first time problem : can't find boot dsk on startup

[beavereater]

I hate it when I wake up and JUST on my way out to work that I realize there's a problem with my PC and KNOWING that I will be thinking about it ALL day.

OK so I successfully installed a new 1TB Harddrve. Moved all my pictures from my drive running Windows since that was what was taking up the majority of the 250GB space. After that, I spent most of the day online looking for movie props and paints etc. When I left the computer, it was on. When I went to bed, it was on. I decided to leave it on so I could see if any of my ebay bids were final. When I looked at the screen it was at the part just after the startup. It must have reset itself and I don't know why. It was very windy last night (Good, since it's summer) I don't think there were any storms or power outtages. I restarted my computer as stated ctrl alt del. Same message. I checked bios to see what drive it was starting with. It looked like my other 1TB drive was set as M and the other two (Old 250GB with OS and new 1TB with pictures) as S. I thought this was strange. I wasn't sure (haven't needed to go into BIOS for ages) but I moved the 250BG up the list. It remained with S but now when I restarted it gave me a 'cannot find boot dsk mngr' or something like that. It asked to repair. I said OK but the message quickly went to that it couldn't and that I should remove any plugnplay devices etc.

I have HOURS to think but no access to my PC. Please fill this thread with advice. I'm running Win7. I plan on using my Win7 to boot from and repair when I get home. Remove, for now, the new HD to see if issues are there. I hate this feeling...

[aedipuss]

the bios doesn't assign drive letters. there is no way to know what a drive "letter" is until after windows loads so what are you talking about?

[jagabo]

Remove the secondary disk and try booting with just the original disk. Once you get that working you can worry about the second disk.

[johns0]

the bios doesn't assign drive letters. there is no way to know what a drive "letter" is until after windows loads so what are you talking about?

M=master position,S=(secondary)slave position,that what the bios assigns the the hdd position in boot ranking,not windows.

[beavereater]

OK...removed the HD and it's gone into repairing. Not sure how long it will take. I hope I didn't just transfer 100GB worth of photos to a bad HD.

ETA: it just got done saying it couldn't make repairs. It had an option to view details. The only part that really stuck was Bad Disk. I'm not sure if this means my 25GB drive is now fried and if I should try and re-install Win7...which I don't want to do...I hate digging around for all my programs and re-installing them. If it is the drive I wonder why how the other HD was messing with it.

[beavereater]

OK...I did a memory test, left it running, came back and Win 7 is now up. I'm gonna turn everything off and plug-in the HD and see what happens.

[darkknight145]

love the animated image in your posts.......... very distracting though!

[beavereater]

This is what the dskchk gave me

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
Cleaning up instance tags for file 0x2b994.
198144 file records processed. File verification completed.
237 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 0 EA records processed. 60 reparse records processed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
248282 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
198144 file SDs/SIDs processed. CHKDSK is compacting the security descriptor stream
Cleaning up 1819 unused security descriptors.
25070 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
33721032 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
198128 files processed. File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
33333027 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

245103673 KB total disk space.
111385108 KB in 140111 files.
80812 KB in 25073 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
305641 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
133332112 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61275918 total allocation units on disk.
33333028 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 06 03 00 48 85 02 00 25 97 04 00 00 00 00 00 ....H...%.......
fe 09 00 00 3c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....<...........
20 60 15 00 50 01 13 00 d0 1c 13 00 00 00 13 00 `..P...........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

[aedipuss]

the bios doesn't assign drive letters. there is no way to know what a drive "letter" is until after windows loads so what are you talking about?

M=master position,S=(secondary)slave position,that what the bios assigns the the hdd position in boot ranking,not windows.

no. you assign those. bios just reads their position on the cable or the jumpers you set.

[Nelson37]

PATA or SATA drives? If PATA, probable drive incompatibility. The M and S designations point to being PATA. Possible the cable is bad or loose. Be prepared to seperate the drives on different cables.

"The part just after the startup" - This is completely non-informational. A more complete description is required for more accurate diagnosis. There were most likely words on the screen, what did they say?

[SLK001]

Is your system on a UPS? If not, you might want to get one that can see your system through a power glitch. Your system HD checked out fine, so probably Windows was "doin' something" when the glitch occured, thus boot problems.

[beavereater]

PATA or SATA drives? If PATA, probable drive incompatibility. The M and S designations point to being PATA. Possible the cable is bad or loose. Be prepared to seperate the drives on different cables.

"The part just after the startup" - This is completely non-informational. A more complete description is required for more accurate diagnosis. There were most likely words on the screen, what did they say?

All SATA drives.

