Hi there, I'm having a serious problem trying to recover files from my hard drive. I'm running Windows XP on an Abit KR7A-RAID motherboard, with a Maxtor hardrive. When I turned on my computer a couple days ago it would not start up. It makes it to the startup splash screen, and then there is a blue screen for a split second and then it restarts. I tried starting with "use previous settings that worked", and in various safe modes, with the same result. In safe mode, I saw that it makes it to loading Mup.sys before it crashes. I checked online for various solutions. I've tried removing all my PCI cards (except video), turning off USB, turning off RAID, turning off everything -- no dice. I tried using the Windows recovery console -- it gave me a C:\ prompt, didn't ask for a password, and returned an error when I tried to do a DIR. Wanting to at least retrieve my data -- at least 10 GB of valuable (to me) documents -- I've removed the hard drive, made a new Windows XP installation on a new hard drive, and then reinstalled the problem drive on the second IDE channel. Howeber, with the problem drive installed the computer will not start up (it doesn't hang, it just displays "Windows starting" for hours). This seems like the drive must be damaged, but when reattach it as the primary boot device, it does the same thing as before (booting and then failing at Mup.sys), so obviously the computer is able to access the drive. I'd rather try to solve this problem myself, with a minimal expenditure of money, if possible... Does anyone have any ideas on what I could do next? Thanks, Alec a_eiffel@hotmail.com

Try setting jumper on the problem drive to slave and put it in as primary slave to the new XP on your other drive. If it still will not boot it seems the drive itself may be damaged beyond recovery. That's what backups are for.

Try downloading the drive utilities from Maxtor.com to test the drive. This should at least determine if there is a physical problem with the drive. There are also some drive recovery programs available, though I do not have a specific recommendation. You can also try as suggested by Richard. I would also try pulling all jumpers, and trying the drive alone on the secondary channel if all else fails. You may be able to recover something if the drive can be recognized.Post back any further results. Good Luck.

To see if the files on your old XP drive are even accessible, you can try making a Windows 98/ME boot diskette and put the READNTFS.EXE program on it, or download and make their bootable diskette with READNTFS on it. Then boot the system with it and start the READNTFS file system. Then use DOS commands to see if you can at least read the files you need. This will not allow you to copy the files to a NTFS disk, but if it works it offers a path to getting to the files and reading them off. To do this you would have to format a drive with a FAT32 for Windows 9x. (Don't have the old drive in when you do it.) Then you could use the boot diskette with READNTFS to read the files off of the old XP drive on the second IDE channel and copy them to the FAT32 partition drive. Once on the drive you could slave it to another system and copy them to a CD. Or you could re-do your new drive with a bootable NTFS partition and a second small FAT32 or FAT24 secondary partition, and use the boot diskette to copy the files to the FAT32 partition.

Thanks for all your suggestions! I will try these and report back. Something I should have mentioned in my first post: I did download and run the Maxtor drive utility on my drive. The drive passed the simple physical tests, and at the end of the advanced test, reported that there were problems with the disk and gave me the opportunity to fix them. I selected No and rebooted -- the reason being that my experience with a failed drive a few years ago was that utilities like chkdsk are good for recovering lost chains, etc. on otherwise healthy disks, but can seriously damage a dsik with a messed up partition table or what have you. My priority was to get files backed up safely off the disk before trying to repair it -- hence the attempt to attach it onto a new system. The other thing I should ave mentioned is that it's an NTFS "Dynamic" drive... Do folks think I should let the Maxtor disk utility try to "fix" the problem? I try the solutions suggested here and report back. Thanks!