HDD FAILURE

[sunnybeerman]

Hi, I have 2 machines running win2k. 1 have 20gig hdd in my original machine - the other 40. On the 40 gig unit, someone moved all files from WINNT to windows folder hence no program can find anything. I moved the 40gig HDD to the 20gig machine as a secondary slave. In win explorer i accessed the drive and moved the system files back to WINNT. Since then the 40gig drive will not boot in either machine. BIOS detects it as ARES_C64K but this is flashing in the BIOS screen. On boot, even as a secondary slave i get "HDD Failure" on both machines. In windows the HDD is not recognised at all. I have never had a flashing BIOS detection of a hard drive and i think that "ARES C64K" is not correct. PLEASE HELP!!!!! Andrew.

 

[wolluf]

Is this the whole story? Its bit odd (someone moved all files from WINNT to windows folder -who, why, how - 2k wouldn't even boot if this happened, unless that someone also changed the boot.ini to point to windows instead of winnt). Then you moved them back - but whatever sort of mess you've been making of your window's files it shouldn't affect the ability of the bios to detect the hard drive - so I was wondering if there's something you've missed out.

 

[sunnybeerman]

Hi thanks for replying. I built a machine a couple of weeks back (which is what i do) and this person has children who use the machine a lot. I had installed win2k and allt he drivers and various other progs which were required for all the peripherals. Everything was in order. He foned me a week later to say the system was rebooting on its own. a further week later he foned and said that the system crashed and that nothing would work. He brought the unit to me and after investigation i saw that not a single icon on the desktop would work (*error msg this folder has been removed or renamed or moved) - then going into windows explorer i could get the directory files in the left hand colomn but nothing at all in the right hand larger window. In directory C: i saw that the folder WINNT was missing. In Program files i found a folder named "win nt" with nothing in it. The Windows folder in C: directory contained all the files and folders that should be in WINNT as far as i understand. (aapart from temp folder) Furthermore i noticed that the screws from the HDD were missing and i suspect that the HDD had been taken out, maybe because someone said that they would have a look at the automatic reboot saga. There is no way that the computer would make a folder in program files called "win nt" I copied files from the windows folder in c: to a new folder which i created called WINNT since thisa was missing. As i was in windows, obviously all the system files were in use and would not copy. I then put that HDD into my machine (also running win2k) as a secondary slave and copied all system files in explorer from windows to WINNT. Since then the HDD will not boot in either machine coming up as HDD failure. But in BIOS rather than reading Maxtor 410041 MB i get a flashing signal reading Maxtor "ARES C64K". not sure what this means. hope this will help u to understand my dsilemma a little more. Kind regards.. Andrew

 

[wolluf]

Don't think I can be much help here. I still can't understand how you copying files from windows to winnt could cause a hard drive failure (unless drive is faulty/tampered with as you suspect & just happened to die after you did this).

I also don't understand how there was a windows not a winnt folder on the machine (I'm assuming you set it up with the winnt default) - was it definitely still using win2k when you got it back (they hadn't installed 98 or XP on it?) & how it booted if still 2k.

Have you downloaded Maxtor's diagnostic utility (powermax) -

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm?

Possibility of a virus springs to mind also - but you need to see if you can access the disk at all first.

 

[sunnybeerman]

Hi thankjs for reply. Yes I had defaulted during setup to WINNT. Thanks for ur time wolluf, but i have been to the manufacturer who have checked it over and confirmed it dead. Damn nuisance really since i have to start from scratch again, but hey it just one of those things i guess... cheers, Andrew