My hd is acting up!

[skangster76]

My primary hd is acting funny:When is start the pc it finds my two hd just fine when bios is loading.But just before the backgroundimage of win xp is supposed to show up with all the shortcuticons some little window with the win xp logo flashes and after a while my pc boots...

Any ideas how to get the pc working again? I have a second hd with just the essentials installed,like win xp,drivers for the printer etc,but all my games,personal files and programs are trapped on the other hd thats acting up...Any chance to get those files back? I can't see the other hd in MY COMPUTER...How can i get it to show? PLEASE HELP! This is begining to get pretty frustraiting...

[squeech]

First of all, Welcome to TechIMO!

Now, when you are acutally in XP (I think you said you could boot into it) can you go right-click My Computer and goto Manage. In the windows that comes up select "Disk Management". There is a list there that shows all of the logical drives in the system as well as all of the physical hard drives. Does your drive show up as a physical even though the logical volume is not there?

If so, there's probably a problem with the partition table. If not, you may want to test the drive itself.

You could try booting to the recovery console and running fixboot, fixmbr, and bootcfg /rebuild to rewrite the partition table on the drive. You may also try doing a repair install from the XP CD (boot like your going to install a fresh copy of Windows and select repair AFTER it finds your installation).

If the recovery console can't even detect the Windows installation on your drive, try running a drive tester utility like Drive Fitness Test to see if everything is okay physically.

I'll try to think of more ideas, post more questions if you have any.

[skangster76]

Yeah i said i can boot with my other drive (a small 4gb,that i made last time my pc acted up...).I looked in the device manager but if i remember correctly (i'm at work now) i didn't see any other drive just my C: (my 4 gb drive).Alsaw i noticed when i booted with the win xp cd and chose the install windows option it showed both my drives but with strange partition,one part was huge and the other just 4mb (i'm not shure about this number,as i said i'm at work now).So i guess the partition is screwed? Do i still have a chance to save my files? Or is it FORMAT C: that is around the corner,and i can kiss everything goodbye...again.

Now i remeber why i like consoles better than pc...

[Strawbs]

Just a quick Q ...Did you try starting in Safe Mode? if so what happens?

Tip: You can start a re-install from the XP CD and when you get thru the EULA agreement, you get a second (not the First "Repair" option mind, that's a Console repair [text version], you don't want that) option to do a repair. Choose this to re-install XP and keep your files intact. You must reload all updates tho'.

[skangster76]

but i tryed that (and i tryed that"last configuration that windows worked with-thing",my win is in Finnish so this was a very free translation,heheh),it did exactly the same as in the normal start up,that is booted just when xp was supposed to start...I will try that repair thing when i get home.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem but:I couldn't install some programs (like Photoshop 7) in normal mode,i had to go into safemode everytime i wanted to install something,and then boot to the normal mode again.