Linux Live CD cant read a drive there is either a problem with hardware, either a faulty connection between the CD Drive/Motherboard, Hard Drive connection or failure. The linux live CD reads from the CD ( as you know) so this takes the windows OS out of the picture all together, only leaves hardware. Sorry for the previous typo's ??? There were typo's - :p Didn't notice - no worries any way - you should see my spell check sometimes :o |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 665604 | 2008-05-04 00:27:00 | Thanks. Will give those a try. | bones (10257) | ||
| 665605 | 2008-05-04 01:15:00 | After quite a while got to recovery console after burning Bootdisk CD. fixmbr didn't seem to do anything fixboot semed to go OK Still no difference tho Running HDD Regenerator sector scan at moment. No problems so far. mbr seems to be the culprit but how to fix? |
bones (10257) | ||
| 665606 | 2008-05-04 01:42:00 | If running fixmbr from the recovery console didn't replace the MBR to a working state, AND the Acer recovery CD'S didn't load thats odd. ? When you ran the Acer Recovery CD did it do a complete reinstall back to factory settings / replace the whole OS as to when you first got the laptop ? You can also try reloading the Recovery console and typing in chkdsk /r let it run and see if it fixes the problem. Looks like Partition Magic somehow screwed something big time. If HDD Regenerator doesn't find anything after about 30 min I would stop it, the boot sectors are at the beginning of a drive, which is where it appears to be the problem. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 665607 | 2008-05-04 02:29:00 | Duh. Only reason I got anywhere was because a flash drive was plugged in. This seemed to get treated as C: When I removed it and booted from XP Boot Cd and try to run checkdisk I get a message " Specified drive is not valid or there is no disk in the drive" This is from the dos prompt C:\ So it looks like its really screwed. It doesn't seem to see the drive at all. |
bones (10257) | ||
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