Computer won't boot

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haffey

Gawd
Joined
Oct 6, 2008
Messages
539
I *may* have messed up my boot drive (we'll find out once I can get past this), but to check, I decided to plug it into another computer. This computer's original drive (which contains a XP installation) is SATA, and so is my boot drive, which I connected to see if I still have my files.

The problem is, the computer won't boot into XP. It gives me the Last Known Good Configuration page and all of the options don't go past the XP "loading bar" screen. That screen appears for a split second and then the computer restarts. I've tried changing the boot order, completely disabling my drive from the boot order, etc. I've even decided to keep my hard drive unplugged until the computer boots, after which I plugged in the SATA cable on the long shot that it might appear in Disk Management. No dice.

What am I doing wrong? This is such a simple task that just DOESN'T WORK. I am at wit's end and I'm extremely frustrated because I know after this, I will most likely not even be able to recover my data anyway...
 
Update: Booted off a Ubuntu Live CD. It recognized the Vista drive in Device Manager and GParted (their partition program) but I still don't know how I can recover the data. It appears to be "Unallocated"...shit.
 
haffey said:
I *may* have messed up my boot drive (we'll find out once I can get past this), but to check, I decided to plug it into another computer. This computer's original drive (which contains a XP installation) is SATA, and so is my boot drive, which I connected to see if I still have my files.

The problem is, the computer won't boot into XP. It gives me the Last Known Good Configuration page and all of the options don't go past the XP "loading bar" screen. That screen appears for a split second and then the computer restarts. I've tried changing the boot order, completely disabling my drive from the boot order, etc. I've even decided to keep my hard drive unplugged until the computer boots, after which I plugged in the SATA cable on the long shot that it might appear in Disk Management. No dice.

What am I doing wrong? This is such a simple task that just DOESN'T WORK. I am at wit's end and I'm extremely frustrated because I know after this, I will most likely not even be able to recover my data anyway...
Click to expand...

If you get the loading screen I don't think it's a MBR issue. It sounds like a borked Win XP install. Take your Windows XP disc and do a install recovery it will reinstall on top of your current Windows XP installation without removing anything. Be careful that you DON'T reformat and just install over top of your current installation.
 
kac77 said:
If you get the loading screen I don't think it's a MBR issue. It sounds like a borked Win XP install. Take your Windows XP disc and do a install recovery it will reinstall on top of your current Windows XP installation without removing anything. Be careful that you DON'T reformat and just install over top of your current installation.
Click to expand...
Alright, I'll try that. But how can the XP install be messed up if it works just fine with just its own drive? (Do you know what I'm saying? The machine will boot up if just its own HDD with XP is connected, but it will go to the Last Known Configuration screen if the XP HD and the drive I want to recover data from are both connected at the same time.)
 
haffey said:
Alright, I'll try that. But how can the XP install be messed up if it works just fine with just its own drive? (Do you know what I'm saying? The machine will boot up if just its own HDD with XP is connected, but it will go to the Last Known Configuration screen if the XP HD and the drive I want to recover data from are both connected at the same time.)
Click to expand...
Yes I understand what you are saying. You don't need the recovery console, you need to reinstall Windows ontop of your current configuration. There's two options usually. One will put you into the recovery console. The second option past the second or two of the recovery console option is to repair the Windows installation. That is what you need.
 
Okay thanks, it's repairing the XP install now. Let's see what happens...
 
kac77 said:
Crap I forgot to tell you. Leave that second drive connected while you do it.
Click to expand...
Yeah 10 minutes into the process I just thought of that. Well it seems as though my XP drive is messed up as well now. I don't even know how it could have happened.
 
kac77 said:
explain messed up...
Click to expand...
It looks as if it's booting into XP, but it just shows the background and the cursor. I can move around the cursor but I can't really do anything else. I left it repairing overnight, so maybe it automatically chose an option while I was away?
 
Okay, I reinstalled XP totally (reformatted the drive and installed on that clean partition), but when the disk I want to recover is plugged in, the computer refuses to boot. I'm stuck on a loop of the "Last Known Configuration" screen. I've tried all of the options and it starts up fine. When the hard drive I want to get data from is removed, the system boots up fine. What's going on? And what's the best bootable data recovery software?
 
haffey said:
Okay, I reinstalled XP totally (reformatted the drive and installed on that clean partition), but when the disk I want to recover is plugged in, the computer refuses to boot. I'm stuck on a loop of the "Last Known Configuration" screen. I've tried all of the options and it starts up fine. When the hard drive I want to get data from is removed, the system boots up fine. What's going on? And what's the best bootable data recovery software?
Click to expand...

I've seen this once before. Is the second hard drive an OEM / value drive by any chance? Depending on the quality of southbridge/hard drive I've seen hard drives that are just not recognized unless they are in RAID or some other configuration.
 
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