WinXP Boot Problem

Over the last two years, I assembled two WinXP pc's for a friend and his son. One AMD the other Intel. Both failed last week. Both fully updated (SP3 + current updates) Both MS Security Essentials. Both pc's fully legal.

The AMD one failed to boot and to cut a long story short, unable to either Repair or Reinstall on top using the WinXP Disk. I end up with "Setup did not find any hard drive disk drive installed in your computer. Setup cannot continue. To quit F3"
The HDD is a SATA one, so no Master Slave links.
I have put in a new SATA HDD and WinXP installed normally. Tried connecting the failed SATA HDD to the other SATA port on the MB and nothing on switch on (guess it did not know which SATA it should boot from?) With just the new SATA connected and booted and running connected the failed SATA and it was not shown in either My Computer or Computer Management.

So question is, what should I try next? Luckily there is not much data on the old HDD that has not been transferred to CD-ROM, but would like to recover the remains.

Now the Intel pc.

This failed about 3 days after the other one. Basically failed to boot normally, then offered the usual choices of Safe, Last Good etc. None of them get anywhere. So far am reluctant to proceed further since this pc does contain some non-backed up data which is irreplaceable - I know, it should have been backed-up.

Would appreciate some pointers on best way to proceed. I cannot remember whether this pc is SATA or IDE, but I have a feeling it is SATA.

I am expecting in the post a SATA pci card which I can put in one of my pc's which is non-SATA which may be of use since there should be no doubt on that one which drive boots first.

Grateful for any suggestions, thanks.

Cheers!

PC1:

Confirm the working drive (the new drive), and then disconnect it, and use the suspect drive. Be sure to use the same cable and the same mobo port. If it doesn't work, it's almost certainly the drive.

Can you see the drive in the BIOS of he PC? If not...ta ta drive. If so, see how far you can get into a boot, or if you still get to the no detection message. If so, try using a floppy with this installed. It's a W98SE bootdisk. Download, execute the proggie with a blank floppy, then try booting the PC, obviously including A: in the boot order (in BIOS).

Once you get to a DOS prompt, you can try C: (whic, if not seen, will result in "retry, abort" etc. message). Failing that, in A: type fdisk, and see if the drive can bee seen as a valid volume. Google about fdisk to learn. It's not all that complicated, as long as you don't try to change anything. You just want to see if there's a valid partition or the expected size (sometimes you won't see the whole drive at the fdisk level though).

If no valid partion, it's probably stuffed. Your last option might be to try fdisk /mbr. This attempts to write the master boot record, and if successful, you might see the drive once more.


PC2:

Boot to safemode. Using explorer/my computer get to the C:, right click / properties / tools and choose error-checking or checkdisk (forget which). Scan for bad sectors and auto fix enabled.

Whether or not you get problems from this, once done, try:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

...using the XP CD disk. Be sure to effect a repair and not a reinstallation.

See how you get on.

Boot from a live Linux CD and you'll be able to look at the hard disk contents, copy them to USB sticks or other drives etc.

Most BIOS you can get a boot menu and select the specific drive, or set it in the BIOS as the default boot drive.

Thanks.

Now, I have never used Linux.

What would I actually need and where would I find out exactly what to do? Little scared of introducing my learning curve into the scenario!

Cheers!

Thanks for that.

I'll try that route and see what happens. PC 2 is a SATA as well.

Cheers!

Download a live CD image and burn to disk. There are lots of them but http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download is popular.

Then boot from the CD. It won't change anything on your machine (unless you ask it to).

AMD PC, It doesnt sound likely that you will save the files on this. It's either failed mechanically or the partition/boot sectors is messed up.

Put the Windows XP cd in and load the repair console by pressing R, a select
option 1. C:\Windows.
enter the Admin password you setup when you did the install.
enter cd c:\
enter dir /p
I cant remember which program it was, it was something like fixboot.exe or fixmbr.exe

Intel PC, This problem sounds like the user didnt always power down properly and the bootup files are messed up. So again put the windows xp cd in the drive and boot into the repair console as before.
enter cd c:\
enter chkdsk /p

Hopefully chkdsk will find the errors and fix them to allow you to boot into windows and run scandisk and defragmentor.

Update.

PC1 the AMD.

The HDD is shown in the BIOS but no way can I access it. The WinXP disc aborts.
Tried using Ubunto and again no access.

I bought a SATA PCI card which I put in one of my pc's and could not locate the HDD.

Looks like it is beyond my repair. Not sure of cost to get some photos recovered. (Most of his data is backed up, but for some reason some not)

PC2 the INTEL

Odd one this. When I went back a day or so later the pc booted up. Almost long enough for me to copy My Documents onto a USB memory stick; then it died again BSOD with:-

*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x869EF868, 0x869EF9DC, 0x805D29B4)

Beginning dump of physical memory.

Eventually had to switch off.

Rebooted and no go.

Waited a couple of days and booted OK and I copied all of My Documents.

With pc running, wobbled all cables and RAM etc, no problems.

Removed HDD and connected to my pc's new SATA card.

HDD accessable and checked OK using Check Disk.

Reseated RAM module.

Still working, fingers crossed!

Thanks for suggestions.

Cheers!

Update.

PC1 the AMD.

The HDD is shown in the BIOS but no way can I access it. The WinXP disc aborts.
Tried using Ubunto - I had a go first on my own pc to see how it worked, so hope I got it right! - and again no access.

I bought a SATA PCI card which I put in one of my pc's and could not locate the HDD.

Looks like it is beyond my repair. Not sure of cost to get some photos recovered. (Most of his data is backed up, but for some reason some not)

PC2 the INTEL

Odd one this. When I went back a day or so later the pc booted up. Almost long enough for me to copy My Documents onto a USB memory stick; then it died again BSOD with:-

*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x869EF868, 0x869EF9DC, 0x805D29B4)

Beginning dump of physical memory.

Eventually had to switch off.

Rebooted and no go.

Waited a couple of days and booted OK and I copied all of My Documents.

With pc running, wobbled all cables and RAM etc, no problems.

Removed HDD and connected to my pc's new SATA card.

HDD accessable and checked OK using Check Disk.

Reseated RAM module.

Still working, fingers crossed!

Thanks for suggestions.

Cheers!

Ancient_Mariner,

Did you try putting HDD from PC1 into an external SATA enclosure, with it's own power source, and connecting over USB2? Probably no different to using the SATA PCI card but might be worth a go...

4M2.