Well I almost do not know where to begin so I will start at the beginning (sort of).
Recounting the story will help me get things straight in my head.
My comp had been fine and then I kept getting "hard drive failure" or similar.
This was not a drive failure, it was the SATA cable coming lose (was a cheap dodgy cable)
and the drive was just laying in the base of the PC not secure, but it had been working fine like
that. OK I know that's a bad idea, so no need to tell me!!!.
Anyhow when I got that error I would just push the lose connector in better and it would boot fine.
Then after a while it started running check disk at start-up, but I would quit it as it took ages.
Then one day I decide to let it run over night to 'cure' the problem - bad move. The next morning
I found the computer constantly rebooting and I could not boot it up.
I since have a new PC by the way!! I'm on it now and it a lot faster
I tried various options for booting but none worked (ie recover restore, boot to safe mode etc..)
Oh well I thought, good job I have a back up drive (the machines old drive was cloned onto a new
bigger drive, and I have been using the new clone for a while, I could in the past boot from either
by swapping the cables). However that one didn't work with!! I had not used it for a while but I expected
to work - it didn't.
I though it might be a hardware error at that stage, however I managed to boot the machine on a Linux
Mint DVD OK and was able to surf the net, pretty good really except for the very poor cursor control,
but it was OK could surf, watch youtube etc..pretty cool really!!
So does not seem to be hardware.
Focusing on the newest drive which failed, I have had various error at various stages, I think when I try and do
recoveries it might screw it up even further.
However one error, which I have just had is:-
(approx wording)windows could not start
as file is missing or corrupt
root\system32\hal.dll
However I can see from Linux that hal.dll is there!!
Another error I have had is
stop:c000021a {Fatal Error} The windows logon process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000034(0x00000000)(0x00000000)
I read on Microsoft site
The STOP 0xC000021A error occurs when either Winlogon.exe or Csrss.exe fails. When the Windows NT kernel detects that either of these processes has stopped, it stops the system and raises the STOP 0xC000021A error.
Both those files exist and indeed the drive seems to be fine, right size and linux told me
that the disk was in good health, it said it's SMART status was OK.
I am actually just running a quick SMART self test on it now. It says the disk is healthy.
Then there is the older drive, and indeed one older than that, I started with a 60gig, cloned to a 250gig and finally to
the 500gig drive I have been using most recently until it gave up the ghost.
Actually the other drive in the machine is the 60gig drive and the 250gig one had errors, I still have it, might try booting
from it but it's has a dodge surface, sometimes files are there, sometimes not so much lol.
I put the 250gig drive in an enclosure and I have just copied the contents of windows to this machine. (reports a couple of files missing
but it has 99.99%).
I also tried and old XP recovery drive I made but that didn't work either.
I don't think the cloning software copes with the recovery partition well .
So................ where to from here??
I guess I may have a number of option and things to try, but writing this out helps me get things clear in my own head
and I can use this thread to document stuff I have done as I tend to forget what did what and when etc...
I maybe able to get a Win XP boot (installation disk) disk from my brother, that is another option if he still has it.
The PC came with no Windows disk, it was a HP machine with software pre-installed. AMD 3800X2
It's not a major problem as I have a new PC and have various backups of data and I am copying the stuff I want onto
this my new machine, but I would like to get the old one working as aback up PC. I might be able to put the 500meg
(newest drive) into this machine to get the latest data if I need it (think it only has one bay though, have not looked yet!!)
I could also put it into a hard drive enclosure and connect via USB.
Might see if I can get a new Linux version too and see if it is any better.
But the bottom line seems to be the drive is fine and all the files are there and it will not boot, the
big problem occurred when I ran a check disk overnight, I guess that screwed something up, certainly seemed to.
I imagine it may just have a corrupt file on it but which one???
IF I try to boot into XP normally now I thing it will give the missing hal.dll error.
However I can see the file from Linux, it says:-
hal.dll size 134.4kB 134,400 bytes it also says accessed 12th Sept, however the I was using it 19th Sept for sure.
So any help/ideas welcome
The PC