Urgent help needed with HD!!!!!

[KIAman]

I just got a WD 160GB 8MB 7200 RPM drive a couple of weeks ago and my computer was running just fine. I had edonkey downloading, then went to the store for a couple of minutes to pick up some stuff. I came back and I try to check my email and it gave me "ADRESS 00000000x0 caused exception at ADRESS 00000000x0" or something like that but it was all zeros. Then I thought that was wierd so I went into control panel and tried to access event logs to see what happened. Then it said it could not find the exe file to run even log. So I tried to go to run -> typed services.msc. It said it could not find any services.msc. I tried every msc and it could not find anything!!!

So now I am getting scared and try to get IE to search the net for help, and it says IE caused the same exception outlook express did. I finally decide to just reboot my computer and it hangs on "Windows is shutting down" for like 10 minutes, so I just hit the reset button on my comp. It reboots fine all the way till it says "verifing dmi pool blah blah blah" but it just sits there forever!! So I tried a boot disk in the A: drive that I used to use to flash new bios for my MB and it boots fine. I put in WD DATA LIFEGUARD tools and run tests. ALL TESTS ARE GOOD, even the intensive scan!!! Finally I put in my windows XP CD and go all the way to where it would like to install XP. I look at drive C: and it says "unkown" where it says partition type.

What happened!!!! My HD obviously didnt crash since it passed all the intensive tests by WD lifeguard tools.

Please, I had some sensitive data on the disk and I would be in a big rut if I lost them! Please help me!
I am on my wifes computer right now so that is how I am able to type this.

Windows XP PRO Service Pack 1
Epox 8k3a
Athlon XP Tbred 1700+
Samsung 512mb pc2700
Ati Radeon 8500LE 64mb
WD 160SE 7200RPM 8MB
HD was formated as NTSF

I think those are the only pertinant info needed. Any help would be great.

 

[deepbluepenguin]

go to your system's setup program or BIOS
restore the setup defaults and clear the NVRAM
(sometimes labeled as Reset Config Data)
this will force the mobo to autodetect all devices
on the IDE channel.
if the lockups persist or the unknown partition is still
there, check if the BIOS detects the hard drive properly.

if that wont work reseat the IDE connections.
if no go, try a known good IDE cable such as the one on
the optical drives. then try switching your hard drive onto
the secondary IDE channel to see if it still gets detected.
if not try flashing your BIOS to the latest revision.

 

[dmcowen674]

Sounds like Memory timings messing with your data as deepblue said. Hopefully you can stabilze your hardware, just do a re-install of XP and should have access to everything again with some possible corruption to deal with especially related to Outlook. Best of luck.

 

[KIAman]

Thanks guys for the help. I tried what deepblue said and I was able to detect the HD, but it wouldnt boot up. Eventually I tried to hook it up to another computer and before windows started up it went to a blue screen and said "Deleting orphan file entry # 1" through number 43,560 or something like that, took like 10 minutes. When the OS came up, a huge chunk of my files were missing, but not the important stuff, PHEW!!! Thanks for helping again guys, appreciate it.