# Hard Drive contents gone!



## 1freedude (Aug 3, 2008)

Has anyone ever experienced losing their boot drive?  This just happened to me.  I ran windows repair console, looked at the partions and my boot drive was whole, all but one megabyte free.  What could do this?  I lost a little bit of stuff, but i'm just curious, wtf?


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## a111087 (Aug 3, 2008)

did you try to check disk for error?
lol, if you really did loose it all, then I don't know... could a virus do that?
may be you formatted it and forgot about it? )


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## WarEagleAU (Aug 3, 2008)

How big is your boot drive? IF you rebooted into windows, Im not sure what the problem is...


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## a111087 (Aug 3, 2008)

WarEagleAU said:


> How big is your boot drive? IF you rebooted into windows, Im not sure what the problem is...



windows repair console is from windows installation CD, so i guess he is unable to boot


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## 1freedude (Aug 3, 2008)

Here's the story,  was running slow, so i rebooted (at least i tried).  no joy, just an endless reboot.  After too many retries, i broke out the xp disk and checked it out.  ran chkdsk/r, but the active boot that the xp disk found was a different one on E:, not MY boot on C:.  the one on E:  is an old 98 just hanging out.  i tried to change the active console to c: but it wouldn't let me. said i needed a snap in, something to do with security configuration, or something. 

SET AllowAllPaths =  true                              didn't work

then ran dskpart saw all of the drives (partions included).  thats when i noticed C: was whole.  aafter i saw that, i gave up, and am on my linux box now.


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## a111087 (Aug 3, 2008)

"just an endless reboot"
to what exact point does PC go until reboot?

is win98 on different HDD or just different partition of the same HDD?

and so, your boot partition is full of something ("whole"), but were you able to see exactly what was taking up the space?   Some Live CD might let you do that (I don't know much about Linux right now...)  and you will be able to check out the drive.

I hope you will recover your data, or at least will not have to throw away a drive


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## xfire (Aug 3, 2008)

Try a linux live cd to access all your HDD content.


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## 1freedude (Aug 3, 2008)

the whole drive is free, and 98 is on another drive, not partion.  i am trying to find my mandriva cd now...


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## mikek75 (Aug 3, 2008)

I had a similar experience, turned out I'd lost the partition table, couldn't access anything. Look for a program called testdisk6.9, it rebuilt mine in seconds and worked like a dream. Good luck!


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## a111087 (Aug 3, 2008)

oh, well there you go, mikek75 had this

If i'm tight then Partition Doctor or Partition Magic can fix it too (but i'm not sure, so try testdisc first)


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## 1freedude (Aug 3, 2008)

Thanks, i almost reinstalled!!  will try it tonight


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## xfire (Aug 4, 2008)

you need a live cd and one that can read and write to ntfs. Go to a cyber cafe download puppy linux and burn the iso.


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

ok all my stuff is still there, but the endless boot continues:

"windows did not start correctly....."

any of the choices result in a very slow boot process.  it takes 35 seconds for the white progress bar at the bottom.  at that point it goes into the windows splash.  when it seems like the windows welcome should show up, no, it reboots.  

the bios is responsive.  i have checked health status and it seems alright.  i am still looking for mandriva live cd.

could this be a processor issue?  i removed heatsink, cleaned off tmp, reapplied tmp, stuck the HS back on (actually, that's the very first thing i did)


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## tkpenalty (Aug 5, 2008)

1freedude said:


> ok all my stuff is still there, but the endless boot continues:
> 
> "windows did not start correctly....."
> 
> ...



No, CPU issues are EXTREMELY rare, and the nature of this issue doesn't seem to be very random. The nature of your issue screams driver issues, and therefore I would try resetting ALL the drivers back to the windows generic drivers (those drivers are used before just after you reinstall). 

I'm guessing you probably have a corrupt IDE driver, something along the lines of that. Playing around with your boot table will not do anything, you wouldn't even be able to boot up at all if you had a corrupted boot table!

EDIT: To do what I just mentioned you'll need to start windows recovery and from the XP install disc and replace the drivers one by one. I'd recommend however to plug your affected HDD into another system to backup, format then reinstall as the effort required is simply not worth it!


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

this post is from my fouled up windows machine.  found mandriva loaded no prob.  so i'd say not proc related.  i have access to the windoze drive 

now what?


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## psyko12 (Aug 5, 2008)

I dunno bout all linux live cd's but I had a go with Knoppix from ubcd and backed up/copied all my impt data from a malfunctioning windows install to another drive, try to back up from there or try what the other one said... rebuild the partition table if it was broken... Sorry wasn't much of help


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## Cybrnook2002 (Aug 5, 2008)

Can you boot into safe mode "F8"??


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

@ cybrnook

safe mode is linux right now....nothing under F8 works, including "VGA"


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## Cybrnook2002 (Aug 5, 2008)

So, what if you run check disk now? but DONT try moving your boot table to C:, leave it on E:.  Perhaps when you installed XP, it found your old 98 install and modified the already existing boot table on E:, and you never even knew, but you have been booting from E this whole time.


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## Solaris17 (Aug 5, 2008)

try this...


remove the win98 HDD so you can access the XP HDD and type the following



fixboot

fixmbr


see if it will let you boot then.


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## spud107 (Aug 5, 2008)

i had something similar happen to a drive, total amnesia, its currently sitting in a box awaiting rma . . .


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

@cybrnook thanks, i thought so too, but i already took that drive out of the machine
@solaris i was going to do that, but i'm in linux now, out of the console.
tkpenalty's on the right track

how do i mess with the drivers from linux?  or make windoze think it never had a problem starting?


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## Solaris17 (Aug 5, 2008)

did you try the commands though? if it got screwed up or confused with the 98 disk it would have modified the boot record already.


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

i'm gonna dump linux and try fixboot.  i'm still online on my other linux box.


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## 1freedude (Aug 5, 2008)

no dice w/ fixboot  i'm not gonna do a fixmbr.  i can read and write to the disk just fine. ok, i'm gonna peel off the shit i need from the drive and slick it.

thanks for all the help.


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## Solaris17 (Aug 5, 2008)

1freedude said:


> no dice w/ fixboot  i'm not gonna do a fixmbr.  i can read and write to the disk just fine. ok, i'm gonna peel off the shit i need from the drive and slick it.
> 
> thanks for all the help.



man sorry to hear that i wonder what went wrong.


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## xfire (Aug 5, 2008)

Copy all the content from that HDD and then reinstall windows.


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## 1freedude (Aug 6, 2008)

after i get back from work in the morning, thats what i'm gonna do


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