I pulled my hard drive out of my computer & put it into a friend's computer to copy some files from mine to his. When I booted his computer, my hard drive did not show up as drive "D" like usual, so I right-clicked on "My Computer" & selected "Manage." When I clicked on "Disk Management" an "Initialize Disk Wizard" popped up, so I clicked next several times, thinking it would get my hard drive to work, but it didn't. My drive showed up as "Unallocated." Well, after realizing I forgot to set the my jumper from master to slave, I turned off his computer & put my hard drive back into my computer and attempted to boot windows. It now says "Disk Boot Failure"!!! What did I do & how do I fix it so I can boot my computer or at least get it to where I can copy my important files off of it?
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Hard drive won't boot 1
- Thread starter kewldood
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I have windows XP. I booted to XP's recovery console via the XP cd, but when I got to the command prompt, I typed "chkdsk" at the C: prompt and it said "the specified drive is invalid." What else can I try? Also, when I ran Hitachi Drive Fitness Test on this drive, it had no errors.
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Have a look at the BootCfg command.
A Discussion About the Bootcfg Command and Its Uses
Try running the FixMbr and FixBoot commands from the Recovery Console also.
A Discussion About the Bootcfg Command and Its Uses
Try running the FixMbr and FixBoot commands from the Recovery Console also.
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Thx for your help guys, but I cannot run any command for the Recovery Console because no matter what I type, it says the drive is not valid. I cannot even access it when I install it as a second drive in ANY computer I put it in. It just shows up as "Unallocated" meaning it needs to be formatted. But I assure you, it worked fine before that "Convert & Initialize Wizard" ran when I put it in my friend's system. That wizard is what caused the problem...I know it did. I just wish I could undo what that wizard did.
To reiterate...I can't chkdsk, fixmbr, fixboot, or bootcfg from the recovery console. The drive tested OK on Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test. I tried several jumper settings & tried hooking it up both as a master and slave. I have data on it I need.
I ordered a Thermaltake external usb enclosure (will be here soon). I will try hooking it up inside that & praying it works, but I have my doubts.
Can anyone suggest anything else?
To reiterate...I can't chkdsk, fixmbr, fixboot, or bootcfg from the recovery console. The drive tested OK on Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test. I tried several jumper settings & tried hooking it up both as a master and slave. I have data on it I need.
I ordered a Thermaltake external usb enclosure (will be here soon). I will try hooking it up inside that & praying it works, but I have my doubts.
Can anyone suggest anything else?
Last gasp efforts coming up....
The following are notes from the late Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
"Go to look for MBRWORK in the free tolls and download it, put it on a DOS floppy (one made by formatting in XP and taking the MSDOS Startup disk option will do).
Boot that and run MBRWORK
Use options
1 (to back up the current state, so it could be restored with 2)
3 then 4 to delete the current code and tables
there will then be a possibility of using A
which will scan the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and rebuilt the partition table then
5
to install standard MBR code so the disk could be booted"
Then there are these to try.
Data recovery.
PC Inspector
Plenty of other recovery software listed here.
Best of luck.
The following are notes from the late Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
"Go to look for MBRWORK in the free tolls and download it, put it on a DOS floppy (one made by formatting in XP and taking the MSDOS Startup disk option will do).
Boot that and run MBRWORK
Use options
1 (to back up the current state, so it could be restored with 2)
3 then 4 to delete the current code and tables
there will then be a possibility of using A
which will scan the disk for 'signatures' of partitions and rebuilt the partition table then
5
to install standard MBR code so the disk could be booted"
Then there are these to try.
Data recovery.
PC Inspector
Plenty of other recovery software listed here.
Best of luck.
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- #9
Linney, you're a life saver!!! I downloaded MBRWORK & followed your instructions & voila! windows booted!!! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!
After a bit more investigation, I realized that my hard drive jumper was set to cable select, not master. My drive is a Western Digital & my friend's hard drive is a Hitachi. I got to looking at his closer & there are a crap-load of jumper pin settings on that drive. It looked confusing to me how to set your jumpers correctly on that drive. Maybe this is the reason my boot file got screwed up. Heck, I didn't even know Hitachi made hard drives. I only buy WD, Maxtor or Seagate.
I won't be hookin up my drive to his computer anymore! at least until he gets rid of that hard drive.
After a bit more investigation, I realized that my hard drive jumper was set to cable select, not master. My drive is a Western Digital & my friend's hard drive is a Hitachi. I got to looking at his closer & there are a crap-load of jumper pin settings on that drive. It looked confusing to me how to set your jumpers correctly on that drive. Maybe this is the reason my boot file got screwed up. Heck, I didn't even know Hitachi made hard drives. I only buy WD, Maxtor or Seagate.
I won't be hookin up my drive to his computer anymore! at least until he gets rid of that hard drive.
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