pc wont start and no recovery disks

Discussion in 'Software' started by longshot, Jun 3, 2006.

  1. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi all i am new here and have a machine thay needs your help.
    Its a packard bell i media 5024 running Xp home edition (i think)
    it wont start up properly and i have no discks , i downloaded a startup cd but it displays ERROR READING drive .
    I have made a boot diskete but dont know what to do after booting to dos point.
    Help req'd please.
    longshot
     
  2. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    system details are
    I media 5064
    pentium 424
    256mb
    sis650 vid
    60gb
    columbia mother board
    When i boot from floppy it says windows milenium
     
  3. Hipster Doofus

    Hipster Doofus MajorGeek

    Have you tried the XP boot discs. Use the ones for the home edition.
     
  4. Ragnarok

    Ragnarok Private E-2

    PB are a proprietry machine. The xp install is probably an oem and so there may be no discs supplied with it. Can you boot into safe mode?
     
  5. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    problem i have is it wont read cd drive but will boot from floppy so i think i need to get in through dos if pos?.
     
  6. jconstan

    jconstan MajorGeek

    Any messages? What does "wont start up properly" mean?

    -Jim
     
  7. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    I dont think so ,tried pressing f5 ?
    I also can get it to go into blue box asking boot from first device by pressing f8.
     
  8. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    machine goes through preboot stage displaying config pages then displays msg's
    searching for boot record from floppy. not found
    searching for boot record from ide-o .ok

    A disc read error occured
    press ctrl.alt.del. to reboot.

    At this point it just stops where it is.
     
  9. techwrecker

    techwrecker Private E-2

    You may need to do several things in order to diagnose and get it running again. I just had a similar problem and had to do the following things.

    1. Found a bootable disc diagnostic tool for the type of hard drive I had. (I.E. i had a seagate and went to their website and downloaded and burned their diagnostic CD). Many of the major HD manufacturers have these on their sites for free. This will at least tell you if its an actual Hard Drive damage problem.

    2. Grab a copy of XP home from someone or somewhere and try to get to the recovery console. http://www.bootdisk.com may help.

    If you can do this then you can run some of the recovery console commands you can find here. This is a great article that tells you all about it.........
    http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial117.html

    Good luck!

    Techwrecker
     
  10. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi techwrecker
    I have the same seagate drive and already been to the site and downloaded the floppy diagnostic tool.It found 92 bad sectors which were repaired succesfully BUT it still wont go, same msg's.
    I will follow the other links supplied and report back .
    Tks Jamie.
     
  11. techwrecker

    techwrecker Private E-2

    well if worse comes to worse you shold be able to use a Linux Live CD and extract your pics, files, docs etc off the dead drive still or just take it out and slave it to another system. If it gets to that point let me know and I will direct ya how I have done those things in the past.

    www.tech-wreck.com/rambo/myfaq
    techwrecker

    Ran
     
  12. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    OK techwrecker i already took the hd out so lets skip the quick boot floppy for now and proced with slave option please.
    P.s.I need to sleep for a while now but i will check in before anything else is done.
    tks Jamie.
     
  13. techwrecker

    techwrecker Private E-2

    ok, if you have a seagate and are not sure on how to set the jumper setting to slave before you put it in your new system the go here http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/model_st3.html
    find your make and model and view what the proper setting for slave is.

    On your other system make sure you HD is set to master (more than likely if only one) and connect the drive you bringing into the new machine on the same IDE cable in the second HD slot. If your computer does not have a second HD slot on the IDE cable then you will have to get another cable and connect it to the motherboard. For more specifics on this whole process view this article....
    http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/install-hard-drive.htm#install-new-hard-drive

    The key thing to remember in this process is PROPER JUMPER SETTING on the drive you are bringing in to the other system. (IE: making it a slave).

    Once you do that and boot up usually your OS will see the new drive automatically and assign the next letter for it (at least in XP usually does). IF you want to change the drive assignment letter or such from there then you would have to go into disk management via the control panel->Administrative Tools->Computer management->then select disk management on left hand side.

    USUALLY you do not have to mess with the BIOS or SETUP program for your system but on some you do in order for the machine to boot properly once you install a second HD.


    good luck!

    techwrecker
    www.tech-wreck.com/rambo/myfaq
     
  14. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi techwrecker
    I have set the jumpers to slave on second drive, NOW, I have a usb cable to connect second drive can i use this instead of taking my good machine apart or do i have to connect exactly as described .
    Usb port is in front of my machine and is usb2.0.
    tks Jamie.
    P.S. I am off to work now so will continue when i get home at around 3pm UK time.I will come back here first to check for replys.
     
  15. techwrecker

    techwrecker Private E-2

    Oh I don't think I saw in the above postings that you had a USB HD. If that is the case then you should be able to just make sure the proper jumper setting is set and plug it in to the USB port. (I take it this is an external USB HD Storage device?)

    Techwrecker
     
  16. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi Techwrecker
    We have slightly crossed wires.The hard drive is internal fitted type.what i wanted to know was can i connect this with the cable i have which plugs into hdd as the ribbon one does but into the pc via front usb2.0 port. Without mounting it in the machine , say perched on a box for the purpose of this test , The 92 damaged sectors may have contained some system or program files which might prevent it operating at all ?.Seaegate repaired / moved these sectors but the info may have been lost forever.So mounting it in my good machine might be a waste of time.But if i can get in and repair any damaged files i will put it back in the other machine.
    I have been told by another source that if i use usb i dont need to swap jumpers , I need to clarify this point.
    Tks Jamie.
     
  17. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi Techwrecker
    I put the drive back in broken machine and tried to reboot using the xp boot disk this resulted in ............error msg ........disk error....press any key to restart........so i did and got same msg......disk error.......
    The original jumper setting was set to cable , NOT master or single. Is this a problem do i reset it to master ?.
     
  18. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    Hi techwrecker
    I re-ran seatools two bad sectors found and repaired it said drive passed with with incosistances.
    Not sure it detected all
    My computer.
    Motherboard primary / secondary IDE controller'
    hdd st360020a
    are displayed and all go green including HDD if quick checked.
    I then checked file system ntfs and it said 1 test failed and lite red light (this is first time i saw this)

    I did notice an error code 40h that is uncorrectable data on one screen.This may be the above fault.

    The machine did not respond to chkdsk,error checking,scandisk but did respond to Dir. when tests finished and went back to C: prompt

    So can i fix the ntfs?.
     
  19. longshot

    longshot Private E-2

    hi again
    I viewed the log file on the failure this is what it said.
    partition1 ( NTFS(60gb)HDD) Results failed with critical errors.
    One or more file names contained errors.
    One or more errors were found in the index.
    One or more errors were found in metadata file records.
    Other errors were found.
    then it goes on to says seek NTFS diagnostics from elsewhere so i am off to microsoft to research it now.
     

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