new guy needs help with repair

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khan4rtist

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i am currently trying to reinstall windows xp on a laptop that had a virus attack on it and pretty much corrupted everything on the hard drive to the point where i get the "we are sorry for the inconvinience" error and when i make the selection to start in safe mode or in any other mode for that matter, it will start to load windows but then it restarts. now my issue is that when i try to install the OS i get the error that it cannot find the hard drive, i have tried pressing F6 to load the drivers but it still wont work, all help is appriciated.
 
F6 won't help you much, unless you are trying to tell WinXP about your RAID controller.
Your HDD is not showing up when you run through the set-up wizard on the XP CD? That is a problem! Sounds to me like your HDD may be in trouble.
Try playing around with jumper settings on the HDD (cable select maybe?), change IDE connector and/or ribbon cable; things like that first up. Each time you configure the HDD's set-up within the PC, reboot and run through the Win installation. You need that HDD to show up before you can really do anything.
 
like i said, its a laptop, no jumpers no cables, nada, im getting the feeling that the hard drive has gone bad....ive tried everything imaginable, but replacing it will be a last resort.

does anyone know if it is possible to boot from a usb floppy drive? i want to see if i can format the drive off of a floppy then maybe xp can see it.
 
Sorry about that! My days are catching up with me by the look of it ...

What I would do in your situation is take the HDD out and use my IDE - USB adapter and try it on another PC. If you don't have a tool such as this then it won't help you a great deal ...

Sounds to me like your HDD is on the brink of disaster. Win CD must be able to recognise it and I don't think there is a great deal you can do in this situation.

Booting from a USB FDD is possible, but your BIOS must recognise it as a FDD first, and I don't think it will help you much considering your WinXP CD cannot recognise the drive ... worth a shot though.
 
do this:
1-get a 98-se floppy boot disk from here: www.bootdisk.com
2-start your machine with this disk and choose "with cd-rom support"
3-do "fdisk" - delete any partitions, and create a new one (fat32)
4-restart same as in #2
5-format the hd
6-put xp cd in cd-rom drive and navigate to i386 directory on the cd
7-run program winnt.exe. this will start xp install process.
 
to be honest with you, i've never tried a usb floppy. is there even such a thing as usb floppy? in any case, it should map as "A" drive on the BIOS, otherwise it will not boot. the simplest way is to hook it up as a floppy on the board. a usb device requires a driver, whereas a straight floppy hook-up is native to bios.
 
well, im working on a laptop, so i cant really just connect it to a ribbon cable because there isnt one....lol.....and yes there is such thing as a usb floppy drive, its the same thing as an external usb hard drive. i got the computer to stop restarting at system faliure, and i got 0x00000024 (0x00190203, 0x8640c820, 0xc0000102, 0x00000000) i know it has something to do with the ntfs.sys, and i cant just reinstall xp because the setup cant even see the hard drive. and i also cant run chkdsk cause it wont let me go into command prompt becuase it keeps restarting.
 
I moved all the unrelated posts, to their own thread. ;)

I also deleted the new thread you made as it`s no longer required.

I hope this meets with your approval.

Regards Howard :)
 
The repair function on XP to be quite honest is a bit crap, I suggest a blank format and reinstall for your safest option, This will avoid having the virus on your system when you complete the repair, If you have critical data on the system I would advise a paralell install, to do this, boot from the windows xp cd by pressing f12 on boot and choosing onboard or usb cd rom drive, press any key to boot from cd, start to install windows as normal but dont delete any partitions, and when it asks you to format choose "leave current file system intact" this should then let you boot to windows and retreive your data.
 
Try getting a Ubuntu CD-ROM (or other Linux iteration) to boot from. It will give you access to the HDD if access is possible.
 
kool. but i cant really format my drive with the installation cd because the setup cant see my hard drive, i know its working becuase it will want to load windows but it wont get far...
 
mikescorpio81 said:
Sorry about that! My days are catching up with me by the look of it ...

What I would do in your situation is take the HDD out and use my IDE - USB adapter and try it on another PC. If you don't have a tool such as this then it won't help you a great deal ...

Sounds to me like your HDD is on the brink of disaster. Win CD must be able to recognise it and I don't think there is a great deal you can do in this situation.

Booting from a USB FDD is possible, but your BIOS must recognise it as a FDD first, and I don't think it will help you much considering your WinXP CD cannot recognise the drive ... worth a shot though.


u don't even know what days are give it another 50 or 60 years to say that
 
khan4rtist said:
kool. but i cant really format my drive with the installation cd because the setup cant see my hard drive, i know its working becuase it will want to load windows but it wont get far...


have u read the threads in front of u'res they tried to tell u how to boot to the cd or in this case format and boot, this will wok if u read and use it
 
go into bios, under drives look or sata operation and fiddle between options, that usually works, but you could lose whatever data is on the drive.
 
the computer is a laptop, vetman's idea seems to work cause unbutu installed sucessfully and now ima try to install xp, ill see how it goes.
 
nickc said:
u don't even know what days are give it another 50 or 60 years to say that

Hehe! I meant that my days are long ... extremely long lately. So long in fact that I can't properly read a post! God help me in 50-60 Years time! :dead:
 
well i tried installing xp but the setup still wont read the hard drive, i think the laptop has a sata hard drive, i dunno if it needs drivers, and if it does iunno if ill be able to put it on a usb floppy disk drive during the installation....
 
Good luck. Ubuntu also can be run from a "live" Ubuntu cdrom without installing it, but if installed, you can do troubleshooting a little easier.
 
That will certainly prove or disprove the viability of the HDD. I hope the HDD resolves the problem and you don't find a Mainboard or cable problem.
I still can't think of a reason Ubuntu would install but XP woudn't. I have an Ubuntu CDROM (not an installed version) from which I can boot up and go online, surf the web, check my WebMail, all without loading any drivers or even touching the computer as it boots up. Although I'm still running XP PRO, Ubuntu (or Linux) certainly seems to be a much "smarter" OS. Amazes me that it will find my hardware and access it without my having to search for drivers, updates, etc. Good luck.
 
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