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hi,
i have never encountered this before, but i was browsing ebay yesterday and all of a sudden the whole pc switched off and started restarting. the next thing i see is the windows xp pro loading (where the little bar slides along a few times before giving the welcome screen) ... the bar froze after about two slides and auto-reset the pc, doing it over and over, i watched it three times. i then tried my hard-drive in a different pc, and it was not finding the hard-drive at all! i then shoved it back into my original pc, and put the winxp pro disc in, where i doing a repair of windows. i am pretty sure that completed, and then i left the computer for a while and i came back and it was on the winxp pro boot screen (same as before) except this time it was not freezing... i left it for 40 minutes and still the bar was sliding across. i am currently doing another repair job of windows.
is this some sort of virus i have? i had all of the latest windows update patches, and i was not doing anything at all other than browsing ebay. please tell me my hd hasn't been ridden off, i have 60GB worth of games/movies/photos from overseas trips/EVERYTHING!!!
can anyone please help me out? give me any ideas whatsover? i am very anxious to at least get the hard-drive working, i dont really care about the computer as i need a new one anyway, but i CANNOT lose the files on it. i apologise for this being such a long thread, and i thank anyone who is willing to give me their time and read it. please, help me out
Pentium 4 1.6Ghz
256MB RAM
128MB nvidia ti4200
Seagate Barracuda 7200 Hard-Drive
(used to be) running windows xp professional
When you put it in the other machine did you set the jumpers to slave? If so, the HD may be dying. Google to 200 WAYS TO REVIVE A HARD DRIVE. Techrepublic. You may be able to keep it alive long enough to recover the data.
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sounds like a hardware problem . put in another hard drive and reload windows and see what happens then if it works use the old drive as a slave to try and get your files from it.
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Could be the ram or psu is failing or a heat related issue.
Test the ram ... www.memtest86.org
Check the psu fan and all other fans are working. Blow out the dust bunnies.
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One reason that the hard drive didn't work in the other system could be because it's an NTFS drive and you tried it on a Win9x system. Win9X will not recognize NTFS drives.
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Latest Update:
I have created an MS-DOS boot disk and been able to use a program called NTFS Professional to access my hard-drive through DOS. i did a quick check through all the folders on the HD and everything is still there.
i was told to use SCANDISK or CHKDSK but both of these programs are not working.
"Scandisk cannot work with drive D. Files might be open on drive D or another disk-utility program might be working with drive D. Close all open programs on drive D, disconnect from any network drives, and quit any disk-utility programs that might be working with drive D. Then, run scandisk again."
I have a feeling that it is the NTFSPRO program that is working with drive d, but i cannot close that because then i will have no access to the drive as it is an NTFS drive and not FAT32. I tried using a program that came with NTFSPRO but it is giving me this error message when i try and run it, "Insufficient Extended Memory!"
By the way, both of the PC's are Windows XP PRO running NTFS file systems.
the person that told me to check my ram, i am unable to do that because i have no access whatsoever to windows, the furthest i get is the booting screen.
i have a feeling that what has happened is that (for whatever reason) the pc restarted, and in the process corrupted a windows file. i have been told that scandisk is commonly used to fix these problems, but i need to be able to run it!
thank you for all your support, hopefully we can come up with a solution!
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Try booting from the XP CD and go past the recovery console to the install menu. Select REPAIR THE EXISTING INSTALLATION. Let it run. You will need the CD KEY. You won't lose any data except the XP updates. You will have to reinstall all of them, including SP1a. Do it immediately, as you will be susceptable to the MSBLASTER and SASSER worm while online.Good luck.
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You need to enable the floppy drive as the first boot device in your bios setup. Memtest86 runs from a floppy with its own OS . Just like using a W98se startup disk.
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OK, i have tried the repair method twice now, both times it actually starts installing windows and repairing it (asks for cd-key as well) and it said it only had a few minutes left, and it needed to restart. whilst restarting i just got stuck back in the same loop of windows xp boot screen.
ok i have worked out that it is not the RAM, thx anyways tho rocket, because i have used another pc's (stable pc) ram and it still did the same thing.
i tried using ontracks software in this PC i am using now... but for some reason if i have that drive connected as well as this one (working) then it tells me there are no hard-drives at all... when i can shove a spare one in and that works fine.
should i go for a fresh install of windows (not fully fresh ie no formatting because i dont wanna lose my files)?
what files would i lose if i did a fresh install of windows? documents and settings folder? because in MY DOCUMENTS is where most of my important docs/photos are stored
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Lets try this. Boot to the recovery console- select 1 - windows-password if you have one or enter if not- Type CHKDSK /R. space between K and /. This should check your disk and replace any bad sectors. Will return tomorrow for an update. Good luck.
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