Hard Drive Died?

Hi
My compaq computer will not boot.

When you turn it on it comes up with a screen with 3 options: Boot Menu, Setup, System recovery.

When I go to boot menu the only option is DVD-RW drive.

I went to BIOS setup and there is no HD detected and no option to autodetect.

The hard drive has 2 partitions, c: is system and the other is H: recovery.

I tried recovery console which saw the recovery partition H: but not C:, ran chkdsk on recovery partition and all was fine.

Ran diskpart and it saw both partitions, when I exited without making any changes recovery console went to C: so I ran chkdsk on C and it couldn't get past 50% saying the drive has unrecoverable errors.

Does this mean the hard drive has died or is there anything else I can try?

One of the problems is there are some recent photos I have not backed up which I don't really want to lose, and I do not have restore disks just the recovery partition.

If the drive is dead and we need a new one can I set the old one as slave to access the working recovery partition?

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Melxv535,
You can't say the drive is DEAD if you can still access the Recovery partition.
Run chkdsk again on C: with the /R option. Then run it again.

Obviously, something has written bad data to your C: drive (partition).
Let chkdsk try to fix it.
You can always reformat C:, but that won't get your pictures back.

Right now, that's all I can think of.

Cheers Mate!
The Shadow :cool

 

Well I would like a bit more info. What is your OS? If it is XP we can try this amazing trick by Fred Langa, "Langa Letter: XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Total-Rebuild Option", I have used it at least 3-4 times now on mine and friends PC's without any DATA LOSS:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897

Lets hope it is just a corrupt OS and not hardware.

 

What a great tip!
Thanks.

 

Be sure to re-patch windows after performing a repair install, as you are (probably) replacing newer files with older versions from disk.

:-D Not a problem if you keep your install disk up-to-date, or have never patched the machine LOL

 

Hi
Many thanks for your reply.
I am using xp home. The trouble is I only have the PC restore partition. I do have a copy of xp home for my laptop, can I use this to perform the repair you mention above.

Thanks Mel

 

Hi
Thought I would give the Langa letter method a try.

It I got as far as screen 6, then a partition list and the options to setup, create partition or delete partition, and underneath a list with 4 unknown disks saying there is no disk in the drive.

Is it now looking like a format?

As mentioned before I only have the recovery partition on the problem SATA hard drive. I was going to try and set it as a slave to see if I could access the recovery partition to copy it off, but with it being SATA and my other PC IDE I don't think I can now.

 

Hi
After it rebooted it came up with the black and white progres bar at the bottom of the screen and a message saying 'Windows could not start because of an error in the software. Please report this problem as: load needed DLLs for kernel. Please contact support person to report this.

Then I rebooted again and it said 'Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\system32\l_intl.nls' You can attempt to repair this file by starting setup from cd select r to start repair.

Hpoe this helps.

 

I have just realised that C: was missing at the beginning of the file name in the message on the screen.

Bios cannot see the HD, recovery console can only see H:Recovery and diskpart can see C:, H:, and 4 unknown disks which I presume are the card readers.

 

I'm unsure why the BIOS can't see the C partition, but you are correct about the 4 other drives. They are your card readers.

 

Hi
Sorry I was mistaken.
The first time I looked only the dvd-rw drive was listed in Bios.
It does now list the hard drive.
But nothing else apart from diskpart sees c: drive.
When I go out of diskpart it then goes to c: prompt.
I have tried chkdsk /r and it used to get to 50% before unrecoverable errors, yesterday it was 26%.

Is the only way to reformat?

 

Yes that should be fine as long as you have the XP key for that PC otherwise you might want to search for KeyFinder Lite.

 

Hi
After copying missing files from cd (Hal, nsoskrnl, vgaoem) I thought I would try Langa Letter method again.

It now recognises there is a C: but doesn't give me the option to repair just setup, create partition, and delete partition. I hit enter to setup and it said how do I want to format the drive ntfs(quick), ntfs or leave intact, I said leave intact, then it said that there is already windows and it will be deleted.

Does this mean I can't use this method?

 

It sounds to me from your description that you have some major physical damage to the hard drive.
I doubt that a format will be successful, if chkdsk /r can't complete a scan.

 

Have you read the method throughly? As it indicates quite clearly there are 2 restore methods, but one is brutal and reformats and overwrites everything while the other method (several steps further along) "only" overwrites the "WINDOWS" files and leaves all of your data and settings in place. Please read it thoroughly from start to finish, then read it again and then finally take action. Without being there and seeing what is occurring I cant really comment. It works wonderfully just read the whole article fully before you start!

 

Are the OS's exactly the same on your two computers?
If (for example) you are trying to do the repair option on a computer that has XP Professional on it with a install disk for XP Home, you will not be offered the repair option talked about in Bold Eagle's link.
You will only be offered a complete ("clean") install, which will format your C drive deleting everything on it.
This is what it sounds like is happening, in your description.

 

As far as im aware it they are both xp home.

Anyway I have given up trying to repair now I have spent hours over the last few days.

I decided to reinstall. even that has taken far longer than normal, I started to format before I went back to work and it took almost 20 minutes and was still only on 1% when I went to work. It had finished when I got back and has set up xp home now.

It takes a good 10 minutes to load to the welcome screen. the black and white progress bar takes all this time.

I am going to start another thread 'Computer slow to boot' to see if I can get help with this now.

Thanks to everyone for their help so far.

 

OK
I fear that the drive itself is defective and will eventually have to be replaced.