Windows XP Home 2nd ed will not boot

[robisbell]

it's a 50/50 if you'll lose any data. you're going to have to reload the programs, with the condition the drive is in, trying to image them over will be a pain and maybe worse. I hate to say it, but just copy and paste the files (images, audio,documents, movies) over to a folder and then try the fixmbr and fixboot. I still say you're going to have to redo the drive from scratch anyway.

you can try dc's way, but I bet you'll have to redo the drive from scratch.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Borg20001

Originally posted by: robisbell
backing up means copying only data that is deemed important, you did not need to make a partition to backup any important data. you could have copied it to a folder. you're going to have to wipe the drive and reload XP anyways.

Rob,

I checked and I have about 39 Gig of data that I need that was not backed up - photos, mp3s, etc.

Plus a slew of programs that I'd prefer not to have to reload as I'm not sure where all the install discs are.

What I wanted to do was partition the new 250G drive and eventually load the XP OS on it. As a short cut I was thinking that I would try to run fixmbr and fixboot on the 80G drive to see if I could get it repaired to run.

Then I would do a partition copy of the entire 80Gig drive to the new 250G drive.

Or even run Drivexml and make a backup image that I would then load onto the new 250G drive. That way I can avoid the hassle of reloading and reinstalling everything.

Is this wishful thinking?

It brings me back to my original question. If I run Fixmbr and fixboot, do I stand a chance of losing all the data on the HD that I run them on?

If not, then I will try to run fixmbr and fixboot first and see if I can recover the OS and then move everything to the newer HD.

Also does it matter which one I run first?

Thanks,

What's the worst case scenario? Usually with MBR issues it's just that you can't boot. So your risk is you can't boot when you run those tools - well, you can't boot now, so it's not as if that's a big risk. You can always stick the disk into a USB enclosure and read the data from it, so it's not as if that's a big deal either. Can you still see your data?

Did you try the floppy bit yet? Honestly, all of this guessing is a bit silly. Try that, see what happens, and then get back to us. If that works, then you know you just have a simple MBR issue, and a fixboot and fixmbr (order isn't important) should get you going. Even if not, you can easily keep using the floppy for years; it's not as if that alone should be a constraint!

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
it's a 50/50 if you'll lose any data. you're going to have to reload the programs, with the condition the drive is in, trying to image them over will be a pain and maybe worse. I hate to say it, but just copy and paste the files (images, audio,documents, movies) over to a folder and then try the fixmbr and fixboot. I still say you're going to have to redo the drive from scratch anyway.

you can try dc's way, but I bet you'll have to redo the drive from scratch.

The typical way in which you lose data with fixmbr / fixboot is if you've used Ontrack or some other disk management software to get around BIOS limitations on large disks - that would get overwritten, so you'd have to put it back if it were ever in place.

Most of that software went out of style years and years ago. His risk is fairly low - I wouldn't put it anywhere close to 50/50.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: robisbell
it's a 50/50 if you'll lose any data. you're going to have to reload the programs, with the condition the drive is in, trying to image them over will be a pain and maybe worse. I hate to say it, but just copy and paste the files (images, audio,documents, movies) over to a folder and then try the fixmbr and fixboot. I still say you're going to have to redo the drive from scratch anyway.

you can try dc's way, but I bet you'll have to redo the drive from scratch.

The typical way in which you lose data with fixmbr / fixboot is if you've used Ontrack or some other disk management software to get around BIOS limitations on large disks - that would get overwritten, so you'd have to put it back if it were ever in place.

Most of that software went out of style years and years ago. His risk is fairly low - I wouldn't put it anywhere close to 50/50.

Thanks for your input. I remembered that I had Fix-it Professional 7 on this PC. When I unhooked the HD and used the USB adapter, I could see all the data so that was fine. My son has a bunch of his iTunes all on this drive.

Anyway, I tried running the rescue disk for Fix-it Pro 7 and ran the recovery commander and it was able to fix the drive. It is up and running but I am still concerned with future stablity so I am trying to copy the boot partition over to the new 250 G drive which I will try to use as my new boot drive. (Though I may be porting over the instability as well - just on a newer HD).

In the meantime, I will port the data off the drive as well and see about running drivexml to get a backup set up.

Though this still sidesteps your recommendation of the floppy patch (which is probably a simpler solution) so I will also get that prepped.

Still not sure I am through this all, but I'm working my way there. I appreciate all the good advice and recommendations from here.

Thanks, I'll let you know more as I find out.

Any other advice would be appreciated if I am headed down a bad path.

 

[dclive]

Check your event logs for disk errors and issues.

 

[blckgrffn]

In the future, I would just make sure all of your "data" is on a seperate partition from your OS, that really cuts down on how long you have to consider whether to rebuild or fix. It should only take a couple hours or so to redo the operating system if you make sure to put your drivers and stuff on that second partition before you start...

