Trying to recover from 'Invalid System Disk' failure.

[Guest_imported]

I have an ASUS A7V333 system board with a 40 gig hard drive. Recently I inadvertently messed up my Master Boot Record using Norton Antivirus, after which when I booted I got the dreaded 'Invalid System Disk' message.

After much experimenting (probably not a good idea) and running of FDISK, option 4 to check on my hard disk status and running Norton Disk Doctor, I was able to reload Windows 98 and access the hard drive.

In so doing all my directories start with DIR and have unreadable data.

Currently when I check the hard drive using FDISK, option 4, I show 2 partitions (I used to have one; the first one is Status A, Type PRI DOS, 5742 mbytes, SYSTEM is FAT32, usage 15%.

The second partition is Status - nothing, Type NON-DOS, mbytes 38162, System - nothing, usage 100%.

When I check my 'C' drive it is listed as around 6 gig. I would like to go back to one partition for the drive. I'm currently running a virus check on the system (booting up with the Norton System Works CD) but I don't think there is a 'D' drive listed.

What I need to know is would Partition Magic help me get back to one partition and is there anyway to recover the data which now is unusable?

Or should I just give up on saving the data that was on the drive and reformat and start over?

Thanks,

rmelone

 

[edfair]

fdisk and remove anything that fdisk can find, then start over.
You'll be happier in the long run, and you'll have a system sooner. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[wolluf]

I'd agree with Ed on this.
However, if any data very important, you could try to recover it before you start over (probably be difficult -

http://home.arcor.de/christian_grau/rescue/

has had a good press from what I've seen - haven't had to try it myself yet!)

 

[dinosnake]

This is what you do:

Start up in DOS mode - either from the hard drive or from a bootable floppy. You will need a bootable floppy to do this anyway.

This technique is for Windows 95 / 98 / 98SE / ME. If you have others different techniques apply.

Since you said you have Norton, do you have Norton Utilities? It will be needed to complete the following steps. If you do not have it let me know and I will send you the two programs you need from it - Norton DiskEdit and Norton DiskDoctor. Norton DiskDoctor must be on the floppy disk.

Run Norton DiskEdit. Hit <Alt> to get the Menus to light up and then scroll to the Tools menu, hit the down arrow key and scroll to Configuration and hit <Enter>. Uncheck Read Only by hitting the Spacebar and hit <Enter>. Now DiskEdit will write to the drive - do things VERY CAREFULLY now.

Hit <Alt> then hit <Enter> to select Drive. Scroll down to in the left pane to the hard drive then hit <Tab>. Hit the Spacebar to select Physical Disk then hit <Enter>. You will be presented with a hex dump of the drive, starting from Cyl 0, Side 0, Sector 1. IF YOU ARE NOT THERE hit the <Page Up> key until you are.

Hit <CTRL> and <B> at the same time to go into Mark mode. Hit the <Page Down> key once. The information on the window should scroll, with the information above the current cursor position highlighted in black. If this does not happen hit <Page Up> to go back to the top of the readout and then hit <Atl>, <E>, <M> to reenter Mark mode and try again.

Once in Mark mode hit <Page Down> until the last entry of Cyl 0, Side 0, Sector 63 has been highlighted in black. DO NOT GO TO CYL 0, SIDE 1, SECTOR 1. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Make sure the black highlight does not go past the last entry of Cyl 0, Side 0, Sector 63.

Hit <Alt>, <E>, <F> to select Fill mode. Select 00 and hit <Enter>. Select Yes to the question and hit <Enter>. The area you selected will now be filled with zeroes.

Exit the program by hitting <Esc> and then answering Yes by hitting <Enter>. Reboot the computer.

Once rebooted start Norton DiskDoctor and run it on the drive. Norton DiskDoctor will repair the MBR and, more importantly, physically search the drive for partitions to rebuild the partition information. Answer Yes to questions as to rebuild the tables. Once compeleted reboot. Check drive. If directories still damaged I can tell you how to hex edit the directory structure back to normal - but it isn't pretty, nor easy. So hope your directory trees are sound.



Your mileage may vary...

 

[Wato]

Hi Guys I need some help to fix my computer.
I am running windows 98.
When I bootup it ghoes straight to scandisk and starts to go into it but the only way I can get away from it is to press enter 3 times and then it goes. The computer says I have some bad sectors and tries to do a full scan.
Can anybody help me with some software to fix the problem plesase

Send it to bibiew@bigpond.com.au

 

[wolluf]

You need to let scandisk complete a full surface scan so it can mark all bad sectors. System should then boot normally, unless vital system files were on bad sectors.

You might want to consider getting a new drive - bad sectors often mean drive getting ready to fail.

Sometime, if you do a low-level disk format (with utility from manufacturers website), it 'cures' bad sectors (obviously this would mean a backup & reinstall) - but personally I'd get a new drive ASAP & backup from existing one immediately in case its about to die.