kirock said:
The easiest way is to boot into Safe mode (usually F8 or F12) and select Last Known Good Configuration. If this doesn't work it's probably a corrupted MBR and yuo'll have to boot using your XP cd and enter the recovery Console at the command promyt type FIXBOOT.
Thanks for the reply kirock!
Usually if there's a problem with the configuration it will automatically go to a screen where I can choose to start in Safe Mode and stuff, right? Since I was able to boot normally (with the help of the boot disk) then it never really came to mind. Will give it a go and see if it works. With the recovery though, I wanted to do it as a last resort because I would need to download the drivers for my SATA drive. I need to press F6 during the setup and I can't seem to find my drivers!
gbhall said:
The one thing that fits all your symptoms (as far as I can tell) is your SATA drive is faulty. Could be a power problem, or cable problem. Can you try the Sata drive on another power connector, with nothing else drawing power. Try it in another PC. Also Sata drives are rumoured to be iffy at times. Try search on this site for 'sata drive problem' and see what comes up. Lo! 500+ entries - you're not alone !
I checked all cables. Everything seems ok. I cant remember my PSU wattage right now. It came with the case. At the time I built my pc, I was told I needed a higher PSU. But since it came with the case, I wasn't able to change it.
If the SATA drive is faulty, why am I still able to use it then? I dont know anybody else where I can test my SATA drive. But I can still use the drive and it seems to work fine. I'll keep an open mind though, but knowing that there are 500+ people having problems with it doesn't make me feel any better.
Also, I just dont want to try to fix something that doesn't seem to be broken.
But the weird thing is, I was able to use it for more than a year using the same PSU and cables with no problem. I just experienced it recently for unkown reasons.
Centurio said:
I'm inclined to agree with gbhall on this one. Your predicament indeed smacks of a hardware problem. Missing letters in a screen display is something that just shouldn't happen. I don't have any direct experience with SATA disks, though, so I'm passing here.
Another idea: could it be that your power supply is a bit weak? Or: you wrote you had probs with high system temps before. Might be that something gave when you tried to copy the content of an entire harddisk at once. System temps tend to go way up then.
Just in case you'll want to try something else before you get the sledgehammer, look here. Maybe you'll find something you haven't tried yet. (It's a link to my first post on my own problem, and a shameless plug to boot.)
Hope you succeed.
Regards, Martin A
The missing letters happened with the IDE drive though. It has 2 partitions, when I checked it the first partition has been wiped out!! Haha. It makes sense now why I got that message with the missing letters. That's because when it restarted in the middle of copying files on it, it probably messed up the first partition. It doesnt worry me much. But Im glad it did not happen to the SATA drive.
Im thinking it's a cooling problem. But that would be easy to fix. When I notice an increase in temp, I just blow a fan right on it. Im more concerned on how to fix the boot disk problem... it's really annoying everytime I hear the noise the disk drive makes when reading the diskette.
I checked your previous post. Thanks for that. But I did not get any "DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." error messages. I just get a black screen with nothing. So yeah... Im pretty sure I just need to do that system recovery thing. Im just too lazy to download my SATA drivers. I guess I dont have any other options. Will try to do that and then let you know what happens.
Thanks guys for the help! I appreciate it. After I fix it, I'll post up some minidumps. Maybe it shows in there what caused my problem. Cheers!
