Help! Bootup problem

oxygene

oxygene

oxygene

Soldato
Joined
20 Aug 2004
Posts
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Location
Bournemouth
So today I opened a file I shouldnt have from a 10 year old abandonware game I found on a site. My pc reset and didnt boot up. Fair enough, many steps later I managed to get windows on to a spare hd I had lying around and use that to "fix" my boot disc. Problem now is, if I start up my pc using the standard C drive, it hangs and still doesnt work. But if I start it pointing to the G drive (the one with the windows disc on) then it lets me chose windows and boots fine off my boot disc. So seriously what on earth have I done lol.
 
Ok I've now done several chkdsk's and a system restore and it STILL relies on the other hd like some kind of artificial organ!
 
AARRGGHHHH Now I really need help!
I completely wiped C, and once wiped I destroyed the raid and rebuilt it. And reinstalled windows onto it with no problems. But it still wont boot via C! It still only boots via the other drive. When I unplug the other drive or change the boot order back to C everything still hangs!

HELPPPPPP Please!
 
Download disk diagnostics tool from the HDD manufacturers website. This is normally a live CD. With only once disk connected, boot from the CD and run though a full diagnostic check. This will tell you if the drive is faulty.

See how that goes.
 
Ouch, that means breaking the raid again and reinstalling windows. Might put that idea off for an hour or two! :p
 
oxygene said:
Ouch, that means breaking the raid again and reinstalling windows. Might put that idea off for an hour or two! :p
Click to expand...

As far as i know the live CD doesn't care about the raid (i could be wrong).. Run the live cd with raid first, if that doesn't work just disconnect and try each drive in turn.
 
Ok still no joy. Lets break this down.
We can assume the following:
* The windows install is fine as it boots ok
* The hd/raid works fine because it boots
* The source windows installer is fine because I've recopied it several times to the hd

The error needs the following answered:
* What causes a fine windows install stop before even a logo, and stay as a flashing underscore
* What, when causing the above, is solved by booting to the install disk and redirecting to the boot disk
* What, causing the above, isnt solved by wiping the boot disk and reinstalling several times

All I can think is that the source is a problem now. I have the windows 7 image extracted onto a harddisk and use that to boot.
 
The windows installer or one of the sata cables on the hard drive?
install windows without the other drive connected -it may have installed boot files onto that drive rather than the C drive, and wont recognise an installation of windows because it is looking for the other drive.
 
All problems solved :/ Took me about 12h altogether lol. I switched to a smaller version of win7 and used my usb 4gb stick, which wouldnt fit the previous version. Now it all runs fine :/
Thanks for all the help though! Couldnt have narrowed down the problem without.
 
haha, that's 6 hours longer than my worst problem which was actually pretty similar to this, but not RAID, and i didnt have to reinstall my OS :)
A LOT of fiddling with dos, boot disks and other hard drives though :P
 
The worst part is, I just settled in to an afternoon / evening of reinstalling everything when the parents pc decided to stop working :/ Completely different symptoms, but god I'm sick of this lol.
 
God no idea on this one. It also doesnt like booting atm, and its compounded by the problem that the mobo likes to switch from seeing an x2 6400 to see a 200mhz dual core. Never solved that problem but its maxing the error diagnosis 100x slower :/ About ready to chuck it out the window.
 
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