Congrats on getting the drive booting again though!

Nat

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: blckgrffn
In the future, I would just make sure all of your "data" is on a seperate partition from your OS, that really cuts down on how long you have to consider whether to rebuild or fix. It should only take a couple hours or so to redo the operating system if you make sure to put your drivers and stuff on that second partition before you start...

Congrats on getting the drive booting again though!

Nat

Thanks Nat,

That's a good point. I think I fell in to the defaults for WinXP and let all my data and docs be saved in the My Documents section which ends up being on the boot drive.

I'll have to migrate all of that stuff and change the default save directories to a separate drive location.

Now I have to see if I can backup all the data from the boot drive and essentially make an new boot drive and leave the old one stored away as a backup.

 

[Borg20001]

Update,

Well, even though I have resurrected the OS on the original 80G hd, it's a bit hinky, so I will probably have to bend to conventional wisdom and do a clean install of WinXP onto the new 250G HD. Then slowly port over all the data files that I can from the old 80G HD.

One question, is there any way to have the newly installed OS find all the programs that I had installed on my PC?

Specifically, there are a bunch of games and CAD programs that were huge and I ended up installing them on the 500 G SATA drive because I did not think that they would fit on the little 80G drive.

Will I have to reinstall them or is there a way I can get the newly reinstalled WinXP OS to find them on the other drives? Or is there software that can do that?

My son has Autodesk Inventor from his school and it was a 5 gig program to install.

As always, I appreciate any insights or advice you can provide!

 

[robisbell]

you'll have to reinstall the programs, been telling you that over and over. you can not copy them over, period.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: robisbell
you'll have to reinstall the programs, been telling you that over and over. you can not copy them over, period.

Sigh...Thanks. I was just hoping for a magic bullet to cure all my woes.

Oh well. Guess I will have to bite the bullet instead.

Thanks for the info!

 

[GR22]

I had this same issue. I tried the bootable flopppy idea and got up and running. I have 2 partitions, each with a WIN XP Home installation. At 1st only one showed up, but when I grabbed my boot.ini off the C drive and utilized that on the floppy I now can select either WIN instalation on start up. Everything's normal except that I can only start with the floppy disk in place. I believe the next step is to run fixboot / fixmbr, but before I do is there anything i should be concerned about? Possible loss of partitions? My understanding is worst case these commands will overwrite my mbr, which seems to be shot anyway?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: GR22
I had this same issue. I tried the bootable flopppy idea and got up and running. I have 2 partitions, each with a WIN XP Home installation. At 1st only one showed up, but when I grabbed my boot.ini off the C drive and utilized that on the floppy I now can select either WIN instalation on start up. Everything's normal except that I can only start with the floppy disk in place. I believe the next step is to run fixboot / fixmbr, but before I do is there anything i should be concerned about? Possible loss of partitions? My understanding is worst case these commands will overwrite my mbr, which seems to be shot anyway?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

GR, I don't have much input on this as I am in the process of installing a new larger HD (250G) and have installed WinXP home and the 2nd SP - and all of the updates that were sitting out there, then I reinstalled all of my drivers for my video card, sound card, motherboard, reinstalled my wireless router stuff, then installed the anti-virus, adaware, firewall programs, then reinstalled Office XP.

I then hooked up my old 80G HD and have copied over all the datafiles to a separate partion on the 250G HD (I'll probably have to move them all later to a different HD when I finish up getting all that I can from the old 80G HD.

I think I still will have to reinstall all of the games and programs that I had before. I had all of these games installed onto the 500G SATA drive but I think all of the files that allows me to run them (and lets WinXP know that they are there) was on the 80G drive in the OS area so I will probably have to reinstall them. I think all the saves are probably lost.

I am still trying to figure out where the iTunes stuff is for my son's iPod. I'm hoping that there is someway to get back to them so that he can resynch his iPod and not lose any of his music (he has about 5 gigs of stuff that he has either bought or converted from his CD collection.)

I ended up not doing the boot floppy.

Maybe someone else here can provide some insight.

 

[robisbell]

yes, you will have to reinstall all programs and games, as for where the mp3's are, if you searched the drive for them, they may be a casualty of the problem it was having. That is why I do not support apple's products nor do I like the software you have to use.

 

[GR22]

In my case, I'm up and running on either of my 2 WIN XP installations with the bootable floppy. Everything seems to be working, so I'm a little aprehensive about running fixboot / fixmbr. At this point, it seems very unlikely I have to do a fresh install (you have no idea how much stuff my family has!). Any advice on those operations in my case would be appreciated. I don't want to boot off the floppy indefinately, I suspect I'm very close to getting this resolved.

