NTFS Problem - Console doesn't boot

[JediLow]

Alright... when I have my hard drive plugged into my system I'm completely unable to boot into anything (Recovery Console, New Install, Windows) whether or not I have another drive in which has Windows (basically I picked up a new hard drive thinking that I could just run Windows off of that and fix my old one to recover the data). When I try to start any of them I get a BSOD telling me its missing/corrupted ntfs.sys

How do I recover (or even get to the drive so I can reformat it) the hard drive? Since I can't get into the recovery console to do so... (though now I'm looking for a dos package or a linux distro that'll let me get in...)?

 

[PanicX]

Hmm.. I'm confused a bit about your explanation. Your system used to have 1 hard drive and it crashed. You then bought another hard drive, installed it (SATA or PATA? channel 0 or 1? Master or Slave or CS?) and expected your system to boot fine?
Windows setup won't load? Or it fails after install?

I'm thinking your best bet is to take the failed drive out of your computer, install windows to your new hard drive, then once your PC is up an running, either reinstall the failed drive as slave or use a USB external encloser to attach to it.

 

[JediLow]

Hmm.. I'm confused a bit about your explanation. Your system used to have 1 hard drive and it crashed. You then bought another hard drive, installed it (SATA or PATA? channel 0 or 1? Master or Slave or CS?) and expected your system to boot fine?
Windows setup won't load? Or it fails after install?

I'm thinking your best bet is to take the failed drive out of your computer, install windows to your new hard drive, then once your PC is up an running, either reinstall the failed drive as slave or use a USB external encloser to attach to it.

I already installed the second drive and it works fine without the first... when I've tried reinstalling the drive as a slave or anything else (basically when its connected to my system) I hit the problem of BSODing again.

 

[PanicX]

So you're able to install Windows fine on the new hard drive. When you attach the old hard drive, does BIOS recognize it? If not, try playing with the jumper settings, and positioning on the IDE cable. Some motherboards expect the master to be in the center of the cable others expect it at the end. You could really bypass the possible problem by disconnecting your CD-ROM and attaching your old drive as master on the second IDE channel, so you have both drives as master.

If you still can't access the drive, you may want to try a USB external enclosure as I mentioned before, or you may want to take the drive to a professional data recovery service.

 

[JediLow]

So you're able to install Windows fine on the new hard drive. When you attach the old hard drive, does BIOS recognize it? If not, try playing with the jumper settings, and positioning on the IDE cable. Some motherboards expect the master to be in the center of the cable others expect it at the end. You could really bypass the possible problem by disconnecting your CD-ROM and attaching your old drive as master on the second IDE channel, so you have both drives as master.

If you still can't access the drive, you may want to try a USB external enclosure as I mentioned before, or you may want to take the drive to a professional data recovery service.

Its a SATA drive... thus I'm really not sure how to go about handling it correctly (computer is currently attempting to boot up Puppy Linux).

 

[PanicX]

Are both drives SATA?
Are the drives connecting to an SATA controller or an IDE controller via an adapter?
Does the BIOS recognize the drive?

 

[JediLow]

Are both drives SATA?
Are the drives connecting to an SATA controller or an IDE controller via an adapter?
Does the BIOS recognize the drive?

Both are SATA connected to a SATA controller. The good HD is under drive one and in my BIOS is set up to boot from. The second drive (SATA 2) is also recognized by the BIOS but crashes the system when the system tries to boot.

 

[JediLow]

Well... I've tried an external enclosure - only manages to crash whatever system its on.

Anyone have any thoughts/ideas?

 

[PanicX]

Are you saying that you tried connecting the drive through a USB port on another PC and it also crashed? Or does it just crash your PC even through USB?

What exactly happened? Did you receive any errors or simply locked the system up?