Topic: HELP!!! (Read 5039 times)

markyd · « **on:** October 29, 2004, 11:00:36 am »

My computer went nutts yesterday... I was downloading the B5 game off the net, I left it downloading, woke up in the morning and all I see is the dos prompt, I resetted the puter and again it just boots into dos?? No errors or nothing....

When I type dir/p to see whats on the hdd it says their is nothing on it....

I have allot of work not backed up yet and dont want to install everything again as I will loose it all... that includes the AXOR and the Reeve and 3 other models I was working on...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Has anyone else ever had this problem.. I am qualified as a computer engineer done ComptaA+ & N+ but this eludes me!!!!

Anything you can advise is greatly appreciated

**edit** Im currently using my wifes laptop to get on the net.... she isnt happy cos im hogging it rofl

GotAFarmYet? · « **Reply #1 on:** October 29, 2004, 12:13:39 pm »

what OS do you have on it?

also if it is booting to dos only and the dir command should work to see if there are any folders on it. If the folders are there the cheapest way to to hook it up as a external drive to the lap top virus scan it and see whatg is recoverable on the drive. A external box that you can mount a HDD in costs about 35 bucks Once you buy it you will always have that option, and it is a easy back up device to use as well once a HDD is in it.

wulf111 · « **Reply #2 on:** October 29, 2004, 12:23:56 pm »

What OS were you running?. If XP have you tried doing a system recovery or a repair install of XP? It almost sounds like either
1) a virus or something blew away your partition table if so maybe partition magic or similiar program might help
2) your hard drive may have crapped out on you if you have any diag tools to check the HDD (i asume you do since you have A+ cert.)
3) did you check your floppy drive and or CD drive to make sure there is no bootable disk left in it? (i know stupid question but you dont know how many people have done that are brought thier system in to be fixed)
4) possibility that some of your ram has gone bad and is not letting the system complete its POST (very common) remove all ram from system and power on if you get POST beeps (usually 3 or 4 quick in a row) replace one stick power on (you should remember how this works)

The fact that you are able to dos commands has me curious did you have dos installed on your system?
Can you get to the OS selection screen (F8 during boot up)?
there are so many causes to your problem and so many ways to troubleshoot it
If you want to contact email me at jspeckma@sarcom.com
and ill try to help you as best i can

markyd · « **Reply #3 on:** October 29, 2004, 01:00:03 pm »

Thanks guys... Im running XP Pro.. and as you know it runs a VDM so the fact that I am now running in a stable SAL DOS enviroment is very peculiar... The HDD seems fine... but my backup drive... 200gb seperate drive seems to be blank???? When I boot from the XP CD it tells me their were no versions of windows found.. thier are also no partitions setup.. no active or logical or anything ???

The more I think about it the more I think im goinna end up rebuilding my life from scratch, I used disk doctor it tells me the HDD are 100% ok no problems... Replaced the ram and no difference.... Im getting cold sweats... so mutch work and collections of junk down the swaney

wulf111 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 29, 2004, 01:17:14 pm »

i know how you feel my friend i just had to recover from a HDD failure a few months back lost the entire 200 GB of stuff i have been rebuilding ever since

Reverend · « **Reply #5 on:** October 29, 2004, 01:20:11 pm »

jeez... didnt know this could happen...
maybe the processor itself is bad.... bad thing is he has a entire backup harddrive, like I do... I got a remote USB HD for a simialr problem... he has an interior secondary drive, also very smart investment...

had this problem when I first got on Taldren, my processor ws incompatable with my video card, and the comp totally freaked out, even when I formatted... it'd be fine for a week or two, then just freak out.
AMD and Geforce MX400 dont mix....
please continue to post any and all, I am very curious about this too, especially since you know so much about comps and you're lost MarkyD....
sorry....

Lord Schtupp · « **Reply #6 on:** October 29, 2004, 01:32:40 pm »

My suggestion is to install a fresh HD, new Windows install on it, and make your old system drive a D: drive. Then run some file recovery util on it. Or install the wiped out drive on a friends computer and run a file recovery util on it. Some file recover utils require them to be already installed prior to the wiping out, some do not. In any case do NOTHING to the drive in question. Try Downloads.com for file recovery tools. If it booting into DOS, then your partion table is probably OK otherwise it would boot that drive at all.

