Problems getting old hard drive to boot

I'm trying to recover data from a hard drive out of my aunt's computer that died. A heatsink on the motherboard fell off and it burnt itself out. The hard drive has Windows XP on it and, knowing her, is most likely LOADED with viruses. I've posted about this before but gave up. Now I'm trying again...

Before, it would boot into Windows on the computer I was using (Windows 98) and show only the recovery partition. Someone suggested that maybe Windows 98 could not see the NTFS portion of the drive and told me to install Windows XP or something. That is where I had to give up for the time being. Now I've got my hands on a Windows 2000 CD and upgraded from Windows 98 which converted the hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS. I'm thinking I should've tried a clean install...Anyways this is of course NOT the hard drive I am trying to recover. That one is set up as the slave drive. During setup I had to remove the cables from the slave drive or else after the "Setup is loading files" screen it would say "Disk I/O Error : Status = 00001020". Once the slave drive was disconnected setup would run normally.

Now after installing Windows 2000 and reconnecting the slave drive I noticed a brief error message while starting up. It was the same error I got during setup. "Disk I/O Error : Status = 00001020". This happens every single time the computer is turned on but it still boots into Windows fine. It also will not appear in My Computer anymore. Not even the recovery partition.

I've also tried booting the drive with it set as the master drive. Here's what I get then.

Code:

Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.0.17
Copyright (c) 1997-2001, Intel Corporation

Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.0 (build 083)
Copyright (C) 1997-2001, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
MXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.
Boot Failure: System Halted

I get the same error when I try it on a Windows XP computer. I'm pretty sure the jumper settings are correct and that the cables aren't bad. I've tried 3 different cables with the same result. Is there anything I can do or is this thing just DEAD?

 

I know the second error relates to a bad hard drive but I've never seen the second 'Disk I/O Error : Status = 00001020' and can't find any info on it but it obviously relates to a bad hard drive also.

Connect the bad hard drive only,set bios to boot from CDrom with your windows disk inserted and press R to run the recovery console,run the checkdisk command and the fix master boot record command,read the first passages here to bring you up to speed on the recovery console if you've never used it before.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229716

If you can't log on to the volume through the recovery console or run the windows disk with the bad drive connected then the drive is kapput.

 

It says repairing will wipe out the data on the hard drive? I don't want to do that. I'm trying to recover the data that is on it now.

 

A quick test might be to set the HD you want to recover as Master and connect it to the Master connector on the CDROM cable with no CDROM attached. Leave your 2000 HD set as master on the HD cable with no slave attached.

See if the PC boots ok to Win2000 and if you see anything in My Computer related to the bad HD.

 

Nada. I get the same brief error on startup but it still doesn't show the bad hard drive.

 

Alright I'm pretty sure this thing is dead now. I tried my Windows XP CD and was able to get in to the recovery console from there. But it says C:\ is not a valid directory or something and if I try to continue with installation it says "Setup cannot access this disk." Also closing setup results in a bluescreen.

 

You are probably correct. Sorry, but the drive is dead.