Problem on start-up please advise

I am running Win XP home, everything was working fine last night until I restarted my computer after burning some videos.

Everything shut down like normal, then in the actual start-up mode before starting windows, I recieved a message that a start-up file was missing or corrupt.

I have tried everything and the problem has gotten worse, it will not detect the boot directory now.

Anyone have any ideas, because it will not even allow me reinstall WinXP over it?

Thanks for any advice that you might come up with, also it would be nice to try to save some items on the HD. Not nice to lose everything that you have worked on.

 

It says "searching for boot record from IDE-0.. Not Found"
I also forgot to mention that it will not boot in safe mode (F8), and I also get a message that says it has an error loading OS.

Thanks, Tim

 

If you can't boot in safemode you might be able to fix it from the recovery console. IIRC you can boot your windows xp cd and run it from setup. Sounds like you need to run the system file check command and check disk command to check for other possible errors. Just did a little research and you might want to have a look here. Hope it helps.

 

Hi, Tim,
Others on here can better advise you in trying to do a repair or a recovery, but if nothing works, you should be able to get an IDE/USB adapter for $20-25 that you can plug the hard drive into (after removing it from your system), then plug the USB end into another PC to recover files. The other PC should see your hard drive as an external drive and you should be able peruse it with Explorer and copy files off it---an "external" drive does not have to have a boot record is how this works, though if the drive has a firmware password on it, that could possibly present a problem. Another option is to try booting from a Linux boot disk to recover the files, writing them to a flash drive.

There have been several threads over the past week or so similar to your situation; you might want to take a look at those for some ideas, too...fellow by the name of Mattitude was one thread, and there was another one early in the day Thursday, and I think another in between those two.

"Boot record not found" doesn't sound good. Any malware problems beforehand? There's something going around that rewrites the master boot record, but I don't know if that's related to your problem or not. Do you recall what startup file was missing or corrupt? Even a partial name could be helpful.

Hang in there...someone will jump in and give you a hand Whoops...looks like someone already has...

Oh, while plugged into the adapter, it might be possible to rewrite corrupted files if you can determine which ones are the culprits. I don't know if you could write a new master boot record to it while it's external but connected, but someone else might know.

 

Recovery console is not working on this problem, it seems that nothing is able to run from the drive.

I always run Avast and Spybot at least once a week, because I am online a lot. I never go to unsafe sites or try social networks.

I use that computer only for my home base business to print quotes and bills.

I do have a enclosure to put the drive in, thanks I forgot about it.

It originally said that it was missing a system32 startup file.

Thanks a million for the info, I will keep trying to find the problems.

 

yeah, Tim, if the drive's not being recognized, I doubt that any Windows recovery, repair or reinstall option would work. I hope that connecting it to another computer works out for you, at least to get your data off, if nothing else. Sounds as if you're going to have to get the boot record back before seeing what else is amiss with Windows files.

Anyone out there know if if MBRCheck or something similar can rewrite the boot record on Tim's drive while it's connected externally to another PC?

One other thing on rewriting the boot record, Tim...if it's a fairly recent Dell or HP or other mfr. that has a Recovery Partition on the disk, it likely uses a non-standard MBR. If so, then you'll likely lose access to the Recovery Partition if you write a standard XP MBR to the disk. On the other hand, you don't have access to any of the disk now, so writing a standard XP MBR to it would be a step up if the disk will afterward at least partially boot, in my opinion, even if you lose the Recovery Partition's use. See what others think about this and go from there.

While you have the drive connected externally, you might look into copying over certain Windows files---I'm thinking of certain \System32 files and folders and such---from another PC, but that could be real dicey if it's not the exact same version of Windows. Ideally, if you had the drive connected externally to another PC with the same version and Service Pack of Windows that's on your hard drive, you should be able to just write over the System32 folder's files of your hard drive using the ones from the other PC, but I'd copy over only those system files that exist on both drives and not a wholesale copy of everything. Before doing that I'd copy all the \System32 files and folders below that from the sick hard drive to a memory stick, just in case copying didn't work, so you could copy them back if need be.

Better still, if there was---and I bet there is, but I don't know about it---a program that will do a byte-by-byte comparison of two files on separate drives you might be able to determine where the corrupt files are and just replace those. It might be tedious unless the program were automated enough to compare, say, all like-named files in two folders and show the differences. Sounds crazy, but it might just work, but again, you'd have to be real careful doing it. Anyone else have any ideas along these lines?

Finally, and I hate to say it, but the other possibility is that your hard drive has just given up the ghost entirely, though I'm not inclined to think that just yet based on the symptoms.

Good luck...hopefully others will jump in soon and give their opinions.

 

I tried to search the drive after placing it into a enclosure, Could not see the drive or access it. Under the profile manager it did see it however it would not show up at the MY Computer section in the start menu.

Anymore thoughts, all are welcome.

Thanks Tim

 

Sounds like you're computer savvy, so I'll mention something I don't usually recommend: if you can enter a DOS environment with this drive, then you might consider a debug routine...

Be advised, however: AFAIK, debugs are guaranteed to clear MBRs, but a misstep could render the drive useless...

 

Caliban thanks for a quick response.

I was able to access the recovery console but had very little luck there. I was able to do a chkdsk but little more than that.

I know nothing about DOS, I can repair most electronics, and get through most problems with computers, however software I do have problems.

 

Don't we all!

The debug routine is not as bad as it sounds, and any number of walkthroughs are available...

I'm agreeing with the other guys: if chkdsk and sfc aren't doing it, I'd be inclined to boot to a Linux distro, or even grab another HD if possible, make the problem drive a slave, and try to salvage your data...

 

After I put the drive in an enclosure again how would I be able to get to the files if it does not show up in the My computer list?

 

Update,

I found that the hard drive is locking up the usb port, and I think that is why I am not able to access the drive. When I check the drives in the hardware profile, it shows both drives, and they both have the same name and location status.

I removed the second drive from the computer and it would not even let me into the recovery console. It stated that there was no drive found.

The second drive when I put in the external enclosure shows everything just fine.
The second drive is NTFS system, where the main drive is a FAT32 system.

Any thoughts?

Thanks Tim