Windows not finding installation (odd NTLDR issue, not the standard one)

i'm fairly good at recovering corrupt OS's and lost data/partitions at this point, but I'm totally stumped here.

my friend's computer crashed (XP Pro) during a game, and the got the always fun to deal with NTLDR missing error.

I boot to the windows disk, load the SATA Raid drivers (I have him set up on RAID1 for work related files), do the standard open recovery console, but run into a very strange issue... I get a C prompt, but it doesnt ever ask me to log into C:Windows, as if there is no existing Windows instllation.

after failed attempts to copy NTLDR and ntdetect.com from the windows disk (or even a floppy which I put updated versions on), I decided to do a repair install of windows-- once again, setup recognizes the Partition that I had installed windows on, even has it named correctly, but does not see an existing windows installation.

whats more, I used an DOS program that allows NTFS veiwing, and i can SEE all the files and the Windows install clearly on the drive.

does anyone have any idea what I can try, short of putting the drives into another computer? (also, if I must put them into another computer, how would I go about that as they are 2 SATA drives in a Raid1 Array?)

I also tried a fixboot and fixmbr.. to no avail

 

Damaged filesystem, run chkdsk /r, with the understanding there is rick of data loss. When Windows cannot write to the drive, and read certain parts of it...you really dont have much choice at this point other than repair it, or wipe and start over.

 

Chkdsk /r will do nothing. The Recovery Console is not even detecting the presence of a formatted partition if you don't get the list of installations to pick from. It isn't mounting the file system at all. It doesn't even think the partition is an NTFS partition. If you run a "dir" at the "C:\>" prompt, you should get no files found (or the system might give you the contents of the CD).

Most of the time I've seen this it has been due to a disk that has failed outright, but partition corruption might have been caused on the RAID. If you go into the RAID controller's BIOS, what does it say about the health of the array? Try downloading the disk manufacturer's tools and running diagnostics with those.

Since it's a RAID 1, you ought to be able to go into the RAID BIOS and instruct the system to break the RAID and then be able to boot normally, but I've never done it so I don't know. You might just try moving one of the disks to another system.

 

Well, that would be your opinion da chicken, not mine.

If I had a dollar for the amount of times I worked with customers where rcon could not read the filesystem, and as such could not log into it, I'd be rich.


A very common error when doing dir on an unreadable drive is "error during directory enumeration." read: rcon cannot read that volume.

It cant read it, but chkdsk doesn't care. It is filesystem neutral, with a few exceptions (It doesn't like nix filesystems).

http://www.alegsa.com.ar/N/i62/Error occurred during directory enumeration.php

Note how rcon couldn't see it, until chkdsk was run.

 

thanks i'll give those a try. I did get the "error during directory enumeration." when running dir, chkdsk is worth a shot

i'm not too concerned about losing data, its just really annoying me because I had JUST clean formatted his system and installed all of his programs and games again...

maybe if he was paying me this would move more quickly...

 

Chkdsk /r gets to 25% and reports "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems"

I'll see abnout breaking the RAID array and see if that gets any progress.

 

Thanks for the info! Never knew about this! Though, I think you've had quite the experience with this

 

Let us know how it goes. Unrecoverable doesn't mean a drive has failed...but there is always that possibility.