StarStrider

Thanks! That's so much simpler than I'd been thinking, which is a relief. =) And thanks; I try to make it as easy as possible for you guys. You're like virtual superheros or something.

Hey guys, you've been so fantastically helpful in the past I was hoping you might be able to help me with this, even though it's OT. A few days before Xmas the old desktop (Gateway 700XL) suffered what I assume was a motherboard failure. I was working on a photoshoot for a client (thankfully I operate from an external hard drive) when all input and output went dead--no keyboard or mouse response, no monitor signal, no sound, etc. I un/re-plugged everything and restarted everything numerous times, but I figured it was the motherboard and left it at that. It was an older machine we expected to die within the next year or two anyway. We got a new machine (I'd needed one for myself anyway, after my laptop died last summer from hard drive failure)--a Gateway FX6840 with i7, 8GB mem, 1 TB hard drive, ATI 5750 graphics, 64-bit win7 home premium. I hadnt planned on another Gateway, but I liked the reviews and it actually had a graphics card that wasn't total crap. (Hooray for finally being able to game again!) Let me know what other specifics you need on it; they don't have a handy features guide for it like they did with the older model. I had most of the documents and things from the old desktop backed up on my external, but because of the holidays I hadn't done a backup that week or the week before (ugh, I know, right?), so there are a few things on there I'd like to salvage if possible. If it's not recommended, we can make do without. So. I'm just wondering what the best way to go about it is? Since I can't get any input or output response from the old desktop, I don't see how a data transfer cable would work. The new desktop does have a swap-hard-drive bay, but I don't know if that would be a good idea? The old hard drive does have Win XP installed on it, so would I have an issue starting the new computer (Win 7 Home premium)? I'm also not sure about compatibility? The old was 32-bit and this new one is a 64-bit, as well. Essentially, I've never actually installed a new hard drive before let alone an older one with data on it already... Or is this a job for a pro? (And if you called me an idiot I wouldn't be terribly offended.) ~StarStrider

I don't see a recovery tool, but I'll look through some support documents just in case it's a hidden option sort of thing. Hopefully I'll be able to round up some funds. I've known some components of the laptop have been failing, and I think I'd be pretty much replacing the whole thing just to make sure all the replaced/upgraded things were compatible. It'd be kind of a hassle anyway, because I didn't receive any of the driver discs.

Sorry--typo. It's "Palimpsest Disk Utility" but you probably would have figured that out. It also has an option to have the disk run a self-test, if that would be of interest.

It does have "Palimpest Disk Utility" and it does say "Disk has many bad sectors" (yellow rating) and advises to backup all data and replace it. (251 bad sectors; in the warning zone under Current Pending Sector Count attribute.) It also lists a whole slew of "0.0 KB Unrecognized Hard Disk"s and several "0.0 KB Unrecognized Solid-State Disk"s which I'm guessing shouldn't be the case. I think I've gotten everything off of it that I need to. The only files left on that aren't backed up are ones that don't show up in their respective folder. Any tricks to this or are they simply gone?

No difference with the re-burned Bart PE disc. Same issues with trying to repair the XP installation--drive is either too full, damaged, not formatted, or incompatible, and must be reformatted to continue. I understand that MemTest needs to run for a long time for best results? If so, I'll wait until later this afternoon and start it to leave running overnight, I think. I remember running it on the desktop I've been using because I was having issues with it--ironically enough, I was told this desktop's drive would fail, and that was like a year ago or something. Just my luck that the laptop would go first. XD And...I probably should have asked first, but I went ahead and booted it with Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/) just to see if it would be able to read any data from the disk, and it actually did (I backed up some of my newly purchased music). The main "C" partition was listed right off the bat, listed as being 97.3 GB I think it was, and quite a bit of the data was still readable. Granted the things that I'd wanted to backup were ghost folders (they were listed in the explorer, and were listed to contain the right amount of files, but when opened they didn't contain anything), but the Windows folder was seemingly intact. I didn't do anything but look through it, of course. I just thought it was really odd that XP Bootable CD and the Bart PE CD could barely register the C drive as existing and Knoppix is able to browse it? Anyway.

