[JustLiam]

Hi All,
Ive been searching forums for days, time to post my issue. Few nights ago I booted my laptop (IBM T43) and received something close to "Disk Read error" before even hitting the windows or any black option screen. I receipted my hard drive, checked the bios and set to default settings and tried again. Same error. After tons of forum ideas i had an old Bart PE cd from a friend (so utilities were limited) and booted from cd. When doing this i ran the beginning of a program within bart pe called a43 managmenent utility. But I say ran the beginning because I did not click next or attempt to run anything within. I got to a screen that when pointing to my choices of drives (ie. x:bartpe, B:(forgot name but not even sure why that drive was listed), and my c: drive. When I chose to "pick the file to use" from the c drive, i chose nothing but was able to verify all my files were visible on my hard drive... Withn Bart I was able to pull up a cmd prompt. I ran chkdsk /r from there and right off the bat I was getting "unreadable something ( I apologiz but its been days and I dont want to give false info), it was not clusters though. Im sure of that. I got a bunch of those and it showed the unreadable "spots". Ie. 1052, 1053, 1054, 1060, 1061, etc.. after awhile it moved onto the rest of chkdsk. I think there were some damaged clusters but it claimed it repaired them all. Anyway, when I rebooted, i now dont get the disk read error, I now get some weird syntax about a paragrapgh long that doesnt even list errors its just weird syntax. I can get it if you need it but i promise it is not errors or unreadable msgs.. [bleep] there not even msgs.
Now I should have recovery console on the machine from when I used combox fix n installed it months ago. Maybe I do, I dont know because hitting f8 doesnt take me anywhere and when booting i dont get to the point of any options, such as hitting "R" to enter recovery console. I wanted to run last known good config to see if it would work. So question 1 would be, is there a way to access the advanced menu through a cmd prompt?
Anyway, i then popped in my win xp pro sp 2 cd. My computers been updated to sp3 since then obviously but whatever. I booted with that n first hit the letter R to run recovery console. It took me straight to a cmd prompt c:\windows. I was expecting more of a gui faced option (never used before) so I had to research commands. I ran fixmbr and fixboot. None of those resolved the problem.
My next step was to boot to the xp cd again but now choose install, accept terms, then choose to "r" repair the current installation. I finally thought I was getting somewhere unti it checks for available space or something on C: and boom... it just freezes at 75%! Maybe freezes isnt the best word, but I left for an hour and came back still at 75%. I tried an external USB CDROM and ran it on there but still not gaining percentages after 75%.
And thats it... Sorry for the long post but I wanted to explain the details. I guess if there is no fix we can come up with then my suggestions would be, is there a way to access (or turn on) the advanced boot menu (for safemode and last known good) through either a cmd prompt? Im lost and really just want to boot to my pc... Oh when i ran also in recoverconsole the cmd I think bootcfg /list? The one that lists your boot list. It came up with /fast detect and / something-optin (again sorry for lack of memory. Plz all, any suggestions?
Thank you so much,
Liam

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This sounds like your hard drive is developing bad clusters and is failing fast. More than likely you have a bad cluster in the area of the drive where windows puts the MBR so it is damaged. If the system cannot hardly read the information sector on the drive it does not know what to do with it. My thoughts on this is to replace the drive, reinstall windows on the new drive and buy a connector kit for the old drive so you can transfer as much data as you can to the new drive before the old drive fails completely.

http://www.tigerdire...2908&CatId=3770

SRX660

[SRX660]

This sounds like your hard drive is developing bad clusters and is failing fast. More than likely you have a bad cluster in the area of the drive where windows puts the MBR so it is damaged. If the system cannot hardly read the information sector on the drive it does not know what to do with it. My thoughts on this is to replace the drive, reinstall windows on the new drive and buy a connector kit for the old drive so you can transfer as much data as you can to the new drive before the old drive fails completely.

http://www.tigerdire...2908&CatId=3770

SRX660

[JustLiam]

Wow... So even though I can view all my files and progrms etc... when hooked up to another computer, it still can mean my hard drive is shot? Or going shot? I appreciate your answer and will have to take your advice, but is there any way else I can test to make sure its not the mbr? I was finally able to run a repair install. I ran a chkdsk in Recovery console, then did an install, repair install. However when rebooting it still has that crazy syntax if booted to hard drive. Maybe I will first try a install over my existing xp install. What do you think? Its just so hard to accept the truth.
Thank you though!
Liam

[JustLiam]

Sorry, 1 last thing... How come I cant get to the f8 advanced boot menu? Meaning the option doesnt even come up or respond when I hit F8 on booting up? Is that hard drive related? Or bios maybe?