 

[robisbell]

wait till the floppy drive fails or the floppy port fails, or the floppy disk fails. then you'll see you should have not patch jobbed it GR22.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
wait till the floppy drive fails or the floppy port fails, or the floppy disk fails. then you'll see you should have not patch jobbed it GR22.

That's absurd.

gr22 - you have the option of simply doing a fixboot (try that first) and that should fix you up. If you want to stick with the floppy boot, that's fine too. What's the worst case scenario? You buy another floppy disk and floppy drive if this one fails? I don't think that's an issue at all.

I think some here believe losing the MBR or boot sector is a deep, dark secret. Honestly, it's just not a big deal. It's also somewhat common, which is why (gasp!) Microsoft put a command to fix this very issue into the Windows XP recovery console (wow!).

Read and learn more about these commands here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
yes, you will have to reinstall all programs and games, as for where the mp3's are, if you searched the drive for them, they may be a casualty of the problem it was having. That is why I do not support apple's products nor do I like the software you have to use.

Why? The MP3 files are all in standard format, and all in nice little folders on his hard drive. He can literally copy the data right over, drop the folder into his new iTunes installation, and the MP3s will all be imported.

How much easier can it get?

 

[robisbell]

dc, that's my long term opinions based on years of experience, and this nitpicking is growing annoying, like when a little kid doesn't get his way.

I'm not going to waster anymore time dealing with you anymore, you can keep behaving like this all you want, I'll keep on fixing things.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
dc, that's my long term opinions based on years of experience, and this nitpicking is growing annoying, like when a little kid doesn't get his way.

I'm not going to waster anymore time dealing with you anymore, you can keep behaving like this all you want, I'll keep on fixing things.

Regardless of your personal feelings of me (and everyone else's intense annoyance at you) the fact remains that iTunes keeps MP3s in standard format, in tidy little folders (if you let it organize them, otherwise, naturally, it doesn't touch anything) on your hard drive.

The fact that you try to argue against this very basic (and proveable) fact is surprising.

The fact that you try to argue against this basic fact by attacking me is par for the course for you.

 

[GR22]

OK, I put another HD in my system and made a mirror image of the origional. If something went wrong, I'd still have my data. I then disconnected the 2nd drive and ran fixboot and fixmbr from the recovery console, set boot order back to hard drive 1st and it's as if I never had a problem. Everything's back to normal. Not counting all my searches on this forrum and messing with the 2nd HD, the whole operation took all of about 2 minutes. Sure beats wiping the drive, fresh install of WIN, drivers, programs. etc, etc. If this didn't work, then I would have done a fresh install.

My thanks to dclive for a simple suggestion. Simple is good ;-)

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: robisbell
yes, you will have to reinstall all programs and games, as for where the mp3's are, if you searched the drive for them, they may be a casualty of the problem it was having. That is why I do not support apple's products nor do I like the software you have to use.

Why? The MP3 files are all in standard format, and all in nice little folders on his hard drive. He can literally copy the data right over, drop the folder into his new iTunes installation, and the MP3s will all be imported.

How much easier can it get?

That's what I thought, but when I went to look for the folders with his MP3's or MP4's in them, I could not find them.

I think I will have to send an email to Apple to see if they know what the default locations for the iTunes folders is.

 

[Borg20001]

Originally posted by: GR22
OK, I put another HD in my system and made a mirror image of the origional. If something went wrong, I'd still have my data. I then disconnected the 2nd drive and ran fixboot and fixmbr from the recovery console, set boot order back to hard drive 1st and it's as if I never had a problem. Everything's back to normal. Not counting all my searches on this forrum and messing with the 2nd HD, the whole operation took all of about 2 minutes. Sure beats wiping the drive, fresh install of WIN, drivers, programs. etc, etc. If this didn't work, then I would have done a fresh install.

My thanks to dclive for a simple suggestion. Simple is good ;-)

Hmmm, after all my machinations, maybe I will now give DC's suggestion a try (though I like your idea of making a mirror image of the original for just-in-case) and I will rehook my old HD and run fixboot and then fixmbr to see if that is a cure-all.

Appreciate the suggestions from everyone (even if I am too much of a worrywart to use them all).

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: GR22
OK, I put another HD in my system and made a mirror image of the origional. If something went wrong, I'd still have my data. I then disconnected the 2nd drive and ran fixboot and fixmbr from the recovery console, set boot order back to hard drive 1st and it's as if I never had a problem. Everything's back to normal. Not counting all my searches on this forrum and messing with the 2nd HD, the whole operation took all of about 2 minutes. Sure beats wiping the drive, fresh install of WIN, drivers, programs. etc, etc. If this didn't work, then I would have done a fresh install.

My thanks to dclive for a simple suggestion. Simple is good ;-)