The best of luck! - LS

wulf111 · « **Reply #7 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:00:38 pm »

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304449

this might be of help

good luck we are all pulling for ya

markyd · « **Reply #8 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:03:35 pm »

Thanks guys.... all of your advice is appreciated.....

Im plowing through seeing what I can do...

Following links now..

Core · « **Reply #9 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:14:30 pm »

i had a similar problem once i just did a reinstall on the same drive where the OS was .... did the trick...you could check the HD with another PC and see if the data is still there ..... there could be another explanation for the aperent inability of dos to locate the files .... it is likely that the ver of dos simply dose not recognize the file system

markyd · « **Reply #10 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:46:10 pm »

Thanks core... I have checked the drives in another computer and they show up as unformatted and blank NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Core · « **Reply #11 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:58:07 pm »

i had the same problem once .... you should use some sort of a recovery program to restore the needed file types as in the earlier suggestion check cnet

Wolfsglen · « **Reply #12 on:** October 29, 2004, 02:59:32 pm »

"my processor ws incompatable with my video card, and the comp totally freaked out, even when I formatted... it'd be fine for a week or two, then just freak out.
AMD and Geforce MX400 dont mix...."

lol you had bigger problems with your comp than that...there are several million n-force 1-2 motherboards out there with integrated geforce MX cards in them that not only run rock solid reliable and fast, but do so exclusively on an AMD processor, it could be a mobo, but its nothing to do with the processor unless its overheating or already damaged, or the graphics card itself (which is very possible if switching gfx solved yer problem)

I only waffle on saying all this completely off-topic as it sounds like you had a bad graphics card or possibly ram/motherboard and you could be entitled to a refund or exchange if you havent done so already, so dont hesitate to as you deserve yer moneys worth (ignore this if you did already) but considering AMD and Nvidia have worked together from the nforce 1 up to the new athlon64 nforce 4, it aint likely to be mixing it that causes problems.

Otherwise anyone using a computer for storage of precious items should consider a decent multi-RAID config, its 5x faster than an external USB drive, just as reliable, and actually can work out cheaper these days, even with 4 hard drives needed. Its saved my ass plenty of times and the big speed boost over regular IDE is a bonus.

Otherwise burn burn burn on cd/dvd

wulf111 · « **Reply #13 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:20:16 pm »

Quote

Otherwise anyone using a computer for storage of precious items should consider a decent multi-RAID config, its 5x faster than an external USB drive, just as reliable, and actually can work out cheaper these days, even with 4 hard drives needed. Its saved my ass plenty of times and the big speed boost over regular IDE is a bonus

you only need a minimum of 3 disks for a raid 5 config but the more you have the better the fault tolerence i acually run my server with 6 drives in raid 5 for storage and 2 drives in raid 0 for my boot drive

as for Markyd's problem i hate to say it i think he got b!tch$laped with a worm or virus while downloading his B5 game that would explain the missing partition table

markyd · « **Reply #14 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:32:31 pm »

I hate to say it but I agree... either that or I was hacked or somthing..... I cant believe it.... all down the swaney.... time for a beer I think

Thanks guys your input.. as ever was appreciated!

wulf111 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:42:46 pm »

i think you need something stronger than a beer mate

markyd · « **Reply #16 on:** October 29, 2004, 03:49:03 pm »

Hmmmmmm.... probably

Thakns Wulf

Centurus · « **Reply #17 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:01:15 pm »

There might be an alternative, but it's a costly one. Start looking around for data recovery services. For the most part, if they can't recover any data, they don't charge you anything. If they recover data, they can back it up onto disk or restore it to the hard drive or another drive. Problem is, they cost both arms, both legs, your head, kidney, liver, gallbladder, heart, 1 and 3 quarter lungs, and maybe your spleen. I know it's extremely pricy, but it may be the only alternative you have left.

markyd · « **Reply #18 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:05:57 pm »

ROFL..... Costly eh...... xmas coming up too... I might just have to suffer.. thanks anyway man

Core · « **Reply #19 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:07:20 pm »

i am confident of his abilities to do the recovary procedure by him self.... to a certain degree as iv suggested earlier try searching on cnet for some of these programs

MrCue · « **Reply #20 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:12:09 pm »

Did you enable large disk support in the comp you checked the disk with?

