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Post by johnny prescott on Sept 7, 2005 8:23:03 GMT
think it might be hdd failure, but a message came up about attributes less than or more than (in the registry method like MORE_THAN_LESS_THAN) and after several reboots it stated error loading operating system...then it f#cked me right over by formatting my HDD...ive downloaded easy recovery professional (advised by chris k) but i have to wait to get the data off as i don't have a spare hdd....
is my hdd on its last legs?
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Post by johnny prescott on Sept 7, 2005 8:24:46 GMT
chris told me that this happened to him a few weeks ago....
last time im going to listen to his advice about downloading patches......
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Post by NHH on Sept 7, 2005 12:23:48 GMT
Hi John, This message you're talking about... do you mean the ' Blue Sreen Of Death' Whenever I'm faced with a possible dying HDD, I always whip out the UBCD which is a free download. Just burn the image to a CD and boot your PC off it. The UBCD has a load of tools including many manufacturer specific (Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital etc.) HDD diagnostic tools, all launched from a nice DOS based menu. Have a go at testing the HDD with the appropriate tool. Whatever HDD diag tool you use, if it tells you that the hard disk is failing then you need a new one, if it doesn't then your problem may be due to a corrupt file system. If it's a corrupt file system then a chkdsk [drive letter]: /R in a windows command prompt should fix it. You'll be able to do this by putting your disk in another PC (as a seondary drive) or by knocking up & using a UBCD for Windows. (By the way you need a Window 2000/XP CD to hand to make a 'UBCD for Windows'). Can you expand on what happened when you say the disk was formatted? I can't imagine Windows (or anything else) automatically formatting a disk ever, especially if the problem is just broke software (i.e. Windows) or corrupt files. Also what did you do before this happened? What was this patch you mentioned? |
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Post by johnnyprescott on Sept 7, 2005 19:24:58 GMT
yeah blue screen of death with that MORE_THAN_LESS_THAN as the error message....ive reinstalled windows and left it running all day today and it seems fine....
i put the win xp cd in the drive and told it to reinstall and overwrite what was there, it said it couldn't do it and tried to do a full installation after a quick format, i got out of this and after a few attempts at rebooting it came up stating that i only had one partition with 80gb free, where as before it stated that i only had 4gb free on John (hd name)....it seemed to format itself...
the patch i installed was one to open p2p ports in win xpsp2....thats when the prob started...
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Post by johnnyprescott on Sept 7, 2005 19:26:44 GMT
it wouldn't let me enter the windows directory either in dos....
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Post by johnnyprescott on Sept 11, 2005 8:56:06 GMT
also, mate is it possible to copy the recovery files onto my ipod as i dont have an external hdd....
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Post by NHH on Sept 11, 2005 22:47:18 GMT
By formatting your HDD and then writing files to it by installing Windows has destroyed any chance of recovering anything I'm afraid.
Lesson learned #1: You never have to format a disk. The only purpose of a disk format is if the disk is of no use to you anymore, or if you want to prepare it for use for another purpose.
Formatting a disk because of a software problem is pointless.
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Post by johnnyprescott on Sept 11, 2005 23:54:27 GMT
but the pc had no files no folders...nowt...this was before i put winxp back onto the pc...i tried to list c:\ in dos and came back with sweet fa.....its puzzling me....
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Post by johnny prescott on Sept 12, 2005 9:43:54 GMT
but it's now been running for 4 days, with several re-boots due to tweaks with dr tcp, and ive had no problems...ive ran scandisk and everything else i can get my hands on (even checked it using housecall to see if there's anything resident in my memory) but its all coming back clean...i dont know whether the hdd is on it's way out but its running fine again...??!!  !!!?? |
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Post by NHH on Sept 12, 2005 19:22:26 GMT
but the pc had no files no folders...nowt...this was before i put winxp back onto the pc...i tried to list c:\ in dos and came back with sweet fa.....its puzzling me.... That's because DOS only sees FAT or FAT32 file systems, NT kernels (WinNT/2000/XP/2003) generally use NTFS file systems. Still... you won't be able to recover anything from before the HDD format, you've overitten the previous file allocation table. |
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Post by johnnyprescott on Sept 13, 2005 5:53:14 GMT
but when i couldnt view anything the winxp cd couldnt see anything on my pc and stated did i want to instal win xp....i couldnt do a repair jobbie on it at all....i tried several times to try and get xp onto the hdd but it wouldnt do it without a format first...ive started to download my programs again...
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!!!??