Computer Gurus, I need help!!

[Jim O'Dell]

My wife's computer crashed during the storm. It is on an APC battery back up, and was turned off before the storm hit. It would not boot up this morning. It is an Intel mother board, with an Intel dual core chip. Running XP home. We tried the Restore software, but that didn't help. I got the unit to show something by installing the system disc. It allowed us to reinstall the operating system on drive C (hard drive is divided into 3 "drives"), or at least it went through the motions. At one point there was a screen that said something like "There is no disc in drive" Then listed the 3 partitions, with C highlighted. We went past that. At the end, it said drive C was corrupted.
How can I access the computer and read the other partitions? Can I go back through the set up and load XP on one of the other partitions? Or do I need to start with a new drive, and hope I can recover the information on the other partitions? Sure glad I haven't been in her computer in a while!!!:rolleyes: But not being the blame for this may not help if I can't help recover her information. And no, she has not been good about backing up her information. :(:(:( I bet she will be better at that now. ;) Thanks for any insights you can give!!
By the way, I can get model numbers if that will help. The Hard Drive is a Western Digital 80 gig. Jim.

[C Scott McDonald]

Well, as a last ditch effort you can remove the hard drive and install it as a slave in another machine. The other machine will boot off the good drive and can you can look at the failing drive with windows explorer. But if you reloaded the OS you may have lost the information hard telling. With this method you can at least look at all the partitions on the drive and try to recover some files.

You will more then likly have to change the strap on the back of the hard drive to make it a slave. The pin layout should be on the hard drive.

Good Luck! Hard drive fails are the pits. I deal with them on a daily basis.

Scott

[Dennis Peacock]

I've done like Scott just mentioned before and it does work as long as the old drive is still good and the disk partition is still in tact. This is also the reason why I have a 500GB extrnal disk backup unit that backs up our data twice each week. Critical data I backup to DVD as well.

I've lived the pain of loosing info one time too many. It's well worth whatever backup path you pick....but pick one and stick to a weekly schedule. :)

[John Hain]

First things first. On bootup, go in the system menu by hitting esc or f12 or whatever the screen says.

Go to Boot Order and make sure you're booting to the harddrive first and not the CD/DVD or floppy.

Electrical storms do crazy things to computers.

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the quick responses. Unfortunately, this is the only system in the house on XP. So I'll probably have to buy another drive to reload XP on, then try to recover the info. The good thing is about all that is on C is the operating system. D was set up to be the software programs, and E all the saved files. It hasn't worked 100% that way, but pretty close. Oh, and it's a SATA drive, again the only one in the house.
John, on this one, the screen says to hit F2 to enter setup, but that isn't working at all. It ignores that command and goes on it's merry way. :confused: Guess I'll have to make a trip to Fry's this weekend. Guess it's good that the IRS refund is good this year!! Thanks all!!!! I appreciate the help. Jim.

[Stephen Beckham]

Jim,

Have you tried to boot from floppy or CD? Not many of those around anymore, but if you can boot from either and EXIT the install, you might be able to read other partitions if they haven't been corrupted.

Also - I thought WD had pretty good drive controllers on their web sites that might be able to help you with their drive specifics.

Be careful though - they usually don't ask "Are you sure" when you hit a destructive repair sequence...

[Jim Becker]

Fortunately, Jim...hard drives are pretty inexpensive these days...and having a second one in the machine isn't a terrible thing given the growing need to store photos, etc. (But you should also consider a back-up devices, too, while you're at it... ;) )

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the idea steve. I hadn't thought to look at WD's web site.
Jim, I've been pricing drives this am. Weird thing about this drive I have, it's only a year and a half old. But nothing else in the house was damaged electrically, and both our main computers are powered through APC battery backups which is supposed to be a good safety net. If I can get the information off the drive, I'll see what WD will do for warranty. You can't find a drive this small anymore it doesn't seem like. (80GB) And Glenna has a DVD recorder in her computer for backup purposes. Plenty of new recordable discs to use. It's one of those things that didn't get done. Like I said last night, I bet that changes after this!! Thanks again for the help! Jim

[Rick Malloy]

Being the only XP drive in the house does not stop you from connecting to another PC. I bought a USB drive case to recover from a PC after an incident like you mentioned. The cable line took a hit and the spike came in thru the network connection, trashed the motherboard. By putting the drive in an external USB drive case, you can recover from any PC or Laptop that recognizes USB drives and can read the format of the disk. If you can't read the format with whatever you have, go visit a friend with a PC that will and take along the external drive.

