'Frozen' Harddrive?

[The Axe Dude]

So, I shut down at about 6PM last night, just before loadshedding...It came back on at 10PM, and I went to start up the PC...The black screen showing my BIOS info comes up, as normal, then the white screen saying 'Acer' and PressF12 for boot options and whatnt, and then it starts this again, infinitely. So, I boot from a Live Ubuntu disc, and its fine...

I wake up this morning, same problem...

Could my harddrive be too cold?

 

[Kasyx]

So, I shut down at about 6PM last night, just before loadshedding...It came back on at 10PM, and I went to start up the PC...The black screen showing my BIOS info comes up, as normal, then the white screen saying 'Acer' and PressF12 for boot options and whatnt, and then it starts this again, infinitely. So, I boot from a Live Ubuntu disc, and its fine...

I wake up this morning, same problem...

Could my harddrive be too cold?

Highly unlikely that your hard drive is too cold, unless you keep it in a freezer. Does the BIOS still detect the drive?

 

[stoke]

My uneducated guess is that your BIOS battery is borked, and your BIOS forgets what it is configured to do when it has no power for 4 hours.
If you enter the BIOS configuration menu and re-detect the hard drives, does it work then?

 

[cyberarmy]

Live Ubuntu CD is the one that you run the system off CD right?
Could it be the power surge fried something in your PC?

 

[The Axe Dude]

Highly unlikely that your hard drive is too cold, unless you keep it in a freezer. Does the BIOS still detect the drive?

I'm not sure how to redetect them, but I went and played around in bios, and saw something that mentioned something about 'Auto-Detect' So I went to that, and showed up my 160GB hard drive. It said it was located on Channel 2 as Master

My uneducated guess is that your BIOS battery is borked, and your BIOS forgets what it is configured to do when it has no power for 4 hours.
If you enter the BIOS configuration menu and re-detect the hard drives, does it work then?

As above. Also, After I played in the BIOS, it still didn't work...

Live Ubuntu CD is the one that you run the system off CD right?
Could it be the power surge fried something in your PC?

Yeah, its where it runs off of the disc. What could have been fried? I really dont know too much about hardware

I can still read the data on the hard drives when I am in Linux, could it be possible that the boot sector is damaged?

Thanks

 

[Gnome]

I can still read the data on the hard drives when I am in Linux, could it be possible that the boot sector is damaged?

Thanks

Yep that's the most likely explanation. But you can run Hard-Disk drive diagnostic utilities on the drive to be sure, every manufacturer makes one for their drives.

 

[The Axe Dude]

Where would I get these? My PC never came with a restore disk or anything ...Had to go out and buy a windows disc just to re-install

Also, I dont know what make of HDD it is

 

[Gnome]

Heh, well the easiest way to determine the Hard-Drive type right now would be to go into the BIOS and get the hard-drive name as stated there, that would help determine the drive. Windows will also be able to report this using the Device Manager.

For example my Hard-Drive is reported as: WDC WD10EACS-00ZJB0

Anyway the tools usually come in 2 flavors, boot from a CD or work directly to Windows. The boot from CD type you have to burn to a CD obviously the work from Windows requires Windows So it's up to you to decide which suits you best. Post the details here I'll be able to tell you what kind of Hard-Drive it is and where to get the tool.

 

[The Axe Dude]

Well, I havent done uiwhat you said above yet, but I have gone into the recovery console from my XP disc. From there, it can see the installation on C:/ so I ran FIXBOOT to create a new boot sector. I rebooted and nothing happened. I ran chkdsk on the two partitions, both are healthy. I am now considering running FIXMBR, but it says I have an invalid or non standard MBR. It also says I might kose access to ALL my current partitions.

Should I risk it?

 

[Gnome]

Make a backup of data you don't want to lose first, then if it doesn't work at least you can still format and start over.

