Major Boot Problem - Please help...

[sarah123]

Both my internal drives are failing to boot. I'm on Win2ooo.

I've tried both an Emergency Repair Disk and a Win98 boot disk to boot, but it says that
there is no previous Windows OS on the computer. BIOS sees both drives but keeps giving me an "invalid system disk" error. I've changed the boot ordere around many times and nothing seems to work. All day yesterday I had been trying
to fix my second internal drive (D) which was not booting. I left the PC on last
night and started a disk Defrag from the Win2ooo System Tools. I woke up this morning
and there was a blue screen with a boot error and neither drives will boot now, even
though C was working last night.

I've tried many many things and it both drives seem to have a boot error, FAT error
or directory error-- something is scrambled, but the data is still on the drive.

Yesterday I recovered some of the data from D using PC Inspector, but I can't do
that for C now since both drives are failing to boot.

The same thing happened with the D drive last week but somehow scandisk's "autofix"
was able to repair the bad sectors/directories/file system on the drive and start
using it again.

I'm on Win2000 with a 1 gig AMD processor. The C drive is 10gig and the slave D
drive is a 40gig Maxtor internal drive. I have a total of about 500 MB of RAM. The
file system is FAT32.

I just spent 5 days recreating this second drive with all the sofware and Windows
settings as well as Outlook accounts and settings.

I have a Win2k AND a Win98 boot disk, as well as the CD for Norton Systemworks (sort
of useless). I also have already been to the Recovery Console and I hit a brick wall
since it cannot see/read drive C or D.

I know how to open the BIOS and CMOS settings to change things, but I don't know what would help.

*Please* help....

Thank you,
sarah

PS: I have all the main spyware utilities as well as Norton Virus Scan and had been running them constantly. I thought I had no viruses left.

[Bovon]

I would work with only one drive at a time..the C: drive..is the C: drive the one with Windows 98SE?..disconnect the other drive and boot..see if that drive is detected correctly. If the BIOS is detecting the drive differently than when it was setup..the FAT will be screwed up..and it cannot boot.

If the BIOS seems to be detecting the drive, but you still get an error that no OS is present, either something (virus maybe) has wiped the hard drive or changed the MBR so that the BIOS cannot find the starting point.

Have you run scandisk on the drive from DOS?... by using a boot disk to get to an A: prompt, can you change to a C: prompt?...if you can do that, and you have a C:\> prompt, type DIR and hit enter..that will show you what is on the drive..if anything is there.

Also, bad ribbon IDE cables and sometimes the power connectors will create boot problems

[Gilthanaz]

I would boot to your 98se boot disk and try using fdisk \mbr. Also if you can get to the win2k recovery console, I think fixboot does the same thing.

[sarah123]

Okay, I turned off the computer for 20 minutes and it restarted Win2000 from the main C drive. Both drives have Windows 2000; I only haqve a Win98 disk for emergencies.

The C drive is very unstable with long load times and many "this application had to close" windows, so something is wrong. Both disks have had WIN2k installed on 2 different partitions as both had their main OS go bad.

So now I can only start Win2K (second installation) on C, but D looks like it's unformatted, even though I can see its logical files (this is all new lingo to me, so I may sound like I know more than I do.)

I'm tempted to reformat the D drive so I can at least start fresh on one of these drives, but if you have more suggestions now the C is running, I'd really appreciate this. I'm really stuck.

Many thanks~
Sarah

PS: for a more in-depth history of this problem, see the posts from me around July 10-11.

[hom3l3ssazn]

do remeber that 98 start up disk (DOS) will not read your HD if it's NTFS. At least it didn't last time i tried. if that helps

[sarah123]

Mine is FAT32, but the bad news is that now my floppy drive won't work--URGHHH$%$#@%

So I can't do a floppy boot, or run the test software from Maxtor.

[Gilthanaz]

Check your floppy data and power cables, and while your at it, check your hard drive cables and jumpers too. Are these C: and d: drives partitions on the same physical disk, or are they two independent disks? I would suggest that the drive is going bad, but it's unlikely that two drives are going bad at the same time (unless something like a power surge fried them both).

[Leby]

Hi, I am just new on this forum and I would like to share my experience regarding this problem, I got this problem before and I have done a lot of tweaking, until I check my power supply wattage output, and it turned out that I dont have enough wattage to supply the needs of all the hardware, If you have done a lot of tweaking too and the problem exist try changing your power supply to a higher wattage, it might help like what happen to me too.

[noseBleeD]

Welcome to TechIMO Sarah!

Sounds like time to clean house. lol
make sure cables all plugged in ALL THE WAY. Sometimes placing firm grip on case with one hand, while other firmly pushing on cable connector with even pressure.

PS might not be able to power so many devices(2 hdd, cdrom, mobo, floppy drive). For now, just use the 10 gb, 1 cdrom, 1 floppy drive.
Unplug the d drive (40gb)
Enter bios settings and set hdd detection to "Auto Detect" for all drives.
Boot to w2k cd and get to the recover console.
type 'fixboot c:' then hit enter <-fixes boot sector, overwriting mbr (ok any prompts you get)
type 'fixmbr' c:' then hit enter
type 'chkdsk /p /r' <-optional -you can do this later
type 'exit' hit enter to rexit console and reboot.
When you reboot, you can change boot sequence if you want - ie: A - HDD0 - CDROM

You can always start from scratch.
Place the 40gb at end of cable, set to master, or cs(cable select)., and in the Primary IDE channel (port) of mobo.

If you haven't already done so, download Killdisk and completely wipe the 40 gb by using the write zero -free one pass only- option .
It will take a couple hours only and in my case of using it, actually wrote to supposed "bad sectors" and the hdd ended up without any bad sectors after zero-writing it.

However, on another drive, the low-level format failed because of the bad sector(s). I ended up trying www.madboot.com 's madboot floppy and used its own low-level format which ended up taking over 9 hours for the 20 gb drive, but the bad sectors were gone afterwards.

Then install w2k
Then purchase Symantics Ghost, or Paragons Drive Backup 6, and copy disk to backup drive, or partition on that 10gb, or even burn to cdr.

The frustration of having to re-install ALL THOSE UPDATES, and programs can be gone forever with the cloning of your drive. Worth the 40 or so dollars. Great, necessary tool to have for ANY PC,MAC OWNER

Keep Coming Back .....

[sarah123]

Hello all and thanks for the throrough explanations. After reading them I realized that I'm in way over my head, espcially b/c I'm susupecting that there may also be an overheating problem inside the box.

So I took the whole computer in to CompUSA where for $100 they do a complete diagnostic and data retrieval process. Figured I can't afford to work anymore 16-hour days on this, especially since I seemed to be going in circles. They're going to trash the old 10gig master drive after data-recovery, and replace it witht heh newer Maxtor 40gig. I decided the buy an EXTERNAL drive this time, so I can plug and play.

But here are my questions:

1) I'm hearing that Norton Utilties actually can mess up Windows 2000 systems, especially its WidDoctor. I need to have a good solid process for disk and Windows maintenance, but am reluctant to put NU back on the new drive(s.)

2) Do you have a suggestion for a good external drive. They had Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, BusLink and Iomega. I know there are other brands out there, and I'd probably buy it online, but I need to get a good one. I need at least 40 gig. Would appreciate your input.

3) How about Norton AntiVirus? Is that a good program as a stand-alone (without Norton Utilities?)

Well, that's enough questions for now! Thanks again and look forward to your answers,

~Sarah