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks Rick. I might price an external housing, but I bet it will be half the price of a new drive, and I've got to have the new drive anyway. Then I can get this one warranted and use it as a back up. Maybe miirror the information so if one goes down, I have the other one for her to fall back on. Jim.

[Curt Harms]

make sure it supports SATA drives. Some support both ATA and SATA. That'd probably be the way to go. Here are some examples:http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=3.5++external+enclosure%2Bsata%2Bide&x=0&y=0 If You have the receipt for the APC surge protector/UPS/Whatever, they are supposed to warrant devices attached to them up to several thousand dollars. Might be worth looking into.

[Jim O'Dell]

Yeah, it's up to 25,000 if I remember correctly. But there has to be some determination that it fried because of a surge through the unit. Since nothing else is damaged, I'm thinking the APC had nothing to do with it, and probably the storm had nothing to do with it. Just circumstance.
I was thinking a little this afternoon and remember TLOML complaining that she couldn't do a defrag on C because it didn't have enough memory, and that the message was different every time she tried it, fluctuating up and down. So I think we just missed the signs that the drive was dying. It never got noisey.
I found a 320 GB drive at Best Buy for the same price as Fry's, and a whole lot closer, for the same price, 99.99. Should have done a little more research before heading out, but the BB stop was on a whim, hoping I could save some driving time.
I'll be trying the new drive in the am. I'll post back with what happens. Thankx! Jim.

[M Toupin]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817193022

$26 - USB connection and does both IDE & SATA HDs

When your done with the recover use it for a external backup HD. I take mine to work so I always have a backup off site. Best $26 I ever spent.

Mike

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the link! If nothing else, I might use the old drive for that later on. Jim.

ps..after it has been replaced or repaired by Western Digital!!!!

[Jim O'Dell]

OK, as I get started this morning, I've got a few questions on how to proceed with the new SATA drive install. I'm thinking I need to take the other drive out of the system, install the new drive, and then load XP. After that is up and running, then shut the system down and reinstall the old drive to see if I can read the other partitions. Does that sound like a good plan? When I hook up the old drive, is there going to be a conflict thinking it sees 2 C drives, or will they be renamed automatically? I've read on the Intel site this morning looking for possible answers, but none I could find for this problem. Thanks! Jim.

[Matt Meiser]

That's what I would do. The old drive should be moved to a higher drive letter, but I've occasionally run into issues with that when there are multiple disk controllers. As long as you put the new drive on the first channel, you should be good.

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks for the quick response, Matt! Jim.

[Jim O'Dell]

More questions! :o

I'm installing XP on the new drive. Partitioned it basically 1/3 for the operating system, and the rest I'll partition later. (I hope I can do it later) It automatically assigned drive F to the partitioned section, even though the old drive is not hooked up.
I guess I will be able to go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from F ? Not sure why it didn't see this as a new system, and start at C. Any ideas? Jim.

ADDED: I answered my own question. I had plugged into a different SATA port that the original HD was in. I stopped things, went back and redid it and now it shows I'm working on Drive C.

[Jim O'Dell]

Well 'never know' struck. :( I plugged in the old hard drive, powered up the computer, and it did the same thing it did when it was the only drive in the system. So something about it is locking up the computer, not just locking up that drive. My wife wants to sent it to an info recovery company. She said 5-800.00 would be a lot cheaper than the 200 or so hours it would take her to redo all the information she lost. Plus the pictures, e-mails and addresses, and all the music that she and her students have created stroke by stroke on the keyboard in her music notation software (Sybelius for those into music composition).
So, any one know of a good place to send it to? I did a search and found prices from 270.00 to 380.00, but who knows if they are legitimate companies or not. There is one listed that is just over in Irving, about 40 miles away. Might be worth looking into. But if anyone here knows a good resource for this, I'll pass that on to the wife. Thanks! Jim.

