Wife's computer. She was using her mail reading program; wasn't happy
with how it was preforming; decided to re-boot. Did so; and than all
shit happened. Message came up "Disk Boot failure.: Insert system disk
and press enter" This I did with a installation disk that I have. It
went through all the motions of re-loading windows; however; when it
came to the part about where you want to load windows; a dialogue box
indicated that all drives had no disk inserted. In other words; there
was no place to re-install windows and it didn't give any other
options.
I than re-booted and tried the system recovery option; it didn't work.
I re-booted and tried safe mode; it didn't work. I am now here; my
last option!
Don't know what happend. I know shit happens. If the hard drive
crapped out, no big deal; there are more to be had. I do have a recent
backup from two days ago. Just wondering if there are other "Options"
that I don't know of.
Some more info!
Compaq Pressario computer running windows Xp. Two hard drives. One
with windows Xp and the other that I use for backing up.
I tried about a week ago to install Windows 7 on the second hard
drive. ( It is a Sata 1 terabite) windows did install; however; it
would not boot from the new hard drive; probably because I am using a
card for the Sata connection. I had no problem with that. That's what
happens when you cheap out. Now in all my wisdom; this past week; I
deleted the Windows 7 installation. Me thinks that this is the first
time that the computer has been rebooted since that deletion. Could it
be???
That is a very good guess on your part. Seems like, that this is the
first reboot since you deleted it.
Did you remember the "first rule of installs" ?
Disconnect anything you cannot afford to lose, before starting an install.
I have quite a bit of wear on my ribbon cable connectors, because of that
rule.
Part of the reasoning behind that rule, is you cannot guess what evil
awaits, inside any OS installer. As far as the installer is concerned,
any disk they can see, is part of their "domain". It doesn't matter
that you said "please install on disk#1". They'll find a way to
write where they please, on disk#2, disk#3 etc. I've even tried
the trick, of disabling disks in the BIOS screen, and some installers
will even re-enable all the disks when the installer is running, so
they can get at them! The only guaranteed defense, is to disconnect them,
since the BIOS controls appear to be insufficient to protect a disk.
(Back in SCSI drive days, we'd simply insert the write protect jumper,
and there'd be hardly any wear on the connectors... How I wish IDE
supported that option. I'd have switches on the computer front panel,
wired to those jumpers.)
I disconnect disks for Linux installs. I do that for Windows too.
Otherwise, the installer boot manager may attempt to out-guess
your intentions, and write to disks other than the install disk.
The installer thinks that every person doing an install, plans
to manage them from just one boot manager ( *their* boot manager ).
That means they can trash any other boot manager they might
happen to find.
Things I'd do:
1) Find something else to boot with, for some simple forensics.
I have WinXP on one hard drive, Win2K on a second hard drive,
and a small army of Linux LiveCDs. All of them can mount FAT32
or NTFS volumes. Using any of those approaches, I could have
verified the WinXP C: partition is still there and readable
(I could boot my Win2K disk and have a look). If all the files
seem to be present, the damage could be small.
2) The Recovery Console has things like "fixmbr", for fixing the
boot code in the master boot record (sector 0 of the disk).
The bootable partition, your WinXP C:, also has primary and
backup boot sectors in it. So there is a second bit of stuff
used for the boot sequence. It can be fixed via "fixboot" if
it got erased (I've managed to do that
).
3) Operating systems usually have script-like information, that
also affects boot operation. Things like boot.ini, contain
path information (ARC). If you move things around, use a
partition manager that reorders entries in the partition table
(64 bytes in sector 0), it can upset the veracity of the information
in places like boot.ini. Using the options in (1), you can
edit boot.ini and see what is in there. Linux can have similar
issues, and I've had to use the editor in Grub, to correct the
path to the boot volume. I have one Partition Management tool,
that likes to reorder entries in the partition table.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot.ini <-- WinXP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcdedit#Boot_Configuration_Data <-- Win7/Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyBCD (alternate to bcdedit)
So you had plenty of options, before reinstalling anything. Since
I'm an amateur, I've only dealt with a small number of "accidents".
I realize, when someone else is breathing down your neck, expecting
a quick repair, you'll reach for the first hammer you can find. If
at all possible, take your time, and you may be able to fix it.
Obviously, restoring from backup is also a "fix", but
1) You're not learning anything from the experience (except about
the importance of having backups).
2) The restore may fail, leaving you with nothing. You'd be surprised
how many places I've worked, where the backups they had were bad,
and someone looks like an idiot because they have stacks of
unusable backup media (Imagine you're the person explaining to
them what a cleaning tape is, for tape drives
The look on their
faces was priceless). I even worked in a place, where they wrote
their own backup program -- you guessed it, when they really needed
it, the restore capability didn't work.
The highest level of safety, might come from restoring to a
spare hard drive, leaving the drive with the problem for later,
when you have time to work on it. Your wife could use the spare
drive, with the restore loaded onto it, while you keep the original
drive for a quiet time when you can work on it. I have about three
drives I could grab right now, for emergencies such as this.
*******
You can install the Recovery Console on your WinXP disk, using
the example here. Apparently, that puts an extra entry in the
boot.ini, offering you the ability to select the Recovery Console
during boot. Since your bootup is currently ruined, I expect that
option would not be working (i.e. you might have installed it, only
to be deprived of being able to use it).
A second way of using the Recovery Console, is with a real WinXP CD,
but people with Dell/HP/whatever may not have that option. I can't do
everything I need to do from Linux, and things like fixboot/fixmbr,
need the Recovery Console. So there is some value in having a copy
of a Windows CD, even if you never plan on doing an install from it.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php?t19528.html
Come to think of it, someone mentioned a separate recovery console,
which they were offering to download from their web space. I found
a download of a similar name here. I'd be much happier about
offering this to you, if I knew where the original image came from.
I haven't tested this one, but it is sitting in my download collection
for later.
http://web.archive.org/*/http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/Tools/bootdiscs/xp_rec_con.zip
Inside that, I found an ISO9660 file (suitable for preparing a bootable
CD). The structure shows
I386
SYSTEM32
NTDLL.DLL
SMSS.EXE
(222 other files, many compressed, drivers and the like ?)
(A couple other small things)
So that appears to be an attempt to provide a Recovery Console, if you
can find a copy you trust. You'd prepare the bootable CD, using a
burning program like Nero, to convert the ISO9660 file into a bootable
CD. And then boot the CD, to be able to issue the Recovery Console
commands. Recovery Console is very limited, in terms of what you can
do, but some of the commands in there, aren't that easy to duplicate
(without a lot of advanced planning).
The above is not a recipe - at this point, I don't know what got broken.
"FixMBR" from a WinXP Recovery Console, would likely put back a WinXP
boot code for the MBR. That may be enough to get it going again. I don't
really know how the BCD stuff works, as I have neither Vista or Win7 here to
experiment with.
Sector 0 of your disk, contains a total of 512 bytes. 446 or so bytes,
are MBR boot code. 64 bytes represent the four primary partitions of the
disk (four 16 byte entries). The last two bytes are a signature, used
to indicate to other tools, that a valid MBR is presumably loaded in there.
If the signature was 0x0000 for example, some installers would feel more
comfortable overwriting the MBR. "FixMBR" overwrites the first 446 or so
bytes, without touching the 64 bytes of partition info. So FixMBR should
not damage the partition information, which must be preserved in order
for any tools to know where C: starts on the disk.
Good luck,
Paul