IIRC the boundry is arround 138gb, after which windows wont see the partition and will show it as blank.
I had this problem before when my OS died i had several partitions vanish until i enabled it again.

markyd · « **Reply #21 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:15:46 pm »

Ohhhh.. now that I havent tried.... I thought that it was enabled during FDISK though... can you enable it elsewhere... the other computer im using is a w2k o/s.. Thanks Cue... and thanks Core

MrCue · « **Reply #22 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:18:45 pm »

I have no idea about 2k, im an XP pro user
Find a friend with XP, enable it and see if the datas there.

markyd · « **Reply #23 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:25:39 pm »

Ok thanks I'll give it a try

wulf111 · « **Reply #24 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:40:17 pm »

http://www.download.com/Active-Partition-Recovery/3000-2248_4-10210196.html?tag=lst-0-12

http://www.download.com/VirtualLab-Data-Recovery/3000-2094_4-10254291.html

http://www.download.com/R-Studio-Data-Recovery/3000-2094_4-8134556.html

just a few progs from download.com that might be of use in recovering your data

markyd · « **Reply #25 on:** October 29, 2004, 04:47:47 pm »

Excellent... thank you very mutch.. all this help is greatly appreciated.... in fact so mutch so that when that ship is finished U.S.S. WULF sounds good

Core · « **Reply #26 on:** October 29, 2004, 05:59:45 pm »

good luck and id suggest not using any thing except XP to recover your data ....

markyd · « **Reply #27 on:** October 30, 2004, 02:56:46 am »

Ok... Ive tried everything.. according to the other xp pro computer (one in work shhhhhh

) My HDD are both blank and unformatted.. I tried recoverey software.. some of which said it was unable to perform recovery on an unformatted hdd... whilst others just didnt work...

Once again, thanks for your help.. I am however convinced I was either hacked or had an uber virus or somthing... Now where is that XP CD... time to start a fresh

Dawntreader · « **Reply #28 on:** October 30, 2004, 03:55:19 am »

Do you have more than one partition on your hard drive? If not, I recommend that you create two partitions: one with the operating system and one with your data. It would reduce the chance of lost information. Or better yet, two hard drives.
BTW, I use Windows 98. I have been thinking of upgrading to Win2k, WinMe, or WinXP. Nice thing, I can actually install windows off of my second partition (don't want to have to whip out the install CD everytime I make a change).
I recommend that you also plan on making a few additions. Install a good firewall program. I use ZoneAlarm. Monitors network access. You can keep certain programs from accessing the internet while at the same time letting others through. It blocks ALL external attempts to access your computer.
Also, get a good Anti-virus. I use Norton Antivirus. I have mine set up to monitor EVERYTHING. I once opened a folder and it found a virus on one of the files. Also stops viruses from being downloaded.
I personally do not recommend leaving your computer unsupervised while a file is being downloaded. Allows you to stop problems before they get worse. If I need to download something huge, I set aside a day so that I can watch it.
To bad about your data. I hope you find some of this info useful. You probably know all of this already, but it bears repeating. The internet can be dangerous. If you keep to these recommendations you will be that much safer.
If you need anything, I have 1,892 ships one my computer. Some may be duplicated by accident but I will be happy to share.

markyd · « **Reply #29 on:** October 30, 2004, 08:53:45 am »

You see thats the funny thing...

Windows XP Pro, NTFS Filesystem, 2 x HDD each with 2 partitions on each... windows xp firewall, zonealarm and norton systemworks 2004 all up and running... ans shazzam... all gone

I am now resigned as I know there is no way to recover this data without paying out of my a**! Im formatting and restarting my life today! $:-\$

Core · « **Reply #30 on:** October 30, 2004, 09:02:18 am »

don't give up there is a way to restore the data after its been formated... i recovered some very important files at one time after formanting .... don't remember what program

markyd · « **Reply #31 on:** October 30, 2004, 09:32:07 am »

yeah mabey your right... I'll give it a couple of days and see what I can dig up.... thanks Core

Starforce2 · « **Reply #32 on:** October 30, 2004, 10:03:36 am »

