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Thread: One little mistake ad now this... help please! bad hard drive or?

  1. #1
    Hooya! Rabbitrunner51's Avatar
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    One little mistake ad now this... help please! bad hard drive or?

    Early this evening I wrote a very long summary of all that has happened to a Mod here i know and probably will hear back from him tomorrow i suppose, but since it is very early in the AM and i've been up for hours on end trying to figure this out and fix it, I thought i would shorten it some and open it up to any and all who might respond.

    Before I relate all this one question: when you have one hard drive that is apparently messed up or corrupted with unreadable data , and you hook it up solely to boot from a operating system CD to install Windows 7 ( or any other in reality ) I get only a 'cannot load NTLDR' message on first load screen. Is this a sign of a bad hard drive and can it be fixed in any way?

    The main jist of this is this: earlier yesterday afternoon I was using my other drives operating system which contains a XP OS and when I rebooted to switch to my other drives OS, Windows 7, a defrag program i use ( Perfectdisk 12 ) decided at that point to go ahead and do a boot time defrag. How nice .. NOT!

    LIke an idiot, and I should know better , I interupted it, rebooted and all heck went on from there. I could not gt into either OS, and it proceeded into a repair mode with endless strings etc.. in XP first, which i proceeded to interupt that also.
    I was just vry impatient with this whole thing and its stupid I know, but i figured even though its a real bummer I would just re-intall the Windows 7 OS and all would be alright or so I thought. Took me awhile to wake up and realize all of this is due to a totally messed up MBR ( master boot record ) and I'm out of luck.

    Finally , after some trail and error ( don't ask me to explain ) , got it to boot into my XP OS, which i cannot stand after like 95% or all I have and use was on that Win. 7 OS drive. Read below for final condition.

    First tried to use just messed up drive with wahtever Win. 7 data is on it, and got the above 'cannot load NTLDR " message, will not boot from CD with bios set to that and.., if both drives are connected same ' canot load NTLDR' again. How can i even use that drive, format it or any other if I cannot get it recognized?

    Just to note; before all this that Windows 7 I was using was totally all updated , loaded with all I wanted, ran fantastic with zero zero issues at all and and no signs of a bad drive whatsoever.

    Geeze Louise.., I just bought a new video card and motherboard i could not afford, and now this.

    I'm thinking of trying to load the Windows 7 disk upon the XP drive bootup, and see if it will load Windows 7 onto it. Question there also. XP has a built in format in the bootup CD so one can wipe the drive. Does Win. 7 have that also? I could use half of the drive to split parition for now, load windows 7 onto that I suppose if all else fails. What so alls of you think.

    For a smart guy i sure am dumb at times. Kind of mad at that defrag program for doing this. Tehy should let one know if its set to to that. I just did not think to set it up that way. MY older one never did that. Boo who.. very sad here.
    Phenom 2 X4 B35 :ASRock N68C-S UCC: G Skill DDR1333 ( 4GB ): ATI Radeon HD6770 1GB : Logitech X504 5.1 SS speakers.:WD 500GB,&300GB Sata2 HD's ; Liteon Lightscribe 24X DVD/combo Drive : Antec 620C neo PSU: CTL 22"WS

  2. #2
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    Never ever interrupt boot defrag or when XP or Win 7 is doing a SELF repair INSTALL . Normally I find that can take a hour or 2 for the repair, but have seen shorter and longer times. So when you see files wit a start of like $XXXXXX , let it fix itself.
    In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, Startup Repair has replaced the Repair Installation option that was available in Windows XP. Startup Repair replaces only damaged or missing Windows startup files. In a Windows XP Repair Install, all Windows files are replaced no matter if they work or not.
    How To Perform a Startup Repair in Windows 7
    http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolso...tup-repair.htm

    Note:
    there are a bunch of pages.

    Maybe better for you
    http://captaindbg.com/repairinstall/

    You are looking for the repair bit on this gui.


  3. #3
    Hooya! Rabbitrunner51's Avatar
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    Train, I'm sure glad my smarts and intuition take over in times like this.. as read the following.

    Summary: Went to bad finally around 6:00am with only my windows XP drive hooked up. Got up and decided to try some things. went into the bios and looked over the boot order. Noticed only my CD/DVD rom and main HD were in that order, then my motherboards Nivida loader 2.49 utility as third. Then i tried to boot when i hooked the other drive again, and same result. Went into bios to see if it even recognized my other HD and IT DID. Was there showing up.
    Booted up with both drives connected, and then saw the XP chkdsk immediately start. I looked at the final startup step and it started to fix the E:/ drive which is the one in question.