[SRX660]

Hitting the f8 key is nothing more than a shortcut to starting in safemode, which means you are still in the windows operating system. If you can't get into the windows OS then F8 cannot work. What happens when you hit the delete key while the computer is booting? Does the blue bios screen come up? That says the HD is going bad fast.

I say to use a external adapter as soon as possible to save as much data as you possibly can, even if you need to use a knoppix bootable CD to get to the drive. The way it looks at any time it may go completely south. I would even suggest a long single session to save as much data as you can because it may not be able to be seen even in the bios on the next boot.

SRX660

[JustLiam]

No... no blue screen on del key. I just hooked my HD up to another laptop via usb, I went into msconfig and I "think" I set it to boot to safeboot on startup. Everything works when hooked up to another computer. Now I havent tried booting to this hard drive with the other computer, but the files and apps work. Is there a way to run a system restore or get into last known good with a secondary hd? Meaning my HD connected via usb on the working computer with another working hd already inside?

[SRX660]

When i try to get into the bios, what i do is keep hitting the delete key very fast while the computer is booting up. It may be your computer does not boot to the BIOS with the delete key. What computer( motherboard?) do you have? It now sounds like you have a driver problem that won't let windows start.

Here is a few things you can read on "last known"

http://www.computerh...es/ch000626.htm

http://www.webtree.c... Configuration:

SRX660

[JustLiam]

Sr...

Yesterday I gained some ground. I found an article basically listing common reasons for having boot issues. I agree with you that it seemed more like a boot issue or an issue between the pc or POST communicating with windows to go ahead with booting. Anyway 2 out of 4 of the fixes were to copy over ntdetect and ntldr from my xp cd to the root of c: on the corrupted HD. So after I did it there were 2 new things I noticed.
1. Now I at least get to a boot screen. It gives me about 4 OS choices to boot to. Keep in mind though, 3 out of 4 of the OS's listed are basically fake or virtual. Meaning during ALLLLL the troubleshooting and commands within recovery console I made made once on purpose and once on accident a listing of an OS that doesnt exist. I believe it was during bootcfg cmd. But luckily enough the first choice listed in the menu I now can get to choose to boot to (bc it only stays up for about 1 second) is the actual OS on my machine thats always been there. It also allows me to select F8 on the screen. However last know and safe mode all get me a blue screen with the error of 0x0000007B 0xF7A26528 0xc0000034. The last time I tried booting normally to the OS since getting to my boot menu I received an error msg after it began to load stating it was missing the file "l_intl.nls".

2.. So heres what Im thinking. When I loaded the ntdetect and ntldr it was loaded and overwritten on my c: drive. Yet all the troubleshooting, commands, and seems like everything Ive done the last 6days have been in c:\windows. Do i have my entire boot proccesses scattered between those 2 folders?
And lastly, Ive gotten this far. I think or hope Im so close. Is there a way to take every single boot file and insert it as a package wherever it needs to be? Or am I beyond the boot issue and now its a matter of reloading my windows system or startup/bootup files? I hope I explained this well because it has gained ground. I want to nip this thing today so bad..
And thank you for all your help so far with this... Just a lil longer, hang in there with me SR.. PLZ!
Liam

[JustLiam]

Major update and Im SOOOOOOO close. Ok,

I got to the point where I was able to boot with the option of advanced boot menu (F8). However no matter what I chose in every option i would blue screen with the stop code ending with 7B. When researching it wasnt that much help other then corrupt boot options or registry.

I decided to load a brand new, yet duplicate OS onto the same partition. It worked for the night. I was booting into windows on the New OS. Which by the way, I setup in a new folder (did not overwrite my existing profile or system folder of c:windows). I used Windows2.

