Computer crashed but Im not a newbie. New one on me

Sunday, April 3, 2005 by The Rated PG | Discussion: Personal Computing

This one is new to me just turned it on. Boot record not found. reinstalled xp yet it installed on empty part of my primary hard drive. Secondary hard drive does not show up in windows. However when I use F8 to use safe mode it shows 4 operating systems to choose from. XP recovery console shows only one windows on primary drive. Anyclue anyone?
13 Reply 9 Referrals
yrag
Reply #1 Sunday, April 3, 2005 8:58 PM
What does the bios show?

kona0197
Reply #2 Sunday, April 3, 2005 9:06 PM
I ran into a system not to long ago that had a botched install and showed 2 installs of XP after pressing F8 at boot. I used Killdisk on the drive to wipe it completely clean and then let XP setup do a NTFS format and then I reinstalled XP.

tjesterb
Reply #3 Sunday, April 3, 2005 10:30 PM
PG, I had a similar problem recently. The simplest thing for you to do at this point would probably be to try and recover your data from the original partition, burn it to CD or DVD, reformat the whole drive, and reinstall from scratch. If you click on My Computer, can you see the original partition? If you can you may be able to recover some of your docs, pics, etc. I would also try to recover the contents of the "Documents and Settings" folder. That will have your "My Documents" folder, as well as your application data, so you can restore your bookmarks and email settings.

Yrag, thanks for your help a few days ago, I recovered most of the data and reformatted & reinstalled this morning (I spent most of the week running off live Linux CDs while I was trying to recover the data.)

yrag
Reply #4 Sunday, April 3, 2005 10:45 PM
tjesterb - NP - Glad you were able to get some back....at best, all data is fleeting and unfortunately, unscheduled in it's demise...

I think PG has a different problem. His second drive isn't showing on top of the partition problem. If it isn't showing in the bios, I would think his PSU went south...

...considering he hasn't returned, it may very well have already left the building...

Hazylunarrain
Reply #5 Monday, April 4, 2005 12:37 AM
He'll be back soon. I don't think it's his "psu". Could be but I think he should do as tjesterb recommends and try to redo everything. At least I hope it will be that easy for him!! Good luck!

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The Rated PG
Reply #6 Monday, April 4, 2005 3:41 PM
The bios on start up shows both hard drives along with all my ram, floppy, etc.
My original was ide-0 I thought when it searched for boot record, but now its on ide-1. My seconds hard drive even shows up under hardware, but not in windows in my computer. Who knows I just finally changed my look to GT3 the day before and was liking the setup. No worm or virus that I know of. Adaware, AVG antivirus, Spyware Blaster, Zone Alarm firewall, Spybot S & D, all up to date. I'll go back and write down what the message says when I try to boot up on the other operating systems.

The Rated PG
Reply #7 Monday, April 4, 2005 3:49 PM
OK this is a trip. I looked in my doc and settings and it has all my old files etc. I see also when I reinstalled xp I may have named my computer different.

The Rated PG
Reply #8 Monday, April 4, 2005 4:02 PM
just realized that what I'm looking at is my secondary drive. Was my D drive, but now is my C drive. Its is 40 GB. my old C drive, primary I had my operating system on is not showing in my computer which was only 10GB. I used it for Xp install and microsoft& office only, and put all my programs on the secondary drive. The programs are there obviously but not accessable from the Xp install that is on there now. Still where did the other hard drive go? Especially since I have not even opened my tower and pulled any connections or changed the order of my hard drives? and how did the xp install itself on the secondary "D"drive?

The Rated PG
Reply #9 Monday, April 4, 2005 6:36 PM
UPDATE: My ide-0 is still there intact. actually my primary drive started booting this time got as far as the bootskin. Started up in IDE-1 and now the computer recognizes both hard drives. my s.m.a.r.t. drive scanner says its bad

Jafo
Reply #10 Monday, April 4, 2005 6:50 PM
Geez....another drive going south.....seems there's a plague of it....

The Rated PG
Reply #11 Tuesday, April 5, 2005 3:14 PM
My computer actually boot up right finally. Can I put everything on this drive onto another drive and replace it? Or is there a good way to do this?

Penguin2245
Reply #12 Tuesday, April 5, 2005 4:30 PM
Admin Jafo: Yes. There is a plague of it. Happened to me about 5 times, and you, PG, Every system i've had my PC on, The primary drive was drive "D" I haven't ever had problems that bad, so I am little help to you. If I find out any more info, I will let you know. Penguin2245.

Penguin2245
Reply #13 Tuesday, April 5, 2005 4:32 PM
UPDATE: Yes you can transer files, but you have to have XP running on both PC's. It is the Files and settings transer wizard. I forget where it is, as I just formatted my PC (again), and I reverted back to Windows ME. Good luck, Penguin2245

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