re: Mystery: Windows System Failure
Friday, April 25, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by DEX
(11703 messages posted)
Dealing with Unwanted Spyware and Parasites
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Sounds like you have no fat table to build on..
Do this if you have a floppy drive.
download the win98se OEM boot , make a new boot with one you have downloaded then
boot up the machine with the old HD drive,,,once you see the A: type fotmat C:
/s
>>..... > > > besure to run all the commands once you run the format command from
the boot disk ,then the format C: /s
once your done pull the disk and reboot and see if you get the C: if so boot up the
with win2k cd and do your thing...
http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
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On Friday, April 25, 2008 at 1:35 pm, Zach wrote:
>Hello, fellow techies.
>
>I am an experienced pc technician, but still learning.
>I've been able to fix tons of windows problems in the past, and have become rather
>skilled with finding the solutions to other people's computer problems, however,
>I have my own now, and I can't find out what's going on.
>
>I have a few desktop PCs here at my house that do not have hard drives. I recently
>received a few harddrives from the local college computer dept, where some tech
>friends of mine had plenty to spare and were moments from throwing them out. They've
>all been erased of all data, because they ran school computers, and we had to wipe
>everything for safety reasons.
>
>I nabbed a few and brought them home to use in my empty desktops, yet I can't seem
>to get them to work right.
>
>I am familiar with installing hard drives, with IDE connections, separating master/slave,
>and correctly setting jumpers, etc. All this basic hardware stuff I learned a long
>time ago.
>
>Here's my problem:
>I have tried and succeeded at installing the hard drives, yet I can't seem to load
>windows off of them. For example, I have a Maxtor 42 GB hard drive installed on
Primary
>IDE Master, with the Master jumper settings on.
>When I start my computer, BIOS recognizes the harddrive, but won't boot from it.
>Thinking there was an OS or boot problem, I popped in my Win2K Installation CD.
First
>I tried a win startup disc, and copied the boot info from another working comp I
>have. Nothing. Then I tried recovery console, where I did a chkdsk /p. Nothing.
Then
>I tried rebuilding the boot partition, and I also tried fixing the mbr. Still nothing.
>I can load windows through the recovery console, and win2k setup recognizes that
>the harddisk has windows installed, because it runs the recovery console and I have
>to select it on the disk to open recovery console. In a desperate attempt measure,
>I've used recovery console to reformat the whole drive, then did a full and complete
>re-installation of windows 200 0 professional. I still have the same boot problem,
>after repeating each of these steps many times.
>
>I have also tried using some of the other drives that were given to me by the college.
>Am I missing or forgetting something? Is there something that says a harddrive has
>to work in only the computer it originated in?
>
>Here's some other odd info:
>When I pull the HDD out of the computer and plug it in as a slave drive on my windows
>xp computer, it shows up right away in My Computer as formatted, NTFS, and I can
>open the folder and save things and look at everything there. But when I try to
make
>it a master HDD in any computer, even my xp one, nothing loads.
>
>This is the process I get:
>1. Power on, bios does the startup tests, etc. Lists RAM, memory speed, processor,
>bios version, blah blah.
>2. The basic POST statements are written, I get
>Keyboard detected, Mouse detected, CDROM detected, and then after a moment or so,
>my harddrive pops up too.
>3. Then I get the single short beep indicating the startup performance tests were
>complete with no errors.
>4.
>Next, it looks to my BIOS settings, and finds the boot order: first is CDRom, second
>is removable devices (incl. floppy) third is harddrive.
>
>When no CD/floppy are in, it will go to a black screen where the cursor in the top
>left will flash on and off continuously. All CPU activity stops, and it sits on
the
>black screen forever until I restart the computer by hand or hit CTRL+ALT+Del.
>
>When the CD is in, it will load that first, and say 'Press any key to load from
cd'...
>if I do, then the boot is from CD. That works fine. If the CD is in and I don't
press
>any key, then after a moment, below that text, it will say "read error occured,
and
>then it will freeze. A few random characters can be seen in weird places on the
screen
>with bright colored backgrounds. usually it's d, r, and }. The } is usually flashing
>at the same rate as the cursor, which again sits continuously. When it freezes
like
>this, I can't even restart. I have to manually reset, (hold the power in 4 secs).
>
>What am I supposed to do? Obviously if I can load the drive as a slave and see the
>file on the disk, I know that the installation CD did it's job. And if it's not
the
>MBR, the boot sector/partition, and I can't use a startup disk, or recovery console,
>then it's a deeper problem. Furthermore, after an inplace upgrade, and then later
>a reformat and complete install, it's STILL not working. Fishy!!! I know it's not
>a hardware failure, because I can open it in other computers as a slave, but when
>I change the jumpers back to configuration on the label for "master", and then move
>it into the master slot IDE to use it, it won't load windows!!!!!!!
>
>Someone please help me fix this. Or, if it's not fixable, at least tell me what's
>going on if you have any idea.
Pleaseeee.
>
>My specs:
>PC1
>Windows 2000 Professional
>512MB RAM
>42GB Maxtor HDD
>
>PC2
>Windows XP Professional
>2 GB RAM
>40GB Maxtor HDD Master
>120GB Seagate HDD Slave
>
>I also have installation CDs for windows 95, windows 98, windows 2000, windows 2000
>server, windows xp home, and windows xp pro if you think they'd be of any assistance.
>
>Lastly, I've also tried loading my working, dependable HDDs from PC2 into PC1 as
>master/slave, and windows xp wouldn't start on that computer either. :( Not that
>it would get real far on a lousy 512 MB Ram anyway haha.
>
>PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!
>
>Anxious For Results
>~Zach
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