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Laptop dead - need help

M

metroplex

Golden Member
I accidentally pulled the power to my Inspiron 8100 (no batteries were installed at the time) and now i can't boot into XP Pro SP-1.

The weird thing is when I use the OS CD to boot up, it doesn't show a partition - it just says UNKNOWN partition for the drive that has XP.

BUT when I try to boot up, my bootloader screen shows up and it just reboots the system when a BSOD comes up. Unfortunately I had it set to reboot automatically instead of displaying the BSOD message.

What seems to be the problem?

If I go into the repair console, nothing happens. It says problem enumerating directory when I type "dir" in the prompt.

This HD looks fubar'd but there's so much important info on it.
 
If it were me, I would try a repair reinstall of XP over it. DON'T choose the 1st repair option when you boot from the CD. Then it will ask you if you want to reinstall, say yes there.

My 2 cents.
 
I don't remember the exact terminology that XP uses.

Boot to the CD. It'll ask you if you want to do a repair - say no.

Then continue on and at some point it will ask you if you want to do a fresh install or a reinstall - choose the reinstall option.

Good luck...
 
Here's what I see...

when it first starts there's F6 for SCSI drivers and F2 for ASR (Automated Self Recovery).

ASR requires a floppy disk.


then once you get in

there's

Install XP
Repair Console
Exit

Repair Console is like DOS and it does not work for me because it failes to enumerate the directory.

Install XP doesn't work either because it just wants to repartition my drive!

Is ASR what I'm looking for? How do I make an ASR diskette?
 
My guess is that you had Write Caching enabled on the hard drive.

When your laptop lost power, the data that was stored in the cache of the HD was lost before it could be written to the drive. In your situation, this data loss caused the drive partition to be corrupted.

I'd recommend dissassembling the laptop, removing the HD and connecting it to a different computer using an adapter, THEN try running some drive recovery tools.

Sorry to hear of the loss.... hope this helps!
 
Thanks!

I couldn't find the adapter locally so I bought one from eBay. Still waiting on delivery.

I'll give the fdisk /mbr a good college try.

I had it set to reboot upon error instead of displaying the BSOD and waiting for me to manually reboot. Argh...
 
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