[Chuck Wintle]

Well 'never know' struck. :( I plugged in the old hard drive, powered up the computer, and it did the same thing it did when it was the only drive in the system. So something about it is locking up the computer, not just locking up that drive. My wife wants to sent it to an info recovery company. She said 5-800.00 would be a lot cheaper than the 200 or so hours it would take her to redo all the information she lost. Plus the pictures, e-mails and addresses, and all the music that she and her students have created stroke by stroke on the keyboard in her music notation software (Sybelius for those into music composition).
So, any one know of a good place to send it to? I did a search and found prices from 270.00 to 380.00, but who knows if they are legitimate companies or not. There is one listed that is just over in Irving, about 40 miles away. Might be worth looking into. But if anyone here knows a good resource for this, I'll pass that on to the wife. Thanks! Jim.
An information recovery company may be your only hope at this point short of buying an external housing, putting the old drive in it, and trying to boot the computer that way. When you say the computer locks up, at which point does this happen? Is it getting past the BIOS post or when it goes to windows?

[Greg Peterson]

May want to raise your expectations as to what it will cost to recover the data. If they are able to swap out the board on the HD, the cost won't be too high, in relative terms. If they have to take it into a clean room and take it apart it gets expensive very quickly.

I had a drive sent in for data recovery last fall. $100 to diagnose whether or not they would be able to retrieve any data. They were able to retrieve everything except a couple of temp files. $2,500 later, our office manager was happy. The drive was a piddly 20 GB HD.

When I get in to work Monday I can provide the name of the company that provided the service. Turn around time was about five days or so, less if you go ground service.

[Dennis Peacock]

My dad had a hard drive recoverd by a recovery business somewhere in Florida. Said it was $250 for the recovery service....IIRC

PM me if you want my dad's email address so you can contact him about it.

[Jim O'Dell]

An information recovery company may be your only hope at this point short of buying an external housing, putting the old drive in it, and trying to boot the computer that way. When you say the computer locks up, at which point does this happen? Is it getting past the BIOS post or when it goes to windows?

When the power is turned on, it goes to the screen for the bios, but won't let you enter the bios, then goes to a blue screen with the error in software message, then powers off.


May want to raise your expectations as to what it will cost to recover the data. If they are able to swap out the board on the HD, the cost won't be too high, in relative terms. If they have to take it into a clean room and take it apart it gets expensive very quickly.

I had a drive sent in for data recovery last fall. $100 to diagnose whether or not they would be able to retrieve any data. They were able to retrieve everything except a couple of temp files. $2,500 later, our office manager was happy. The drive was a piddly 20 GB HD.

When I get in to work Monday I can provide the name of the company that provided the service. Turn around time was about five days or so, less if you go ground service.


OUCH!!!!!!:eek::eek::eek: That won't happen!:D I think I'll pass on that company. Although it sounds like they did the job properly. One of the googled places stated that they had gone to a one price deal, and it wasn't more to go to the clean room if necessary. But again, would they do a good job??
I've taken Dennis up on his offer, so we'll see what that turns up.
And I sure thought the first time I loaded this OS, I had the choice of the Fat32, or the NTSF formats. I am now only getting the choice of the NTSF quick version, or regular. If that's true,and the original version was Fat32, would that keep me from reading it?
I may try the USB enclosure before I send it off to a recovery company. I think that's what I will need to have for a system back up anyway.
Everyone, Thank You for all the help!! Jim.

[Greg Peterson]

The last couple of HD failures I've experienced were particularly nasty. Very similar to your situation.

I've always been able to install a new drive, install the OS then put the old, failed drive back in on another IDE channel or even slave it to the master drive. But in both instances the OS wouldn't even recognize the failed drive.