When it happened several years ago it was with the same laptop, but it was a pretty simple fix of going into the recovery console, running chkdsk /r then fixboot. Which is why those were the first things I tried when it happened again recently, but not only did they not do anything, but after doing those it seemed to get worse as it wouldn't get as far into the boot before saying hal.dll boot file was missing. (I also tried bootcfg /scan and /rebuild but nothing would work at all because the initial scan would fail.) I did try a repair installation, but it wouldn't offer an installation of windows to repair, and when I did force it to show me the list of drives, highlighting the C drive only prompted it to tell me that the file system was unknown or too corrupted and needed to be reformatted. I didn't want to do that since I wasn't sure it was a lost cause at that point, plus I wasn't sure reformatting would actually fix the problem. It also baffled me that in the recovery console I generally get two options to choose from: 1. C:/windows and 2: D:/MiniNT, and all I've been able to get after that first time is 1: D:/MiniNT I'll try things again, just to be thorough, though, plus the new disc and MemTest.

Here's the log: == Mon Sep 20 13:26:44 2010 Command line: TestDisk TestDisk 6.11.3, Data Recovery Utility, May 2009 Christophe GRENIER <grenier@cgsecurity.org> http://www.cgsecurity.org OS: Windows XP Compiler: GCC 4.3, Cygwin 1005.25 - May 6 2009 20:35:43 ext2fs lib: 1.41.4, ntfs lib: 10:0:0, reiserfs lib: 0.3.1-rc8, ewf lib: 20080501 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sda)=1027416576 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(/dev/sdb)=100030242816 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive0)=1027416576 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\PhysicalDrive1)=100030242816 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\C:)=92674229760 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\D:)=1027384320 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\E:)=7345142784 disk_get_size_win32 IOCTL_DISK_GET_LENGTH_INFO(\\.\X:)=163481600 file_pread(4,1,buffer,2006927(1990/15/63)) lseek err Invalid argument file_pread(5,1,buffer,195382529(12161/254/63)) lseek err Invalid argument Hard disk list Disk /dev/sda - 1027 MB / 979 MiB - CHS 1990 16 63, sector size=512 - SanDisk U3 Cruzer Micro Disk /dev/sdb - 100 GB / 93 GiB - CHS 12161 255 63, sector size=512 - HTS541010G9AT00 Drive X: - 163 MB / 155 MiB - CHS 38 64 32, sector size=2048 - QSI DVD+-RW SDW-082 Partition table type (auto): Intel Disk /dev/sdb - 100 GB / 93 GiB - HTS541010G9AT00 Partition table type: Intel file_pread(5,1,buffer,195382529(12161/254/63)) lseek err Invalid argument Analyse Disk /dev/sdb - 100 GB / 93 GiB - CHS 12161 255 63 Geometry from i386 MBR: head=255 sector=63 FAT32 at 0/1/1 Info: size boot_sector 14345976, partition 14345982 FAT1 : 34-14016 FAT2 : 14017-27999 start_rootdir : 28000 root cluster : 2 Data : 28000-14345975 sectors : 14345976 cluster_size : 8 no_of_cluster : 1789747 (2 - 1789748) fat_length 13983 calculated 13983 set_FAT_info: name from BS used NTFS at 893/0/1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=4 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=8 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=16 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=32 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=64 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=128 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=240 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=4 Current partition structure: 1 P FAT32 0 1 1 892 254 63 14345982 2 * HPFS - NTFS 893 0 1 12159 254 63 181004355 Ask the user for vista mode Allow partial last cylinder : No search_vista_part: 0 search_part() Disk /dev/sdb - 100 GB / 93 GiB - CHS 12161 255 63 FAT32 at 0/1/1 FAT1 : 34-14016 FAT2 : 14017-27999 start_rootdir : 28000 root cluster : 2 Data : 28000-14345975 sectors : 14345976 cluster_size : 8 no_of_cluster : 1789747 (2 - 1789748) fat_length 13983 calculated 13983 set_FAT_info: name from BS used FAT32 at 0/1/1 FAT32 0 1 1 892 254 57 14345976 FAT32, 7345 MB / 7004 MiB NTFS at 893/0/1 filesystem size 181004355 sectors_per_cluster 8 mft_lcn 786432 mftmirr_lcn 5901879 clusters_per_mft_record -10 clusters_per_index_record 1 HPFS - NTFS 893 0 1 12159 254 63 181004355 NTFS, 92 GB / 86 GiB get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=4 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=8 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=16 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=32 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=64 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=128 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=240 nbr=1 get_geometry_from_list_part_aux head=255 nbr=4 Results * FAT32 0 1 1 892 254 63 14345982 FAT32, 7345 MB / 7004 MiB P HPFS - NTFS 893 0 1 12159 254 63 181004355 NTFS, 92 GB / 86 GiB interface_write() 1 * FAT32 0 1 1 892 254 63 14345982 2 P HPFS - NTFS 893 0 1 12159 254 63 181004355 simulate write! write_mbr_i386: starting... write_all_log_i386: starting... No extended partition TestDisk exited normally.

