Computer Emergency! Operating System not found

Harmonix, I have gone into BIOS, and I didn’t see any S.M.A.R.T. hard drive testing option. Can you tell me how to get there?

Alien,
Thanks for the files. I downloaded everything and I will read as much as I can before I try anything. I appreciate your time finding, zipping, and sending everything to me. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to report.

Merijeek,

You didn’t miss anything (I don’t think, anyway). I haven’t had any luck in figuring out how to get the hard drive out. I know there are directions, and a link is posted in this thread, but I’ve not been able to get it out. I really don’t want to damage the drive if there is any hope of getting the data.

Are you saying that I could copy my files to another hard drive with no danger of losing anything your way? That would be a good option.

Sadly, I don’t have the significant cash that it would take to pay a professional, so I rely on the expertise of the teeming millions to walk me through it. If the drive is toast, it’s toast. But until I confirm it, I will not bury it.

Basically, yes. If your drive is clicking it’s either dead or dying. You can’t fix it, so you may as well salvage your data.

As for getting the drive out, most of these suggestions involve that. IBMs are a bitch because (once when I took one apart) there were, what, 13 different sized screws?

The hard drive is usually pretty simple. A couple screws, a hatch, and that typically does it.

Then you just need something like this:

Looks like $14 including shipping. I don’t know that particular model, but that’s the general idea we’re looking for. ’

Just keep in mind your laptop drive is a 2.5" and not a 3.5" drive.

-Joe

Glad you got the email.

Just to clear up any possible confusions:

  1. Understand that the hardrive is dead or nearly so. You’ll likely not be able to boot into windows again, not without a successful physical repair/fix (see below). This has consequences as to which method you can choose to salvage data.

If you can boot to windows:
a) On a standard computer (not laptop) the motherboard has two IDE connectors. Since each IDE cable has two disk plugs on the cable, as many as four disks can be installed by default. As for power supply, spare splitters (cables) should normally be available inside the case. To copy data, either install Windows on a new disk and hook up the damaged disk as secondary (slave) on either IDE cable, or simply leave the damaged disk as it is (as master) and plug in a new disk as secondary (slave) to copy data to.

b) A laptop on the other hand probably wont have the necessary spare IDE connectors. In that case you can use the method suggested above by Merijeek. The method is simply a harddisk wrapped in a USB interface which will turn up as any other USB device in Explorer. A possible problem is that you’ll need to install drivers which may again require a reboot, a risky step at this stage. As an alternative you can use USB flash cards. Drivers for these come with Windows XP and should not require a reboot, AFAIK.
If you cannot boot to Windows (likely):
a) On a standard computer: You can still hook up drives easily using IDE cables, but copying files represents more of a challenge. The easiest method is using some kind of DOS recovery software, or a simple DOS program like XXCOPY from xxcopy.com (this is not the XCOPY program). Part of the problem here is with hidden files and long filenames.

b) On a laptop: Well, there’s a challenge. Without spare IDE connectors and no Windows interface you’ll be forced to use one of the ports, ie. USB, parallel or serial. Parallel and serial ports are extremely slow. The problem with USB ports is that you’ll have to load DOS-based drivers for the USB device you want to use, and that’s easier said that done. Many USB devices doesn’t even come with such drivers. Can it be done? The answer to that question is at best a maybe.

Here’s a step by step approach you can use to solve your problem (though I’m sure you can find other tips in the info I sent you):

  1. Find out how you remove your hardrive. A harddrive has two plugs, an IDE cable (data signal cable) and a power supply cable. Find them.

  2. Either:
    a) Remove the disk and install it into a different computer. Since you’re on a laptop this might be difficult for you. In that case proceed to 2b:

b). Replace both the IDE cable and power cable. On a laptop it’s likely that one or both cables must be special ordered, but they should still be cheap. (This step is to verify that the problem is not a cable failure).

  1. Remove the IDE cable, but leave the power cable alone. Boot. You are now giving the disk power but no data signal. If you can’t hear any clicking, be confident that the disk can be temporarily fixed with Spinrite and that data can be transfered to a second disk. In that case, learn how to use Spinrite and prepare a second drive.
    If you still hear a clicking sound it’s likely that the data reading device (arm) inside the disk is stuck somehow and that the disk has trouble spinning. Do the following, starting with a):

a) With access to Spinrite, see if you can probe the disk with this software. Spinrite doesn’t use BIOS to access the disk. This will probably fail but it’s worth a shot, and any failure has no consequences.

b) Put the disk in the freezer for an hour (in an airtight plastic bag). Boot while freezing cold. Make sure you have a second disk ready because success wont last very long (as the disk gets warmer, it will eventually fail again). The disk will now operate below the specified minimum temperature (which is usually 0-5 Celsius)

c) If you can afford it and your data is worth it, go to a pro. I understand that this is not an option for you, but if you could afford it, this would be the time to do it.