I back 'em up every night now to a server. At least for the few clients that I don't want to go through the bother and expense of retrieving irreplaceable data.

[Chuck Wintle]

A person I read about experienced a hard drive failure. Rather than send it in for an expensive recovery he purchased another drive that was the exact same model and F/W version as his. He very carefully removed the controller board and replaced it from the one he bought. He also did something to the read/write head, replaced it also I think, and was able to recover 99% of his data. If you like doing that sort of thing then this could be an option.

[M Toupin]

It sounds like it may be a boot conflict between the two drives, the new one and the old one. Without getting too deep into it, drives can be coded as "boot" so the computer knows which one to start from.

You now have two drives, both coded as "boot". The computer may be confused which one to boot from and is trying to boot from the "old" one. I'd recommend trying the external enclosure first. After booting up the computer with the new drive, then power up the "old" one in the external enclosure hooked up via the USB.

I just went through the same problem, the external enclosure allowed me to save my data.

Mike

[Jim O'Dell]

OK, made the 60 mile round trip to Fry's, got the enclosure..................AND IT APPEARS TO BE WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm transferring the D drive now, and will do the E drive after that. It even appears to read the C drive. :confused::confused: Tried to boot from that, but it wouldn't. Well, the E drive is copying now. Then we'll see how much info is missing. It showed 25 files wouldn't transfer from the D drive. All of them were Netscape files, so we'll see if that makes any difference or not
So a BIG THANK YOU!! for everyone's help. Looks like this might just take care of things. Jim.

[Chuck Wintle]

Jim,
Glad to hear you can retrieve the data! Just wondering which enclosure you bought.

[Jim O'Dell]

Charles, it's the Vantec NexStar-3. 40.00 at Fry's. Might be able to purchase it cheaper on line. but that didn't matter today. :rolleyes: Still can't find the address book, or get the old inbox, or the bookmarks to load into the browser. Anyone have any ideas? I remember I ran into this problem when I redid my computer a couple years ago. Don't think I ever got it to reload.
Not sure about everything, but looking at the drive, it appears it's all there. Glenna will just have to see if she can access it.
Well, I can see I won't get to step foot in the shop this weekend. It's time to go mow. :( Jim.

[Curt Harms]

Still can't find the address book, or get the old inbox, or the bookmarks to load into the browser. Anyone have any ideas? Jim.
Hi Jim
Glad to hear you're having luck with the external enclosure. I don't recall how Netscape is set up, but with Firefox bookmarks are at c:/documents and settings/username/applicationdata/mozilla/firefox/profiles/some-arbitrary-number-letter. You could also do a search for the filename bookmarks.html or bookmarks.htm. I find the free version of powerdesk handy for searching for specific file names. For emails see if You can find an mail folder and incoming.account-name. I wish I could be more help.

Curt

[Jay Johnstone]

Jim - first off, sorry to hear of your misfortune. Been there myself. :eek:

Second, as has already been mentioned, an inexpensive external hard drive enclosure seems like the logical choice here. I purchased this one to try and recover files for much the same reason - http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1337265&CatId=2778

- and it worked fine. Most of my old drive was bad but I was able to salvage a few pictures and what not. Even if your old hard drive turns out to be 100% corrupt, you will at least have a way to back up files should you spend big bucks to replace or repair your wifes PC. All you'll need is a cheap hard drive. If you do decide to get an enclosure - don't buy it from Best Buy unless you'd rather spend $60+ as opposed to 20 or 30. Good luck, Jim!

[Jim O'Dell]

Thanks Jay. Unfortunately, time was a factor for the wife. It's her business computer and she was dead in the water with out it. Had the PC up and running with the new HD Saturday. Drove 50+ miles round trip and got a USB enclosure from Frys for 40.00 on Sunday.
It is odd to me that I can read the C drive when it is in the USB enclosure, and that's the drive that was corrupt. Makes you think there was a data cable bad, but I tried both on the new drive, and they worked fine with it.
I think she is reading everything I was able to down load so far. I don't think she has been able to import her address book or old inbox yet. And that is going to hurt.
Thanks for checking in! Jim.

