Win XP Pro Major Boot Problem, Help!!!

[rkoenn]

This evening I returned to my XP Pro system which had gone into deep sleep. The USB optical mouse had turned off and the system would react to no keystrokes or anything, USB keyboard as well.. I hit the reset button. During the next, and all subsequent, boot attempts, the WinXP logo screen shows for about 5 seconds and then a big blue screen with the announcement basically of "Cannot mount drive" message. I have attempted to boot to safe mode to no avail either as well as last known good cofiguration. The system is an MSI based Athlon with, this component may be the problem, a dual hard drive system on a Promise RAID controller. If somehow the RAID driver is missing or other similar scenario, could this be the cause of the problem and if so, how do I repair it? Is there anyway to do it that anyone knows of short of a windows reinstall. I suppose if I had to do that, I could do the repair procedure which should keep all my data, programs, and settings but I would probably have to load all the updates, etc. Any quick response to this dilemna is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[rkoenn]

To those interested, I managed to repair the problem. Tried reinstalling Win XP Pro first and attempted to use the recovery console. This wouldn't work as I had no recovery floppy built. Next tried the repair option and it would hang up saying it did not know what file system was on my RAID array. It did see the logical D drive in the array though. I knew the drive wasn't totally hashed since it would begin to boot until it hit the can't mount drive message. I then attempted to do an install over the existing drive and it said again it didn't recognize the file system on C. I was kind of desperate, being like so many and having not backed up recently, that I decided not to do a "clean" install yet. I then pulled out a new drive, I am a system builder, and installed windows XP on it, without touching the RAID array. During the install it said it had to verify one of the existing drives for consistency and I think it was the old C that was messed up. The install on the new drive went fine and it ended up being G. When I fired it up I could see the RAID C and D drives just fine, ALL OF MY DATA AND EVERYTHING WAS THERE! I ran check disk on the C array and it did not tell me of any problems. So, taking a chance, I removed the new drive and booted to the RAID array and, wallah, the system is running fine now. A MAJOR RELIEF!!! Thought I would post this on the chance it might help someone in the future, and don't forget to backup, backup, backup.

 

[managerdan]

I think your Raid card is the cause for all your problems. I would contact tech support for this Raid card where they should get you back up and running. There's a variety of Raid cards out there, good luck.