(Took a while to get A43 to cooperate for me to open the testdisk.) It actually lists my flashdrive as /dev/sda. But it appears the hard drive is listed as /dev/sdb: "Disk /dev/sdb -- 100 GB / 93 GiB -- HTS541010G9AT00" Is it all right to proceed by highlighting /dev/sdb?

Gateway 8510GZ Notebook Serial # T225701007262 http://support.gateway.com/support/srt/doc...n=T225701007262 If that helps (and if it shows up for you) The hard drive is HTS541010G9AT00 Let me know what else you need.

That would be nice. It should be 100 GB I believe. And, I have no idea if it's SATA or RAID...that's probably something I should have known though.

I have a feeling it's a lost cause...? I right-clicked on the C drive, pulled up the properties tab, and first noticed that the little pie chart diagram was solid blue (used space) but the breakdown was like this: Used space: 0 bytes of 0 bytes Free space: 0 bytes of 0 bytes Capacity: 0 bytes of 0 bytes I went to the Tools tab anyway and checked the options for checking the drive for errors, clicked Start, the little status bar would fill up in about a second, then it would disappear and not say anything like how it's supposed to. Also, on the Hardware tab, it apparently doesn't recognize the drive or something. It tells me the model type/number, but then it says "unknown' for everything and that it's located at Location 0 (0), and no information about its driver is available or known.

So...Um, yikes? There's no + next to the C drive like there should be, and when I select the C drive and click OK it tells me there's a RunScanner error that "Target is not Windows 2000 or later."

Just want to double check something, as it's not proceeding quite as your instructions indicated. In my OTLPE folder I have a "Start.cmd" rather than .bat. When I double click on that it brings up a (rather slow responding) dialogue asking me to choose Windows Directory. Is this asking me for the stable copy on the Bart PE cd or the copy that needs to be scanned? So far everything I tried either comes back with an error saying it couldn't find a windows installation or that it wasn't a 2000 or later version. When I select the BartPE it tells me that's the current installation. Am I just supposed to double-click OTLPE.exe or is something awry?

Erm. Never mind. It popped up when I went to try a third reboot. How annoying. XD I will start the last bit of your instructions now and reply when it's done with the logs. Sorry for the extra strange round-about.

Sorry for the delayed response. My (immediate email) subscription didn't notify me of your response... Just tried. Twice. A43 still won't show. =/

Thanks Elise, I did encounter some problems. I had to use the sp3 slipstream xp cd rather than my original xp cd because when I tried to build the iso file with PE Builder it came up with an error saying, " "D:\i386\ntdll.dll" is version 5.1.2600.0 should be 5.1.2600.1045 or higher. Must use XP Service Pack 1 or Server 2003 version of Windows!" Using the Service Pack 3 slipstream disc didn't cause any problems with PE Builder, though. (It did display a warning in the log that "Building from an OEM version of Windows can mean trouble..."--my copies of Windows are OEM, though. Everything else proceeded normally until I tried to run the A43 File Management Utility in Bart PE. It simply wouldn't show up. I let it sit for a long while thinking maybe it was just taking a long time to load, but it wouldn't come up. When I would click on it from the Go menu, the loading hourglass cursor would display, but then nothing would happen. I did try opening the task manager from the Go menu, which listed a43.exe among the processes, but again, not under running applications or anything. I also tried the Bart PE's "Run..." to start a43.exe that way, and it would say that "a43.exe could not be found."