[David G Baker]

Jim,
I store most of my non bulky items in my E-mail account on Yahoo. Address book, favorites, sent e-mail and received e-mail that is important. I learned the hard way, it it is stored on my hard drives the possibility of loosing things is always there. It takes a little time but worth the effort.

[Chuck Wintle]

Thanks Jay. Unfortunately, time was a factor for the wife. It's her business computer and she was dead in the water with out it. Had the PC up and running with the new HD Saturday. Drove 50+ miles round trip and got a USB enclosure from Frys for 40.00 on Sunday.
It is odd to me that I can read the C drive when it is in the USB enclosure, and that's the drive that was corrupt. Makes you think there was a data cable bad, but I tried both on the new drive, and they worked fine with it.
I think she is reading everything I was able to down load so far. I don't think she has been able to import her address book or old inbox yet. And that is going to hurt.
Thanks for checking in! Jim.
Jim,
Your problem got me thinking as to why the drive works in the enclosure but not the computer. It may be the drive had an effect on the sometimes finicky computer bootup where the computer became locked but when placed in the external enclosure the more robust frontend of the interface of the external enclosure allowed the drive to work.

[Peter Stahl]

Thanks Jay. Unfortunately, time was a factor for the wife. It's her business computer and she was dead in the water with out it. Had the PC up and running with the new HD Saturday. Drove 50+ miles round trip and got a USB enclosure from Frys for 40.00 on Sunday.
It is odd to me that I can read the C drive when it is in the USB enclosure, and that's the drive that was corrupt. Makes you think there was a data cable bad, but I tried both on the new drive, and they worked fine with it.
I think she is reading everything I was able to down load so far. I don't think she has been able to import her address book or old inbox yet. And that is going to hurt.
Thanks for checking in! Jim.

Can you boot off the USB enclosure? If so open the email program and export the address book and mail box messages. I use Outlook Express but don't remember exactly how I moved it to the new PC. Do a Google search to see if there is anything on how to move you email to a new PC. You might be able to just move the files that hold the address book and mail messages. Glad to hear the enclosure worked for you. I bought one to use with my old PC's drives.

[Jim O'Dell]

Peter, I tried to boot off the enclosure, but it wouldn't. I might try going into the bios and changing the boot sequence so it will try to bood from the old drive first. We'll see. Might bring it to my computer and play with it here first. That way LOML won't kill me if I mess something up! :D Part of the problem so far is finding the location that the address book is hidden in. I remember it took me a while when I did mine 1 1/2 years ago. Lots of google searches and poking around computer forums. And I can't remember where it was. There is a way to do it, I just haven't found it, again. Jim.

[Peter Stahl]

Peter, I tried to boot off the enclosure, but it wouldn't. I might try going into the bios and changing the boot sequence so it will try to bood from the old drive first. We'll see. Might bring it to my computer and play with it here first. That way LOML won't kill me if I mess something up! :D Part of the problem so far is finding the location that the address book is hidden in. I remember it took me a while when I did mine 1 1/2 years ago. Lots of google searches and poking around computer forums. And I can't remember where it was. There is a way to do it, I just haven't found it, again. Jim.

You might have to unhide the hidden files in explorer then look in C:\Documents and Settings\YourDirectNameHere\Application Data directory, it might be there. I know that's where my firefox Bookmarks file hides. What email program you using?

[Jim O'Dell]

We use Netscape, which is based on the Mozilla set up just like Firefox. I haven't gotten into Firefox enough to see the email portion. I just need to spend some time with her computer and find the location again. Maybe this weekend. Thanks for the help! Jim.

[Curt Harms]

Not sure if this will help with your present problem but for the future Mozbackup works great. It'll back up Firefox bookmarks, cookies etc. and Thunderbird address books, settings, emails etc. It says it works with Netscape as well. Once you get off the failed drive what you can get, it wouldn't hurt to try mozbackup and see if it sees the netscape installation.

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/