Tech Support Question

[spartak]

Trying to boot up on the PC gives me

disk boot failure insert system disk and press enter

If I reset the boot priorities I can get my win2k install disk to work but the bios is able tod etect both hard drives.

My questions:

Is the problem really a dead HD or is it a mobo/bios issue?

If I reinstall win2k will I lose all the data on the drive?

Is the drive really gone so the data is lost anyway?

Is there anything else I can do to fix this?

Cheers

[Terra Nullius]

Have you fiddled with your hardware at all lately or did this just appear out of nowhere?

Assuming the answer to this question is no...
You seem to have a corrupted boot sector which could be due to a failed sector on the HDD or a virus or bloodsucking alien demons waiting for you to fall into an exhausted sleep so they can suck out your brains,... no wait - you're already running Windows.

Is the problem really a dead HD or is it a mobo/bios issue?

Might not be a completely dead HDD, but you might have lost some sectors or it might be a virus, or you should remember not to bring radioactive fuel rods home with you. Probly not a mobo or BIOS problem.

If I reinstall win2k will I lose all the data on the drive?

Yep.

Is the drive really gone so the data is lost anyway?

Probly not. Chances are it's recoverable.

Is there anything else I can do to fix this?

Google "boot sector repair" or something like that.
There are downloadable programs to fix bad boot sectors.

Or, install another HDD as master. Set yours as slave. Do a virus check! And copy your data across.

Or, use a recovery disk to fix the boot sector - I haven't done this in ages, so I can't give detailed instructions on that one.


Then get a copy of Ghost and DO A BACKUP!


Oh, and I'm probably talking out of my butt as usual, so if someone else sounds like they know what they're saying, just ignore me

[spartak]

Thanks for this. Kind of what I thought. The PC booted into windows had a missing DLL and then rebooted into a boot disk failure. MY major problem is that I can't get the bloody thing to boot and I don't have any kind of boot disk. I only have a CD in this particular machine so a floppy is no use. Anyone have any ideas apart from I'm screwed?

[spartak]

Oh I thinjk big bro set the HDD up as fat32

Does that also mean I have had it given that all the articles refer to NTFS?

[Terra Nullius]

If you can still download and burn, there are some very good bootable cd utilities out there.
"Bart's bootable cd" is highly recommended by people who know more about this than me.

This page http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about it.

You can do just about anything you want direct from a cd (assuming you're still able to download it and burn a copy). It will allow you to boot, access your files repartition and so on.

Floppies are handy for emergencies, but these utilities are far more powerful, and you can have every tool you need on a single disk.

FAT32 shouldn't be a problem. Any decent cd-boot disk can handle it easily.

[spartak]

Thanks for the help but it looks like I am screwed. I now have a boot cd and th installation CD and neither of them can repair the hard drive. ays sopmething about it being blank or a non windows installation. It looks like I need a new HDD, install WIN2k on that and them see whether I can repair the other drive from that installation. Looks very much like the MBR is gone.

Thanks for holding my hand while I worked through this.

[The Mad Monk]

You came over here? You must be desperate.

DON'T re-install windows.

DO buy another drive and set it to master as TN suggested -- don't worry, they're cheaper then sneakers nowadays.

[spartak]

No point posting antything that needs a quick answer to CG at a weekend is there.

Buying the new drive is exactly what I'm going to do but nothing is cheap in Denmark