Hard Drive Won't Boot XP 1

[moggy44]

I have a 200gb Maxtor HD which has been running OK since last November, a couple of days ago machine stopped booting at Bios black screen, just before the Windows XP blue progress bar.
Looking at drive in Dos or Win XP Installation Disk it says drive has no partition, so I presume the MBR has become corrupt.
If I boot to Dos prompt the drive and its contents are not displayed.
Got loads of data etc on drive is there a way I can recover data, or have I lost all.

Would be most grateful for any help.

Also very strange, not the same problem as above, I put in my spare HD set (I have a spare Master 40gb and a 60gb Slave) and this worked fine then the following day that too booted as far as the black screen after the blue progress bar, the mouse pointer was displayed then stopped, mouse still moved, N.B this is not the same drive as the 200gb Maxtor as above, I can see data in Dos on these drives so not as big a problem also this drive has a dual boot Win 98 and booted OK to Win 98.
Not my week.

Regards John.M

 

[bcastner]

For the 200 gb. drive:

. It is possible the drive has gone bad. Download the Maxtor MaxBlast utility and test the drive.

. It is important you have Service Pack 1 installed for 48-bit LBA support

. It is important you have this Hotfix applied:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=331958

 

[lamar225]

Your bios may not support large HD western digitals Data lifeguard tools has a nice bios mask that will support any size hd, you will have to repartition the drive with the WG software so your data will be lost but it will correct the problem

 

[linney]

DOS cannot read a NTFS partition without using third party software to mount the various partitions. These might help you more.

314503 - Computer Stops Responding with a Black Screen When You Start Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314503&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

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

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q305/5/95.asp

HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console for Windows XP (Q307654)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q307/6/54.asp