    Not having read your post here yet, i decided to just let it all play out, repair no matter how long it took. Good choice. It just finished, but of course it wiped out my data, but no matter. It is open to use and showing up in my XP OS. Horray Horray. You do not know how this makes me feel. over this pst month with new HW buys and all other, i'm not sure i could take any more without pulling out my still full head of hair... haha!

    Now i suppose i can reload that Windows 7 once again. Sure i am still bummed a bit about losing all that info and data, but i can live with that. Only because i normaly use most of that other drive, I do not do a bckup like i should. How much space in a 490+ HD will it use? I only had like less then 200GB left recently before.

    Also, i must have completely overlooked that 'repair' menu on first screen. Don't know how i missed that one. Obviously would have saved me some stupid steps wasted time and all the rest.

    I hoped Train you would respond today. Thanks so mcuh for the info etc.. Never even got into my email till now, for obvious reasons.

    Saved those links in favorites for now. Thanks again. You is pretty darn smart yourself.
    Last edited by Rabbitrunner51; 01-27-2012 at 09:39 PM.
    Phenom 2 X4 B35 :ASRock N68C-S UCC: G Skill DDR1333 ( 4GB ): ATI Radeon HD6770 1GB : Logitech X504 5.1 SS speakers.:WD 500GB,&300GB Sata2 HD's ; Liteon Lightscribe 24X DVD/combo Drive : Antec 620C neo PSU: CTL 22"WS

  4. #4
    Hooya! Rabbitrunner51's Avatar
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    One other thing. That drive I used for Windows 7 still has some files that are empty mostly and one thing i'm not sure of before install. It has a OS boot ini but upon bootup obviously the bootup needs to load a startup to add, which would not be there considering no OS is there intact now. Can i just go ahead and install my Windows 7 now , have to re-format or just delete all those files and then install the OS? Kind of a dumb question but i have learned much and wnt no issues here.
    Phenom 2 X4 B35 :ASRock N68C-S UCC: G Skill DDR1333 ( 4GB ): ATI Radeon HD6770 1GB : Logitech X504 5.1 SS speakers.:WD 500GB,&300GB Sata2 HD's ; Liteon Lightscribe 24X DVD/combo Drive : Antec 620C neo PSU: CTL 22"WS

  5. #5
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    To get it to format that drive, using win 7, remove the partition, then remake the partition. Then Win 7 during the install will format that partition.
    And yes, it will put the windows bootloader on C:\ drive if that is the bootable hdd.

    The repair function I pointed out would have fixed the bootloader too.

  6. #6
    Hooya! Rabbitrunner51's Avatar
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    Got it al formated and loaded my 'Windows 7' just fine. ( I know how to do that ) Had to first make it a non live drive ,tehn format. Up and running. Just loaded all my drivers and some MS updates thus far.... sweet! I just expand the disk on C:/ drive and load windows from there.

    The reason I asked all that was because of the INI file and it had the windows folder files intact. Thanks Train. over a course in time I often wonder what i would do if you were not around to respond. Your like my older brother, although I know i know more then he does.
    Phenom 2 X4 B35 :ASRock N68C-S UCC: G Skill DDR1333 ( 4GB ): ATI Radeon HD6770 1GB : Logitech X504 5.1 SS speakers.:WD 500GB,&300GB Sata2 HD's ; Liteon Lightscribe 24X DVD/combo Drive : Antec 620C neo PSU: CTL 22"WS

  7. #7
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    Probably do something like I have been known to do. Climb the walls while upside down and backwards.
    Last edited by Train; 01-28-2012 at 12:02 PM.

  8. #8
    Hooya! Rabbitrunner51's Avatar
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    THATS VERY FUNNY. I just get extremely mentally ill. Makes me feel like I fit in to society just fine. lol
    Phenom 2 X4 B35 :ASRock N68C-S UCC: G Skill DDR1333 ( 4GB ): ATI Radeon HD6770 1GB : Logitech X504 5.1 SS speakers.:WD 500GB,&300GB Sata2 HD's ; Liteon Lightscribe 24X DVD/combo Drive : Antec 620C neo PSU: CTL 22"WS

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