I was looking for recovery operations for a digicam card, found one for 35 bucks online. Now, perhaps simply spending time searching online you can find one. I'll keep my eyes out. Most places you can send the drive to will charge a couple hundred.

markyd · « **Reply #33 on:** October 30, 2004, 10:09:39 am »

Thanks SF... I have been looking... no luck yet... ost places want like £400

Centurus · « **Reply #34 on:** October 30, 2004, 03:43:33 pm »

You're lucky in a way. Several years ago one of my hard drives actually blew out!!! I contacted a data recovery company and they said that if they could recover my data, it could cost up to about 2000 bucks!!!! Because of the size of the drive and the nature of how my drive was damaged. It's a 20 gig. I still have it. As far as I know, still doesn't work.

markyd · « **Reply #35 on:** October 30, 2004, 04:15:12 pm »

WOW... I have accepted my fate though... I will format and restart in the morning and then give my wife her lappycrappy back...

Core · « **Reply #36 on:** October 30, 2004, 04:31:14 pm »

dont let her see this post

markyd · « **Reply #37 on:** October 30, 2004, 04:50:30 pm »

Imagine that.... rofl... nah Im ganna have to reboot... she needs her lappy for uni on monday and I need your input guys so I need my puter up and running.... plus this stupid finger mouse thingy does mu bol**cks in... right pain in the butt!!!

"I'll be back!"

manitoba1073 · « **Reply #38 on:** October 30, 2004, 05:06:30 pm »

i never heard xp going to dos propt like u described. as from what i asertained XP dont work with dos at all.

Core · « **Reply #39 on:** October 30, 2004, 05:12:23 pm »

actually it dose in a way remember scandisk and it could if a hacker rewrote the boot files in the main startup files...
that says ... id suggest updating your softwere regularly coz a 2 yearold firewall .... doesn't do the job very often

plus get sum sort of a pup-up blocker and switch to mozila .... that should solve several hundred security problems.... in the short term any way

wulf111 · « **Reply #40 on:** November 01, 2004, 08:57:04 am »

I sorry you couldnt get any of your files back Markyd i thought at least one of those programs might be able to do something (bows head for moment of silence for the lost data)

Quote

Excellent... thank you very mutch.. all this help is greatly appreciated.... in fact so mutch so that when that ship is finished U.S.S. WULF sounds good

even suggesting this is a great honor my friend I am touched

markyd · « **Reply #41 on:** November 01, 2004, 11:24:25 am »

All was not lost.... upon resetting my computer and reinstalling everything I didnt touch my backup HDD... When I installed XP the backup drive was all there and singing happy.... wierd considering that when I stuck the same HDD in my work computer it said it was blank... either way.. I have retrieved allot of my work... the main thing I have lost which wasnt backed up was the reeve...

Anyway.. im moving on... thanks for all of your help guys... really appreciated

wulf111 · « **Reply #42 on:** November 01, 2004, 11:30:43 am »

is your computer at work a Win98 system? if so remember Win98 cannot see NTFS partitions

markyd · « **Reply #43 on:** November 01, 2004, 11:37:35 am »

Rofl.... No its an XP System

Either way... I got most of it back so it wasnt that bad

wulf111 · « **Reply #44 on:** November 01, 2004, 11:45:06 am »

glad to hear that most of it is back Markyd i know thats a relief to you.

markyd · « **Reply #45 on:** November 01, 2004, 12:38:21 pm »

Itis a relief.... to loose everything was a bit of a hard pill to swollow... a loss of 10% is just a bit of a kick in the a*s.... so I will rub and move on

Core · « **Reply #46 on:** February 08, 2005, 06:06:05 pm »

BTW if you wish to reduse the risk do the thing that I've suggested earlier ... it could prevent some similar disaster i the future

--------------------------
a bit late i know ...

Sapharite · « **Reply #47 on:** February 10, 2005, 03:37:58 am »

Damn it

I hope Your Rommie fighter is still on ???

$:-\$

markyd · « **Reply #48 on:** February 12, 2005, 08:13:20 pm »

Rofl.... This little problem occured along time before the start of the Rommy fighter... Ahhhhh however let this failing by myself be a lesson to all that do not do regular backups.... occasionaly it comes to bite you on the a$$

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Topic: HELP!!! (Read 5039 times)