After doing this 2 major points. Somewhere right before the new OS I was in recovery console and did the system root command. Accidentally selected like D:. I immidiately ran it again and set my %systemroot% folder to C:. Is this correct or should it be c:windows?
The next morning I was receiving a blue screen on the new OS as well. I ran a few chkdsk /r from recovery console and it would check all its different options it checks but then freeze pretty much at 50% during the repairing something. Maybe sectors but dont quote me on that because it was after a few scans of many different options.
The important part to this is while running it in RC i gained no ground. However on a different laptop I downloaded a few tools/apps for repair, for backup and recovery, for many many options. I ran the Bootable Spotmau cd on the bad hd still inserted internally on its laptop its always been on. Now i dont think it was the spotmau power suite completely. I think it was just the bootable cd. Within that i ran windows recovery. At first it wasnt even seeing any OS installed. Meanwhile there were 2 OS's and i could view them in RC. Which told me either i was doing something wrong with the spotmau app OR the systemroot entry I made was incorrect...(remember i chose c:) But regardless the important thing is I ran a partition utility they have. I ran there chkdsk. It found, corrected, deleted , rebuilt, etc... everything to the point where my partition that was listed before as 100% used with no free space and now after the chkdsk utility was at the correct size of 16 gigs of free space before all my issues. It did its job. Oh and there were a ton of issues regarding bad sectors, clusters, and whatever else.

Which leads me to now. Still BSOD. I realize my HDD is almost shot to [bleep]. There are a few possible options I would like to try and attempt before or as part of using the new hard drive.

I ultimately would love to Backup and restore on new HDD. However my system32 folder is missing files and god knows what else is missing. I do have my personal folders but thats truly not enough. Its my programs intact as is that I need. I cannot stress enough the importance of needing to backup at least some of my apps and restoring them on the new HDD (which I already have) as is. Meaning not reinstalling, I need to have them unchanged. Not back up the personal files from app, reinstall app, then just paste the saved personal app files back to app folder. A few apps do not let me get a new product key when switching pcs. Basically, you buy a new pc, then your stuck buying the app again! Its ridiculous. Anyway, This sort of task, is it considered imaging up my image then back down to new HD, or is it considered "cloning"? Either way, Im concerned if I image/clone (again, not sure of term used) my bad HD's image will it come back missing the system files on new HD? Can i drop the bad image on new HD, then drop a clean good xp image over it where it will only overwrite duplicate files? Meaning apps stay put but the system files either overwrite or get loaded since they are needed anyway? Also, at a previous time (no clue when but i believe i might have been during as issue i had maybe 6 months ago, I installed PEBuilder on the bad hard drive (which wasnt bad back then) and built a bartpe something. Bottom line its got a ton of system files and a bart log with my specific OS and product key on it along with sp3 (which must of come from my system and not my xp install cd because sp3 is not on my cd). Do i have a backup located in my pebuilder or bartpe subfolder with all my system files already? Is this Bart tool something i can run and repair as is? I dont fully understand the desciption on there website. I just remember installing it a few months back for n issue I had.
With all that being said, do I...

1. Repair system files by copying from either dllcache folder,my windows 2 folder (OS installed 2days ago), or perhaps another laptop (which happens to be same make n model)? Then after repairing do the image/clone to storage device and bring back down to new HD?

2. Or is there software that allows you to image/clone everything BUT system files and registry files?

3.Is there n app/tool to repair the system folders?

4.Is there a secret windows xp location that has backed up registry files from previous restores or previous anythings? I did notice within my BartPE log that hive files were backed up and created etc..

5. Lastly, i tried running the command within dllcache for a system restore because it was missing from my restore folder. Which intresting enough, about 3 weeks ago there were a few folders inside the resore folder that looked like previous restore points. Needless to say they are now gone..Anyway, After having to move the restore cmd itself to the restore folder it said "cant run bc srrstr.dll is missing". However it wasnt missing. I right clicked the file and selected register but it tells me the file was loaded however the "DLLRegisterServer entry point was not found. Cannot be registered"... Remember, the only wasy Im actually using the bad HD right now is because I used Ultimate Boot CD to bootup. Any commands Im trying to run or files Im moving, viewing, copying, etc.. such as when I attempted to use system restore are being done through msexplorer inside of the UBCD's programs - file management - explorer option.

What do you think?

Thanks so much everyone...