 

[The Axe Dude]

But how do I backup 160GB of data? I can only access Linux from a live disc, so I cant burn Discs :S

 

[Gnome]

Well then this is good time to have another computer or a buddy, to whom you can take the hard-drive Hard-Drives are very simple to remove, it only has 2 cables and they can go in only one way.

Are you sure you can't burn disc in Linux even if you're using Live CD's? And you don't want to backup the ENTIRE 160GB only that which you can't get again, IE. Application install files, your warez and work. Windows and installed programs you can leave, unless you can't get a certain programs install files again, then copying *might* be a option.

 

[The Axe Dude]

Well, I went ahead and tried fixmbr, and it never worked Here is the 'name' of the hard drive from the BIOS: WDC WD1600JS-00MHB0 [IDE Channel 2 Master]. Would re-installing windows work, even if it is a BIOS issue?

 

[Gnome]

Your PC hardware should still be fine, the problem is data corruption, which can be because the PC was busy writing to a section of the MBR or essential DDL and lost power or because the hard-drive is kicking the bucket, but I doubt the hard-drive is failing.

What exactly is the error message you receive when you try and boot into Windows? Also after running the MBR tool can you still see the data in Linux?

Btw. You have a Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB 8mb Cache 7200RPM hard-drive, most likely it's still under warranty so if it is failing you should still be able to return it and get a new one Standard warranty is 3years. The Western Digital Diagnostic utility requires that you write a CD tho. But like I said the chance that the actual HD is failing is low. But yeah the tool can be found from here: http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=30

 

[The Axe Dude]

Your PC hardware should still be fine, the problem is data corruption, which can be because the PC was busy writing to a section of the MBR or essential DDL and lost power or because the hard-drive is kicking the bucket, but I doubt the hard-drive is failing.

What exactly is the error message you receive when you try and boot into Windows? Also after running the MBR tool can you still see the data in Linux?

Btw. You have a Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB 8mb Cache 7200RPM hard-drive, most likely it's still under warranty so if it is failing you should still be able to return it and get a new one Standard warranty is 3years. The Western Digital Diagnostic utility requires that you write a CD tho. But like I said the chance that the actual HD is failing is low. But yeah the tool can be found from here: http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=30

Well, I can still see all of the data from Linux, which is a good thing . There is no error message, it just doesnt boot. It displays the information about my graphics card, as it normally does, and then it displays the boot screen, which is white, and has all the information about getting into the BIOS and the boot list. It then goes to a screen, where it would normally say "Verifying DMI Data pool..." and a bunch of other stuff, but instead it just restarts.

Windows can still see that there is a windows installation.

I have just noticed, however, that I dont have "NTDetect.com" on my C:/ root. Im fairly sure this is the problem, as I remember deleting it. (I recently had a virus called NTDe1ect.com and mistook it for that OOPS!) Now I need a way to copy that file to my C:/ drive from the install disc, but it keeps giving the error that permission is denied. GAH!

Edit: It appears I had the XP Installation files on my pc...Maybe I can find ntdetect in there

Edit: It's there...now to reboot, hopefully, (not hopefully?) into windows

Edit: YAY! It worked! As a lesson to all: NEVER, EVER delete NTDetect.com God I feel like an idiot

Edit_AGAIN: Thanks for all your help guys, Gnome, now I know that I have a Western Digital Harddrive

 

[Gnome]

OK I thought that the MBR might not be damaged if you could still see data.

In that case the easiest option is to try a repair with your Windows XP CD, it should fix the NTDetect.com problem. If that fails there are only 2 options left, one is to reinstall Windows on your current partition, it will overwrite most of the current system files, this cures most problems but if the actual registry or something important like that is damaged your only option is format

For more info on the Windows XP Repair look here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

If that doesn't work try the reinstall first, all you do is in setup pick the Windows detected and DON'T delete the partition or format

EDIT: Ok I saw you tried just copying NTDetect if that works then great Else try the repair option.

 

[The Axe Dude]

Yeah, the copying worked perfectly lol