Window 7 machine suddenly no OS?

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devil_trigger

Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
726
Ok, yesterday when I came home from work and looked at my computer it had a screen saying to restart it out of nowhere so I did and then upon restart it said missing operating system. At first I was like ok whatever ill reinstall it and run my backup files but when I tried to do that it keeps saying I cant install on either of my disks. So then I popped in my old XP disk and that went threw the setup process and I formatted the disk(the 500GB one, my raptor wont show up anymore) and went thru the install and it succeeded and got me to the desktop but the actual windows loading screen took like 2 minutes. So then I tried to restart again and now its saying "windows could not start because of disk hardware config problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk."

I tried putting in the windows 7 disk after formatting with XP and it still doesnt let me install on either drive, it gives me an error for both. Does this sound like a settings problem, an OS problem, or are my HDDs dead or something messed up with my Mobo? I find it hard to believe that 2 different drives died at the same time.

Any help or suggestions would be really great.
 
Sounds like possibly a failing sata controller or drive.

Download UBCD and run some disk tools.
 
Can I download that from a different computer and put it on a disk and run it from setup or something? Since my computer wont get past installation anymore.
 
devil_trigger said:
I tried putting in the windows 7 disk after formatting with XP
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I'm not sure why people are suddenly starting to do this, but if you want to install Windows 7, start with a blank, unformatted disk. There's no reason to start an OS install with the drive already formatted, hasn't been in a long long time, especially one formatted in a much older OS. Get some kind of utility (plenty of free ones) to blank out the drive completely, and it's MBR. I'm sure you can get one from the drive manufacturer's website.
devil_trigger said:
Can I download that from a different computer and put it on a disk and run it from setup or something? Since my computer wont get past installation anymore.
Click to expand...
Yes, but you can also get the diag tool from your drive manufacturer's website, as well.
 
Ok ok I see now, I downloaded a utility from WD for my raptor and as soon as I opened it windows opened its Image burning app and that worked fine. But I cant get the ISO to burn at all for the app from samsungs site.
 
Don't use the Windows app....use whatever burning app you have installed. If you don't have one, I'm a big fan of CDBurnerXP. It's free and full-featured.
 
Well so far I've run the WD app for the raptor and it failed the quick test for a read error or something so then I did the extended scan like it said to but it scanned for like 20 mins and said it was supposed to be done and stayed like that for another 20 mins with the drive just clicking so I just restarted. Its now going thru the extended scan again and see if it does anything different, still havent even had time to scan the samsung drive. Then after that ill try changing the SATA ports on the mobo and see what I come up with. I'll post back with what I come up with when I can. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

EDIT: Well I burned the ISO for the samsung utility with Nero 9 and its not working. So then I tried starting UBCD and its saying I need Admin privileges, even though the account is an admin(this is on windows 7 machine as well). Ugh I'm not having any luck...
 
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Given your results of the Raptor's test, I'd get my data off it quickly, and start an RMA process.
 
Well the raptor has already been reformatted and i keep all my stuff backed up weekly so I'm not losing any data from this, just being without my computer. Anyway, the raptor is almost 3 years old so I dont think I can RMA it or anything. I just wish I had another drive laying around to throw in there. Like I said I cant get the Samsung app to run to test my second internal drive and I cant get UBCD to do anything cuz W7 wont let me lol.

EDIT: Ok well I unplugged the raptor and changed SATA ports for my samsung drive and installed XP on the samsung drive with no problem this time and even the loading screen was fast like it used to be. I'm posting this edit from my computer, not the lappy. So now I'm going to diagnose this HDD just to be safe and try to find something to completely wipe it and then try to reinstall windows 7.
 
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Alright well I'm back on windows 7 now with no problem after disconnecting and removing the Raptor. For some reason having it still plugged in wasnt letting me install Windows 7 at all not even on a different HDD. Thanks for all the help guys.
 
If it was the primary, or first, drive, Windows 7 still was trying to write the boot sector to it.
 
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