Need help with Compaq Presario 700 Notebook PLEASE!!

impostercity · November 29th, 2002, 10:27 PM

Greetings all!

I'm sorta new here so I hope this question can be answered as it is VERY urgent.

I have the above mentioned notebook and Windows has crashed. Unfortunatly, I need to recover data from one of the folders (c:\ drive). Now my problem is that windows loads, then it restarts and keeps repeating from there... BUT.. when I use a bootdisk (98 boot disk).. it boots from it.. but it does NOT display my C:\ drive... STRANGE!! it does however say A: but when I do C: it says drive does not exist.. is this a COMPAQ thing? what do I do here..

someone please help, I need to recover a file from my C: before I restore the computer with the supplied compaq CD's... thanks!

fyxxer32 · November 29th, 2002, 10:35 PM

Can you start it in safe mode? And I think that might be a ComCrap thing

impostercity · November 29th, 2002, 10:37 PM

I tried it all..... does NOT work in safemode... keeps repeating itself by rebooting and rebooting again and again.... its just stupid if u ask me...

Kuasimodem · November 29th, 2002, 10:44 PM

Sounds like a hard drive failure to me, if it can't find the C: drive in DOS.

One thing you might want to try is boot into DOS mode instead of safe mode, and then type "fdisk /mbr", it's just possible that you might have a corrupted master boot record.

impostercity · November 29th, 2002, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kuasimodem
Sounds like a hard drive failure to me, if it can't find the C: drive in DOS.

One thing you might want to try is boot into DOS mode instead of safe mode, and then type "fdisk /mbr", it's just possible that you might have a corrupted master boot record.

no you see, it reads the C: drive when it boots.. thats the funny part.. in the middle of the loading of windows.. it crashes and does it again and again.. when in DOS.. it does not want to go to C:\

going to safemod is not hte question.. the question is.. HOW do i recover files from C:\???

Kuasimodem · November 29th, 2002, 10:53 PM

Well, you could get one of these adapters and slave that drive to a desktop and recover the data.

Kory · November 29th, 2002, 10:55 PM

Thats a pretty neat adapter, but I thinks he wants to 'slave' his lappy first.

impostercity · November 29th, 2002, 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kuasimodem
Well, you could get one of these adapters and slave that drive to a desktop and recover the data.

Great idea! however, its an emergency and I need the file now.... do they sell these things at CompUSA or something?

fyxxer32 · November 30th, 2002, 06:23 AM

VERY cool idea Kuasimodem! I didn't even know they made such a thing.

November 30th, 2002, 06:44 AM

Does the hard drive use a dynamic disk overlay (DDO)? If so, DOS won't see the drive unless you insert the disk after the DDO has loaded. Most DDO's have a boot message like "press XX to boot form floppy disk" or some such. Compaq may have disabled this message, though.

Not sure about compaq lappies, but some compaq bioses don't let you boot from floppy too easily, without using a hot key or a special compaq rescue disk. Dunno if that's the prob or not.

Compuq is not my fav PC manufacturer.

Hope you can get it without pulling the HDD out.

Cheers
Mick