d) Remove the disk. Shake it. Reinstall. Also try to boot with the disk upside down if possible. Note that you only need to attach the IDE and power cables to the disk to boot it, the disk doesn’t have to be in the computer.

e) If you think you’re up to it, buy an identical or nearly identical disk (a used one will do). From the healthy drive, transfer the IDE controller. This is the printboard with all the electrical components on the outside of the disk. You’ll also see a flat, paperthin, detachable cable going from the printboard to the reading device inside the disk. Doing this is not too difficult, but you’ll need a special screw driver. A failing controller is a common cause of disk crashes.

f) Thump it. The point is to free the reading arm from whatever is keeping it stuck. Note that this may damage the disk, and should only be tried when you are ready to throw the disk in the trash.

g) Wrap the disk in a towel and drop it on the floor from 3-4 feet. You can drop it several times. This could very well damage the disk even more.

h) If you did e), dismantle both disks. Either transfer the reading arm to the bad disk, or the “plates” to the good disk. Note that this is the kind of work better done in a lab and that you’re pretty certain to fail.

Not all bios have it. On mine it is under advanced bios features and is called “S.M.A.R.T. testing for harddrives”.

You people have the patience of saints.

Og bless ya.

You’re thinking about connecting the disk as slave so its (<-- got it) not loaded as a boot disk, skipping a possibly dead MBR? Maybe you’re right. I was under the impression that the MBR also contained information about disk partition, and without it the disk will be seen as blank. But maybe it will just skip the boot disk part and go straight to the partition info …
Which reminds me of something, xp inhales, do you actually see the bad drive in BIOS or is it undetected? If you can see it, that’s pretty good and leaves a lot of hope.

it’s … arghhh

[off to bed]

Alien, you asked…

Well, it’s listed in the boot order. And when I change the boot order, I can get it to die with a different message. I have tried to boot the machine after changing the boot order (no new software on the floppy), just to see what happens. The screen again begins to list some internal info, and the last thing I see is the ip address. Then it hangs. No clicking sound occurs when I do this. The clicking now seems to always occur when I try booting it from the hard drive. To me, at least, it seems to recognize the HD. Of course, I could be wrong.

Is there a way, from the BIOS, that I could ping the drive somehow to confirm it is being recognized?

Thanks

Often there’s a hard drive detection auto detect or some similarly phrased option in the BIOS. It exmines the HD and sets the appropriate parameters for it based on the hd’s response.

Good. So it’s probably not a serious mechanical problem, just a boot problem. In other words: Theres a fair chance you can get to your data. I want you to do something: In BIOS you should have an option where the drive’s parameters are listed, like disk size and stuff. (it’s probably not the screen where you decide your boot order). Does this info look correct to you? Also, if you can boot from floppis now, do that - then see if Spinrite can access the disk.

I’ll check out a couple of things in the meantime.

I could have explained this better. What I want you to do is: Boot from floppy, then write “dir c:”. What’s the result? Then I want you to copy spinrite.exe to a floppy, put the floppy in the maschine and write “spinrite”, press enter. The program starts. Choose “Options”, then “Hard Drive Information” What’s the error messages? Look for errros concerning partitions, booting, root, MBR (master boot record), MFT (master file table) or system files.

btw, you “ping” the drive every time you start the computer. Simplified, a NTFS disk is made up by three parts: The boot code and partition data area, which contains metadata about the disk as well as the code to execute to boot the disk and load the file index, The Master File Table (MTF), an index of all the files on the disk, and the Data Area, where the files themselves are stored.

If the disk is recognized correctly by BIOS that should mean that the partition data, the most important part of the disk, is ok. However, it could be that the partition data in this area is ok, while the boot data is not. We’ll see. You can find a lot of information about this on ntfs.com

See what you can find, will you?

Alien,

I will find out as much as I can and post it back to this thread. One misconception I may have given you… I can’t boot from the floppy. Since this is the case, can I still try to run spinrite? From your message, it doesn’t seem like it. I think the key for me is to figure out how to create a proper boot floppy.

Also, I have not been able to get a prompt at all, so I don’t know where I would type “dir c:”.

I may have access to an XP boot disk this week, so I will try that. I will also try to create a boot disk from the site you posted, but my attempts at creating the boot disk have continuously failed. I was able to create a “quick boot” disk, but the computer stops what it’s doing when it tries to boot from that disk and waits for me to replace the disk with the correct boot disk.

I’ll write more tomorrow after I try some of the things you’ve suggested.

