Booting Issues

[rsnovak]

I just picked up this PC from a customer

HP
pentium 4 1.8ghz proc
512 ddr ram
160gb HD PATA Western digital
OS Win XP sp2

Anyways the pc was getting an inaccessible boot device blue screen. So I put in the win xp cd and tried to do a repair. So when the disk ran through all the setup files and I got to my options I chose setup win xp, thinking that I would get the repair choice after it found the os vers. It did not, it continued to check the drive loaded some new file then rebooted. After that when I boot it up, it sits at a blinking cursor. The drive is kind of loud so I pulled it out and put as a slave in my test machine. I ran a diagnostics test on it and it passed. So then I booted with an win 2000 disk and went to the recovery console and ran the fxboot. That didn't work, then I tried the fixmbr - nothing! So I replaced the system boot files( boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.sys with good ones. Still nothing!

I did put that drive in my machine several times and some time it would be recognized and other times it would not be. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[Kodiak]

When you had it in as slave to your other machine was you able to access the files freely on the drive?

[Ferrit]

Drive is dieing thats pretty easy to see.I would say back up all data to another drive immediately.
Drive tests although a good indicator are not an exact science

[rsnovak]

When you had it in as slave to your other machine was you able to access the files freely on the drive?

When I can access the drive as a slave its hit and miss when trying to access the files.

I tried to ghost the bad drive but it would shut down my machine like it was over heating. So I was going to back it up through the windows system backup.
Load the new os then pull over the backup.

I figured it was the drive. I have ordered 2 160gb drives and setup the slave as the backup. I just hope I can get the info off the failing drive! What would be the best way to do this?

[Ferrit]

My last ditch effort for getting data off the drive is using the freezer.
Put the drive inside a sealed plastic sandwich bag and freeze it overnight in the freezer.
Yes I said overnight in the freezer. Have a computer all setup with another drive to copy or ghost to.
Pull the drive out of the freezer and immediately connect it to the pc and begin the copy. You usually don't have a lot of time or number of tries,
so be sure everything is setup beforehand. You can also leave the failing drive inside a icebag to give you some extra time

[markduren2458]

another thing you might try...if you are able to get to the xp recovery console or even use your 2000 boot disk and run chkdsk /r this might work. what it suppose to do is recover files and move them around bad sectors if necessary. notice I said 'suppose to' if this doesnt work or the freezer trick does not work, well time for a new drive or spend a lot of $$$ at a data recovery service