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Can no longer boot into XP Home

H

Hardball

Member
Hi all-- My computer had been running fine until yesterday. It was used yesterday morning and turned off, and then turned on later in the afternoon. When it was turned on it could not boot into Windows. It gets to the point where the devices are listed, but at the bottom of the screen it has "a disk read error occured, press ctrl-alt-del to restart". Rebooting, even multiple times does nothing to change this as it can't get past this point.

I created a bootable cd with the Western Digital diagnostics program on it and tested, and everything passed, no errors. I then tried to get into the Recovery Console by booting from the XP Home setup disk, but at the point where it says "Setup is inspecting your computers hardware configuration", it hangs and goes to a black screen. So I can't access the recovery console. I am currently running Memtest86+ from Ultimate Boot Disk, and no errors so far. The WD 160GB IDE hard drive is about 2.5 to 3 years old and has shown no signs of any issues up to this point. There have been no hardware changes or software issues. Any ideas as to what I can try to fix this without having to lose all my data with a full format and reinstall of XP?
 
Unplugged and replugged the data cable, tried a new data cable, and tried different power connectors, all with no effect. The motherboard is an Asus p4b2666 with an Intel P4 1.6 ghz cpu and a retail Western Digital 160GB IDE hard drive that's a little less than 3 years old. Also, the OS is Windows XP/sp3. Memtest86+ ran full test, no errors.
 
Magnus - The PSU is an Antec 400w. This computer was built several years ago and the parts were all good stuff at the time. No garbage in there, but it's certainly showing it's age. Why do you think it's CPU or MB and how could that be tested? Wouldn't there be other signs if there was an issue with those two components? Could it be that the boot manager/boot loader got corrupted somehow and how could that be checked to see if that is the case here?
 
Hmm, strange. So you are saying that the BIOS is giving you an error reading the HD and won't boot? But WD diagnostics doesn't indicate an error? If it's a bad sector, WD should show you that. Did you do the long read test (surface scan)?

I would try clearing the CMOS, and re-setting it up. Possibly even test the voltage on the CMOS battery while you're at it, if it's lower than 3.0v, replace it. A new one should show something like 3.2v without any load applied.
 
Hardball said:
Magnus - The PSU is an Antec 400w. This computer was built several years ago and the parts were all good stuff at the time. No garbage in there, but it's certainly showing it's age. Why do you think it's CPU or MB and how could that be tested? Wouldn't there be other signs if there was an issue with those two components? Could it be that the boot manager/boot loader got corrupted somehow and how could that be checked to see if that is the case here?
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Well, if the ram checked out with memtest and the hdd checked out with WD diag. then, there's not much else to go on but the MB and CPU. Doing what VirtualLarry suggested couldn't hurt but, I'm not sure that's what's going on. Truthfully, as much as I believe in fixing things as opposed to replacing them, your MB and CPU could be replaced by a better low end processor and MB for very little money. Just something to think about.
 
I've run into this issue before - very frustrating. For a motherboard of that vintage I'm betting bad caps or possible bios corruption. Have you tried updating and resetting the bios as suggested by virtuallarry?

If the drive isn't going bad and passes testing and you've checked/changed jumpers and cables then it could be the drive controller on the PCB itself.

I've been successful with some by booting from a boot floppy or cd that allows for fdisk /mbr. Also chkdsk /r has worked in the past as well.
 
Motorheader --where do you get a boot floppy or cd that allows fdisk /mbr and chdsk /r to be used? I thought they were only in the Recovery Console, which I have not been able to access?
 
Magnus --The Ultimate Boot cd is what I used today to try and resolve this issue. Is there a tool on there that has the fdisk /mbr and chdsk /r tools incorporated in there? I just used this today for the first time so I'm not familiar with all of the tools on there.
 
Hardball said:
Magnus --The Ultimate Boot cd is what I used today to try and resolve this issue. Is there a tool on there that has the fdisk /mbr and chdsk /r tools incorporated in there? I just used this today for the first time so I'm not familiar with all of the tools on there.
Click to expand...

They're part of the system files. You should be able to run them directly from the command line.
 
Is there any risk to the good system from installing the problem drive into it? It is almost certainly a mechanical failure of some sort, although there were no clicking sounds before it failed. It did seem like the system had been slower overall for the last month or two, but I'm not sure if that's related. In the HIGHLY unlikely event that a virus or malware of some sort is behind all of this, would the good system be at risk then from hooking this drive into it?

I swapped the IDE channels as well as different cables, and tried each memory stick on it's own, but same result. I also got UBCD4WIN and tried that out. It has Recovery Console as well as FREEDOS and NTFS4DOS, but all failed. Recovery Console would hang at the "system is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration" prompt (I waited 20 minutes just to make sure), FREEDOS would say invalid drive C:, and NTFS4DOS would show .... for a second when I typed CHKDSK C: /r, and then drop me back to the A> prompt.

I also removed the battery and shorted the jumper to clear CMOS and still no dice!
 
I recently lost a 120gb laptop hard drive that was doing something similar - progressive sloowww boot and drive access. I booted my Spinrite disk and drive checking was estimated to take 48 days before I just shut it down.

Not likely a danger to a system with the drive in it for data recovery purposes. Can you download and successfully boot from a Linux distro? My favorite for such purpose is SLAX since you can make either the CD or a bootable flash drive.

Did you check for leaking or bulging capacitors on the motherboard?
 
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Update: I have decided to get a new hard drive to remedy this problem. My question now is regarding what I have to do to the new drive in order to install the OS.

When I installed the previous drive I had made a backup image after I did the fresh install of XP Home. I used Drive Image XML to make the image. Do I still need to format and partition the new hard drive in order to restore the image I have, or is that already incorporated into the image file of XP Home that I have from Drive Image XML? I assume I will have to boot from CD and use BartPE or UBCD, both or which have the Drive Image XML plugin, in order to restore the image file to the new hard drive, but do I need to format or partition the new drive prior to doing the image restore?
 
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