Thanks

[QUOTE=Alien]
e) If you think you’re up to it, buy an identical or nearly identical disk (a used one will do). From the healthy drive, transfer the IDE controller. This is the printboard with all the electrical components on the outside of the disk. You’ll also see a flat, paperthin, detachable cable going from the printboard to the reading device inside the disk. Doing this is not too difficult, but you’ll need a special screw driver. A failing controller is a common cause of disk crashes./QUOTE]
I had success with this tactic after a Maxtor HD failed im my old system. (Note that the ultimate cause of the failure turned out to be a failing power supply, so you may want to check that as well.) I found a used Maxtor HD of the same model on e-Bayand swapped out the controller boards to get the dead disk up and running again in a different computer. (I swapped them back afterwards and had a working replacement drive.)

The FAT and some of the data had been partly corrupted when the HD crashed, but I was able to recover most of it (and all the important stuff) by using data recovery software from Runtime Software. Good luck with your hard drive.

Arrgh! Preview is your friend!

You need to able to boot from a floppy. That’s the first step, and you can’t get anything else done unless, because you can’t boot on your C-disk.

So you didn’t you get the boot floppies from the link in an earlier post to work. Not good. As an alternative you can go to bootdisk.com and download the bootdisk for win98 (possible win98 SE). That’s just a few files = one floppy. FAT-booting is lot easier than NTFS booting (IMO the only problem with Win2k and XP was the loss of easy booting). Next, locate a small DOS program called NTFS Reader and put it on the floppy and run it. You can probably read NTFS (and run “dir c:”) with this program even though you booted with a FAT system. I have never tried it.

Good. You might very well need the XP cd soon. But don’t try to repair anything with it just yet, because you don’t know exactly what is wrong. There are at least two things concerning your problem you can repair with the cd: a fixmbr and a fixboot.

A couple of more things you could/should do:

A: Check for an active partition

  1. Download a copy of fdisk.exe. It should be widely available on the net (it’s part of dos/windows pre w2k/xp). Note: This is a win98 (FAT32) program but it should work for your purpose, which is listing disk partitions
  2. Put it on a floppy. Boot with your boot disk, insert floppy with program, write: fdisk
  3. WORD OF WARNING: DON’T MESS AROUND WITH THIS PROGRAM - IT’S EASY TO DELETE IMPORTANT SETTINGS
  4. Choose menu option: 4. Display Partition Information
  5. You’ll see a list of partitions: Write down the following: the #number and corresponding TYPE for each partition. Also make a note of which partition (by number) has an “A” listed in the STATUS column and which partition number is next to the “C:” in the “PARTITION” column. Be aware that if your disk is very large the disk size info will be screwed up.

Quit Fdisk. If you can’t get it to work at all, just move on to:
B: Partition testing

  1. Download TestDisk (it’s free) from http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html. You’ll want the Windows NT/2000/XP version (there’s also another program in this zip file, disregard). This is a very powerful tool and requires quite a bit of knowledge, but we will only do a simple test.
  2. Copy to a floppy, boot computer with your boot floppies, switch floppies, run the program
  3. You’ll see a screen, and hopefully your disk is listed as disk 80. Choose analyze, bottom left
  4. When the program is done testing, write down any errors reported by the program, especially anything along the “no boot disk found” line. If you don’t get this error I want you to look in the list of partitions for a star to the right of a list entry. This star should indicate the primary bootable partition.

Report back on what you find.

The reason why I want you to do this is because on your laptop you have a small hidden partition used by the laptop to go into sleepmode. This partition might be mistakenly marked as “Active”, meaning the computer will try to boot from this partition, and not your C-disk. Otherwise I think your problem is either related to lost boot data or lost partition data. You can fix this with the XP cd (yeah, I know). It can also be a data reading problem (physical damage) in any of these two areas, in which case Spinrite might be able to fix it.

Btw, after changing the boot order, why is the last thing you see the IP address? Do you know why your computer looks for an IP address at this stage?

Just to clarify, once you get it to boot, either with xp boot disks, the win98 boot disk, or even possibly the xp cd, then you get the a: prompt, and you can use various programs like spinrite. But you need something like NTFS reader to list the content of the drive with the “dir c:” command ONLY when you boot with a win98 disk because you cannot access the file system on an XP computer otherwise.

Quick update. The boot disk was found, however they have a Compaq computer and I have (as mentioned ad nauseum) an IBM. Is this a concern? Alien, your note seems to imply I can use just about any XP boot disk, but you didn’t mention cross computer booting. Can it be done? I want to try it, but if it will do more harm thank good, I’ll pass.

Thanks,

Hardware brands don’t matter. You can safely boot to prompt with it. But if you need to use the CD to write a fix to the disk later, I would have made sure that the CD contains the same XP version (Home or Pro) that you have installed. I’m not sure whether it makes a difference in the end, but bettersafe than sorry IMO.

Thanks, Alien. I’ll give that a try then. I also found my xp home key (he has home as well), so we will at lease have a match on that. Heck, I found my Windows 95 boot disk! Think I should give that a whirl? Me neither.

I’ll send for the disk tomorrow, and it should be here by saturday. I’ll also try some of your other suggestions in the meantime to see how much trouble I can get myself into.