what happened to my HDD ???

[sparrow18]

Guys, girls, the situation goes like this, I'm running on a dual OS initially, with win98 and XP running. Later, XP gave a problem about "some kernel problem" and give me a blue screen, that's the 1st time i ever saw a blue screen from an XP. OK, no big deal ? just restart, HOWEVER, after restarting, the computer can NO longer reach the Windows Load menu, sort of like the LILO in Linux. So I reinstall the 98 back, no problem, then when I reinstalled XP, the problem arise again, no load menu.
After fiddling with virtually all the computer knowledge I know, the computer stubbornly refuse to load whenever winXP is present. So my last resort is to zero-fill my whole hard disk, and reinstall the OS, ALSO to no avail.......

I switch my hard disk and put it as slave in my friend's comp, repartition it all to NTFS and reinstall the winXP in my comp, the following error occur : "Invalid Partition table"..even though i install it on my C drive

I switch my hard disk all back to FAT32, reinstall winXP, and this error occur :"Bad Operating System"

Win98 works fine

I have reason to believe that my MBR is somehow corrupted by the 1st blue screen and somehow zero filling and fdisk doesn't clear that part. I need help, desperate here, anyone with the slightest idea or experience please help me through this, I've been formatting and fdisking for the past 2 days...... ok, enough of that, please help.



Andrew

 

[Wolfsraider]

fdisk /mbr 3 times should clear the boot record

if its not the harddrive this should rid the problem

is the xp disk scratched because it sounds like it

you might try also letting it copy all the files to the harddrive first.sometimes my optical drive won't read right so i copy it to the harddrive and it fixes this?

hope this helps

mike

oh yea...

i am running a dual boot off the same harddrive and use partition commander to set up the active dual primary partitions xp pro/98se

 

[sparrow18]

-fdisk /mbr 3 times didn't do the work
-computer still couldn't install winXP, win98se is a no problem though.

-there's this 1 partition......a very sturborn partition which refuse to be recognize by fdisk. It only recognized by my friend's computer which is using winXP.

-strange thing : Under my friend's XP, some part of the hard disk refuse to be formatted to FAT32, only NTFS....
-strange thing : Somehow I still think my MBR is still refusing to recognize winXP

strange situation : in my friend's XP i delete all partition, reclaimed all my 40GB hard disk. Then I partition it into 4 part, 10GB, 10GB, 10GB, 8GB. So now technically i have my 40GB back. Now the strange part, when i fdisk the whole hard disk, it state only 30GB. Which means lost 10GB, go back to my friend's XP and I found out that the 10GB was under the name 'Unallocated"......why is this so?



I hope you guys understand my english, Again, requesting help.

 

[Wolfsraider]

what about putting it on the friends computer in the slave position repartitioning and reformatting it
then install it on yours and loading the os?

this worked on an older system of mine(friends harddrive) or try downloading a disk checking utility from the drive manufactures website and see what it tells you about the harddrive if it checks out try the first suggestion

hope this helps

 

[Wolfsraider]

whoa there are you only having problems in ntfs? if this is on the same harddrive ie 2 partitions try using fat 32 to format it and when xp installs tell it to leave the file system intact as if on one harddrive you need to use the samefile system ie both fat32 .

hope this helps

 

[speed01]

Low Level Format.......that'll get rid of any existing partitions....

 

[sparrow18]

Guys, the problem is finalized.

-Low level format does not clean ALL the hard disk. It'll stop when it reaches around 90% And it assume it finished its job. Therefore, the remaining 7GB cannot be reclaimed.

-the remaining 7GB can ONLY be seen by other winXP when connected as slave and even Partition Magic Pro could not see this 'unallocated 7GB'.

I've given up hope to fix this problem and am currently using win98SE on the remaining 30GB to post this message, question is, is this hard disk still under warranty due to this sort of fault? Anyone with the experience ???

-just for your info, my Win98SE is currently having the old "MS-compatibility problem on hard disk drive" thing, which prevent my hard disk from running at optimum speed. Again, is there any advise on this ???

Thanx for all your time.


Andrew