Hello. I have a Compaq Presario 5UVME2 with a Quantam Fireball 40GB (Windows XP) and a Seagate 20GB (Storage). Today, when I tried to boot up XP, I got some error and could not get XP to boot up. So, I thought it would be a bad sector or two, and ran some disk check program on my Hiren's Boot CD v8. It found some, and repaired them, but then XP still wouldn't boot. I got some error, but I forgot it. (sorry) I ran Norton Disk Doctor 2002 and it said something about my Boot Sector or Partition Table (?) and I had it fixed, and made an undo floppy. I started the computer up after it was done and after the COMPAQ logo, the screen stays blank with the little blinker at the top left. It only boots from a CD or Floppy though. I put in my Windows XP Pro SP2 disk and ran the recovery counsole but it only detects my 20GB Storage drive. But I ran my BIOS "Check Disks and Exit" function, and they show up in order: QuantamFireball 40GB, Seagate 20GB, CD-ROM, CD-ROM.

So, is my drive dead? I really don't want to have to reformat my storage drive and loose all of that data. Should I put the drive in another PC and try to see if I get anything?

Thanks,

Nick

OK. I put it in my other Presario and it comes up as the D drive which is fine, but when I click on it, it says the it needs to be formatted, which I really dont wanna do. Can I use Partition Magic or something to change it to FAT32? Or would that be of no help?

Nick

Bad sectors aren't repaired. They're just marked 'bad' and not used. The utilities like NDD will try to recover as much data as they can from the bad areas but it's unlikely they can recover all of it. Otherwise the sectors wouldn't be bad. In your case it couldn't recover all that was there and it's affecting the ability of the OS to boot up.

A recovery operation may fix it or you could reinstall windows. You could also go to Maxtor's site (I think they're the ones that bought Quantum several years ago) and see if it's still under warranty. If so, send it back and get another.

Well, I doubt that It is under warranty, it was OEM and came with my other Presario in 2000.

Im trying to use NDD and when it asks me to select the drive to scan, the only drives in the list are A:, B:, and R: (the Ram Disk made by the Boot CD)

Nick

Is it back on the original computer? If you have it connected to a 9X or ME system it won't see an NTFS drive.

If it's on the original computer and you're using a bootdisk, again a 9X or ME won't work.

Otherwise make sure it's connected and jumpered properly and identified right in cmos/bios setup.

Well, that computer has Windows XP Pro SP2 also. But I *think* I have it working now. Windows XP setup is formatting it now while I am typing. I used a program like KillDisk or something like that included on the Boot CD. I canceled it after 5 minutes and I popped it back in the original computer and the BIOS detected it as only "40GB" instead of "QuantumFireball 40GB" and Windows gave me the "Operating System Cannot Be Found" and then Windows setup recognized it, so I think I am fine. Unlike the other times I format the drive, this time I am NOT going to do Quick. Maybe it'll help.

Thank You for your quick responses!

Nick

You shouldn't have used the Recovery Console & there was no need to format & lose all your data. You should have done a "repair install"

Keep an eye on that drive. I've noticed the more recent quantum's seem to get their firmware corrupted fairly easily. One of the signs is if the bios starts describing it differently.

OK. And another thing. I've installed Windows successfully, but my 20GB Storage drive is C: and my Main System Drive (40GB) is now D:. Is it the cable select cable? And if I can just swap the drive location on the cable, will I have boot loader issues?

Thanks,
Nick

Cable Select? People actually use that? lol!

If the drives are jumpered as cable select then swapping them on the cable will swap the drive letters. If they're jumpered master/slave then you'd need to change the master to slave and vice versa.

I can't say if that will affect the boot loader as I haven't really worked with those. I would think you could swap the drives and just see what happens. I doubt you'd do any damage that way.

Well, I tried some fix I found with the registry entries and I found out why they say backup... But I had just reinstalled and only had about 3 programs installed. So I reinstalled and everything is back to normal. Thank You for the help,

Nick

Happy Trails

Sometimes that's the best way. At least you got it going again.