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Hard drive will not boot and I can't find the System Disk. Options?

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MrPederman

MrPederman

Vendor
Mar 2, 2004
273
US
My hard drive won't boot up and I am being pompted to put in the "System Disk" and I can't find the "System Disk" I previously created. Do I have any options, or do I just need to buy a new hard drive? Thanks in advance.
 
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Check the power (try a different hard drive plug, and data (change if you have a spare) cables to the hard drive, this message means either the computer can't "see" the hard drive, or the drive has failed. Download the drives manufacturer's diagnostic program (runs from floppy), from their website.
 
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I tried a different power cable and that didn't help. I reseated the ribbon cable. but I don't have a new one to try. I do see a hard drive light when it is trying to boot though. Could I connect the hard drine to the "secondary Drive" plug that is "in-line" with the ribbon cable?
 
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Is there any floppy disk still in the floppy drive?

How to Use System Files to Create a Boot Disk to Guard Against Being Unable to Start Windows XP (Q314079)

Q305595 - HOW TO: Create a Boot Disk for an NTFS or FAT Partition in Windows XP


How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP

Have a look at the FixMbr command.

266745 - Error Message When You Run fixmbr Command
 
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If this just happend I would recommend you to download the manufacturer of your hard drive diagnostic tool and do a check on your hard drive to make sure its not starting to go faulty.

Usually you create one or more floppies to check the hard disk but for example Seagate lets you create a cd with the tool. Which is very handy for pc's without floppy drive (its also a lot quicker than the old floppy method).

If your drive check out ok, do the above posted things to try and fix the mbr or filesystem. If all else fails a windows repair should fix the problem.
Tip on how to do a windows repair ontop of current setup

---
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.
 
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I downloaded the diagnostic tool from Maxtor and the confirmed the drive is bad. I installed a new 160gig Seagate drive and restored the system with the Compaq system restore disks. Is there any way to recover files on this drive or is it toast?
 
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You can purchase a prog called spinrite. Its a very good prog and repairs a lot of hard drives. However, yours may not be repairable.

When i run into this i use the diagnostic floppy or cd and use the program inside it that writes zeroes to the hard drive. If that works then i go ahead and try a format of the drive with win xp or fdisk and format fat32, just to see if the drive will format. Then i know its good and i can install it on a win xp system and format it NTFS.
There are other ways, thats just what i do.





Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
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Pardon me, i had a couple copies open and i posted in the wrong place. Wish there was an edit\delete post button here.
Anyway, just ignore my post please.
thanks


Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
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I do recommend spinrite but it depends on what shape the drive is in. I generally don't start out with Spinrite on anything that I know I am going to trash.

For data recovery from dying drives I use R-Stuido ( from R-TT Tools. You can download demo to see how much of your drive it can see. Demo limitation is that it will not copy files over 64K.
 
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You can try to hook up the bad drive as a slave, to see if you can see any of your files. 5 minutes - worth a try.
 
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Do I just plug it in and the BIOS will recognize it, or do I need some kind of installation software to install it?
 
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You only have to make sure its jumpered to slave mode, then add it to any empty ide connector and make sure you plug molex power cable to it, do the same as the existing hard drive that is already there.
When you boot up the first time let it go all the way and see if you can see the drive in windows.
If not, shut it off, reboot, but go into bios (usually press del button) and then go to the ide hard drive section and, depending on which bios you have, have it automatically "set" or recognize the hard drive. If not, and if you have the correct parameters of the hard drive that you got or can get from the hard drive mfgr, then you can set it to manual and plug the numbers in yourself. But its best to let the bios do it by using the "auto" method.
When you leave the bios click on exit and save instead of just exit.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
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