Think i'm gonna kill myself...

Bartonprince

Hi all, Hope you can help me.

I have 3 Hard Drives. 40GB, 80GB and 250GB. I use windowsXP

I started with the 80, and what happened was that it just stopped being able to boot up.

1) After i selected boot normally or last known good, the screen just went black and nothing else happened.

a) I tried to go to safe mode and lots of stuff came up (lines of text, and it stopped on sytem32/drivers/mup.sys (i think) and then nothing else happened.

b) When i tried to use command prompts from an winME boot disk like C:\WINDOWS\FIXBOOT and lots of stuff like that, it kept saying bad command or filename.

c) So finally i tried to re-install windows so i booted from the WINXP CD - and i got to agree to terms and stuff, then once i pressed C and said i wanted to setup windows, it said "Searching for previous versions of windows XP" then nothing happens. Nothing at all, it just stays like that. So it looks like there is no way to format the disk =( i can't even get into the recovery console, it hangs when reading the CD. (the cd drive with windows disk in it won't open", but the other one will, and when i try it in the other drive after a reboot, then that drive won't open!!!)

- So i got a 40gb HDD, and set it as master, and set the 80GB as slave, i booted up on that and i could see the 80GB drive in there listed as . I could copy stuff to it and take stuff from it!!.

Then today i booted the 40Gig with the 80gig as slave, and the same thing has now happened to the 40GB!!!! It fails to bootinto windows. Black screen after selecting boot normally. Also, same thing happens in command prompts, (nothing works, even though scandisk finds no errors, including full surface scan). And the same thing happens when i try to format, hangs at "searching for preVious windows installations".

Now when i boot into my 250GB (which i just bought today because of this) and when i put the 40GB as slave, just after the windowsXP loading screen goes, the screen goes black and i get a blue screen of death saying that "if any new hardware was installed, try removing it"...

I know this is long but...How the hell am i gonna format those 2 drives =(

Thanks so much

T

johnnyrotten

Suicide is Painless

youcancallmeal

Have you tried any other general troubleshooting like running memtest to check for faulty ram, or have you tried a barebones setup?
Also if you can get into the bios whats does you hardware montitor say(i.e. cpu temp).

Bartonprince

Ok Memtest found no errors at all, and my temprature of the system is 36c and cpu is 38c.

What else?

BopNiblets

Find a third party drive formatter boot disc like Acronis Partition Expert or some Norton one?

Bartonprince

Do think that will work? all i need is to be able to boot into the hard drives?

BopNiblets

Well if you can partially boot with a WinXP CD, it might work...

I don't know if there's a formatting tool that can fit on a floppy, sorry, or booting from a USB key might be an option, someone else might know how to do this.

TempestSabre

Theres always the possibility that something on the hardware side is causing this. If you can't boot with any of those HD's or CD's there another problem. If I was you I'd get a cheap 10GB disk. And install a fresh clean install of XP onto that. Don't keep mucking about with your disks because thats asking for trouble.

Once you get XP up and running on that then connect your other drives. If you can't get it running on the 10GB then you've some hardware problem, that you'lll have to chase down.

If you don't have the patience and the skills (no offense) to chase this down. it might be easier and more effcient to get a tech to sort it out for you. But don't give them your disks with data unless they swear blind they won't loose the data on them. Assuming you haven't lost it already.

If you were in Dub, I'd take a look at it for you. Probably some other boardies near you.

jay-me

Don't kill yourself destroy the computer and live free with the trees and the elves etc.. Oh and yeah don't kill yourself either....yeah

CyberGhost

Don't kill yourself........ without broadcasting it over the internet we wanna see!

Check cables,

and for a third party tool, download "hiren's boot cd" google for it...

try get a win98 disc if you can, when you boot up on it select boot with cd support, it will then bring up DOS and just type in fdisk. this will let you do a full format of the hard drive. or you could just try and download a copy of the HDD install software from the manufactures site.

peepsbates

check the makers of ure hd website for tools for ure drive i know maxtor do maxblast that fits on a flopy, u should be able format with it

kmb

Jasus,Are ya still in trouble?Thougt you had sorted problem out last time.

I wonder if its a irq problem with one of your bits of hardware.What do you have in the computer in cards?

MODEM?SOUNDCARD?GRAPHICS CARD?

My advice,take out all unneccessary cards,go into bios if comfortable and turn off all onboard stuff not immediately needed.If you have a ps2 mouse and keyboard turn off usbs also.
Did you happen to change the apic folder in your bios?

And reboot.

Let me know what happens when you do this.And i will try to help you further but you must respond with answers.

regards kieran

kmb

Hi,I am wondering if you got sorted or are you still in trouble?

regards kieran