I can't find where I said "The part just after startup." The message I was getting was as after the BIOS splash screen just after it finishes showing me what is running (Looks like DOS stuff). I'm going to turn off my PC and plug the HD back in to see what happens.

Is your system on a UPS? If not, you might want to get one that can see your system through a power glitch. Your system HD checked out fine, so probably Windows was "doin' something" when the glitch occured, thus boot problems.

By UPS do you mean Uninterruptible power supply? If so, then I don't think so. I've never heard of them until now.

[Bjs]

By the sounds of it and the actions taken so far you may have a hard drive which developed a fault ... normally this type is terminal or will be soon.

Note that this was the message the system reported after failing to repair itself.

1:

With the original os hd in the system try using the win7 disc to do a reinstall ... just stop when it reaches the point where it shows partitions found ... this tells you the hardware is able to communicate ... if partitions displayed look normal ... exit the reinstall process now.

2:

Time to backup data ... preferably using a live linux distro.

3:

Repeat the reinstall process and go all the way with recreating the partition ... should the end result return system to normal operation then you had mft table corruption ... if not then the drive has a more serious fault and needs to be replaced.

[johns0]

the bios doesn't assign drive letters. there is no way to know what a drive "letter" is until after windows loads so what are you talking about?

M=master position,S=(secondary)slave position,that what the bios assigns the the hdd position in boot ranking,not windows.

no. you assign those. bios just reads their position on the cable or the jumpers you set.

In newer mb the bios reads the hdd starting from sata1 down to sata6,not from jumpers or cables,you can then later change the boot order in the bios by making any of the other sata first in line.By default sata1 is master drive and the rest are secondary.

[beavereater]

Well, everything seems to be working.

I have moved all important data over to my new HD. If the 250GB crashes, there won't be anything on it. I may just pick up another 1TB drive and toss the 250GB, spend my day off re-installing everything. Maybe get a couple new parts here and there...

[johns0]

You might want to replace the cable on the drive that's having the problem.

[SLK001]

By UPS do you mean Uninterruptible power supply? If so, then I don't think so. I've never heard of them until now.

A good investment - especially in Japan with all of your power problems. I live in South Florida, serviced by FPL (Frequent Power Loss) electric company, so my UPS has saved my ass more than once.

Also, look at the SMART data from your hard drive. It will tell you if it is having problems. If it is, then it is time to replace it. If no problems are reported, then maybe Windows got corrupted by your power glitch.

[jagabo]

Also, look at the SMART data from your hard drive. It will tell you if it is having problems.

Only about 1/3 of the time, according to Google (who analyzed a lot of their drive failures).

[SLK001]

Also, look at the SMART data from your hard drive. It will tell you if it is having problems.

Only about 1/3 of the time, according to Google (who analyzed a lot of their drive failures).

I guess that this depends on the brand of the drive. Seagate does a good job of reporting hardware ECC errors, which is the major thing that you want to watch for "pending failure". I'm not familiar with other brand's reporting abilities.

[jagabo]

Also, look at the SMART data from your hard drive. It will tell you if it is having problems.

Only about 1/3 of the time, according to Google (who analyzed a lot of their drive failures).

I guess that this depends on the brand of the drive. Seagate does a good job of reporting hardware ECC errors, which is the major thing that you want to watch for "pending failure". I'm not familiar with other brand's reporting abilities.

It covered all brands:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/labs.google.com/en...k_failures.pdf

I agree that ECC errors are easily detected by SMART. And that once you start getting bad blocks the odds are high that others will develop shortly. I replace a drive when it starts showing ECC errors and use it for non-critical storage only.

[SLK001]

The problem that I have with the Google study, is that they considered it a drive failure even if the cable or the controller was the actual defective item. I was also surprised with the percentage of drives still operating 8 months after their first ECC error (70%) - I would have expected a lower percentage.

But alas, in the end, all we have to go on are our SMART readings. At least this is more than we had 20 years ago.

[TBoneit]

It really sounds like the power blipped, on/off/on possibly rapidly. That will tend to cause software problems and / or power supply problems.

Definitely look into a good UPS one that has high enough VA rating as well as a maximum power output wattage rating.

it is quite common to have different models or brands of a UPS with the same VA rating and totally different output power ratings.

[Nelson37]

Your second attempt at describing the screen was only very slightly less useless than the first one. The PC restarted and apparently stopped before completely loading Windows. This is generally a bad thing, however, you have not provided enough information to tell if it is just Somewhat bad or Really, Really bad.

The units being discussed are Battery Backup systems, they are NOT uninterruptible power supplies. There is a major difference. True UPS are not consumer items.