Hey guys...I was told to start a new thread here. My first thread about this problem is here, and I'll be copying/pasting the background info from that if it's all right. Yardbird told me to go through through the cleaning instructions post and then post here. I only posted in the PC help forum because since I CANNOT BOOT, I don't see how I can do anything. I couldn't do any of the steps from the cleaning instruction post. The only things I CAN do when I turn on the laptop are to 1) go into the Bios menu or 2) go into the boot menu (prompts boot to CD, boot to hard drive, or boot to LAN). CD only takes me to the blue menu screen that takes me either into XP setup or the recovery console. If I try to get further into the boot (usually where you have the option to get into safe mode, etc) I just get the black screen error that says hal.dll boot file is missing. Thanks in advance, StarStrider

Thanks for the replies... Could not complete the advice from noknojon. I'm posting to this forum from a different computer as my laptop won't boot into windows at all (not even safe mode). I've been running chkdsk /r and so forth from the recovery console (from a bootable cd). All that comes up when I try to boot normally, with last known good config, or into a safe mode is that hal.dll boot file is missing or corrupt.

I have a Gateway 2004/5 laptop running WinXP sp3. It has Norton anti-virus 2010, and I do have MalwareBytes on it, but I'm sure it was out of date as I hadn't used the laptop in several months. Either way, I hadn't fun Mbam for a while (yeah, I know...). Right now I'm using the family desktop, as I can't do anything other than run the laptop from a CD boot. Everything started yesterday afternoon with a kernel stack inpage error [ 0x00000077; 0xC000000E, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000, 0x02CB200 ]. When I restarted, it came to the unmountable boot volume blue screen. I'd encountered that several years ago, so I put in an XP sp3 slipstream disk (I do own my version legally, though; I'd had to make a slipstream disc to install recovery console startup option on the desktop last winter). I brought up the recovery console and started with chkdsk /r. That first time it listed my C:/MiniNT as the (only) partition option. After that finished, I restarted and the same unmountable boot volume error came up, but when I went into the recovery console again it wouldn't list the C:/ drive and only gave me my D:/MiniNT option (my D drive is a bare system restore partition that was done when I'd purchased the laptop). I tried fixboot as well as chkdsk /r a few more times (occurring over several restarts and into recovery console again). I then tried bootcfg /scan which stopped with an error saying the scan had failed and told me it might be too corrupt. Thus, bootcfg /rebuild also will not work. With that I tried to repair the XP install with the slipstream disc (the non-destructive repair install), but it would not give me the option to repair the installation and told me C:/'s file system was either unknown or too corrupt to read and wanted me to reformat. I canceled out, just in case there's still a way to save it. Now when I restart instead of the unmountable boot volume error, I just get a black screen saying that hal.dll boot fill is missing. Is there anything I can do? Should I just continue with chkdsk /r until it doesn't find things to fix (it does every time I run it)? I do have the majority of my files backed up, so I'd mainly be loosing what music/photo/novel files I hadn't yet backed up this month as well as all my software installations. So, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but, it'd still be a setback. The other thing, do you think this was caused by malware/virus? My laptop has been slowly dying. The USB ports have started not working--the computer either doesn't recognize them at all, blames devices for not starting, or tells me that they're not 2.0 ports (which they are). (Which is why I haven't been able to back things up consistently.) The troubleshooting I've done on that leads me to believe the hardware is starting to go, so from that angle I suppose this could be just the hard drive finally giving up? Thanks in advance. =/ And let me know if there's any other info you need. StarStrider

No problem. And really, considering how much money I probably would have had to spend to figure this out, you've been a *ton* of help. Not right now, but if anything crops up, you'll be the first to know.

Gotcha. Already been browsing through options on newegg.com; should be able to make the purchase soon. Thanks again.

I ran the extended test and no problems showed in the results...?

*sigh* Makes sense. Thanks for all your help! I really, really appreciate it.

Happy new year Sorry for the delay. Chkdsk did come up with error(s), still not having any effect, though. My hard drive comes up as "WDC WD1200BB-53CAA1" in Device Manager property window, with manufacture unlisted ("standard disk drives"). It's 111GB capacity. I have a feeling that's not exactly the info you want?