Aaarrgh Help! Windows Strikes again!!

[caveman]

OK, I have a Dell Dimension E520 which has been fine for years...

All has been fine since I`ve had it, but a few days ago while doing a quite a few things involving my D: drive, I got a delayed write fail and the stuff I was listening to stopped and my D; drive disappeared.

I shut down and checked the drives and my C: was quite warm but my D: was HOT!

I hung it out of the case and rebooted and all was fine so I set about mounting some fans on the drives. All went well and the hot D: was running about 10-12 degrees C cooler than before with the C; running 5-6 cooler.

Sunday night, I shut down the machine for the night and went to bed. My wife tried to boot the system in the morning but the thing just sorta stalled at the point where the BIOS shows any RAID volumes (I don`t have any although the drives are controlled by the RAID BIOS).

The bottom line of the screen saying "press CTRL-I to enter configuration utility" and the cursor blinking on the next line. That`s all I get when booting from the drive.

I`ve had the drive out and scanned for viri and done chkdsk /f and chkdsk /r on a separate machine and it finds and supposedly fixes tons of stuff yet it still won`t boot.

If I put it back in the Dell and boot from WinXP CD it goes thru the motions then the last few things on the bottom of the screen are FAT filesystem, NTFS Filesystem then it says starting windows waits for a few secs (10-20) then I get a blue screen with stop:0x0000007B with some other 0x`s in brackets.

I don`t have another SATA drive to try but I do have a brand new 80GB ATA Seagate and an adapter that will allow me to connact a PATA drive to a SATA board but I still get the stop error (not 100% sure it`s the same one but it`s a BSOD)

***UPDATE***

It is the same stop error with the PATA drive on the SATA adapter.

Bear in mind I can`t get to the recovery console, it blue screens before it gets there.

Spec:

WinXP Pro (Genuine) SP3 **(where I can find a bootable SP3 CD?)**
Intel Pentium D 3.4Ghz Dual core
3GB RAM
ATI 2600XT
160GB Seagate (C
400GB WD (D
Some CD-RW (E
Some DVD-RW (F

Oh, and I`ve even had the whole MOBO out to see if there was any crap behind it...it was clean but I blew it off with compressed air anyway!

I don`t know whether I`m onto something here but it`s WinXP Pro SP3 on the drive and my only bootable WinXP Pro CD is SP1!?!? Maybe?? Maybe not??


Can anyone help me out here?? I`m truly, truly lost

[nightowl]

so is your C drive is not bootable at all now either?

if that is the case Try Removing then try to boot with just your C drive.

It sounds like you D drive is fried. You could try the freezer trick with that second drive to recover the data. Put it in a Ziploc bag then leave it in the freezer for 30 min then take it out and install it back in your computer. Might recognize the drive and get data off of it.

[mnosteele52]

This isn't a Windows issue, it's a hardware issue, your drive had died and needs to be replaced.

[caveman]

Errrrm, I don`t think I worded that very well.

The stuff is still there on my D: drive it still works, or rather it did when the system last booted up.

The stuff on my C: drive is also still there, (seen and accessed it all in an external enclosure)

I`ve just been to see a mate of mine and did a windows repair on his system with my drive and when finished shut it down a brought my drive home, now it`s stuck in a "restarting installation > reboot > Restarting Installation > reboot" loop.

I still cannot get as far as the recovery console on my C: drive although I still haven`t tried booting without my D:.

I did however remove ALL my RAM and used two known good 1GB sticks and got the same result.

I`ll try without my D: now and report back! thanx again!

***UPDATE***

Still can`t get recovery console without my D: connected

[nightowl]

sounds like your C drive is fried, get a new one and do a fresh install.

[caveman]

Hmmmmmm..........

It SEEMS I`m a complete tit!

I`m just sitting here with my head in my hands and thought to myself "why don`t I use the original WinXP with SP2 disc that came from Dell to get to the recovery console" So I did, and I`m in!!

I had a sneaking idea it was to do with the `alternative` SP1 disc I was using.

Anyway, now I`m in how can I fix this?? fixboot? fixmbr? install over install? repair?

What would you guys do?

Incidentally, all drive diagnostics come back passed!

I know a replacement drive would be the best idea, but I ain`t got one ATM so I need to 'botch' this one up for now!

Thanx

[caveman]

OK, well I went for the good old install over the install option!

I know it`s not ideal but it`s only short term (maybe a week or 2)

The good news is, my drives seem ok....well so far anyway. i`m trying to restore to a backup I made a couple months back but for some reason the recovery environment in Nortons ghost is telling me my network credentials are wrong! They`re not, but Mr Norton thinks they are!

So, the scores on the doors are as follows....

A complete re-format on a new drive in a week-or-so`s time
and some sort of backup solution that is better than Norton!!

I`d like some suggestions on this please, and I`m really gonna run it weekly this time!

Also, even though setup said it was deleting all my stuff, the drive is still half full and I can still get at all of my stuff so with this in mind how `could` I get the system to boot up with the new `booting up stuff` and still have all my other stuff where it was (not very technical am I?) well this is only for a week or so and to keep the Missus happy til then so if there`s a way, let`s be having it.

I`m sorta a bit happier than earlier on anyway! so that`s a bonus.

Seriously though, let`s have some input on a good backup/recovery solution.

Thanx again guys (and gals)

Al