Just performing the autopsy and would like some input as I've never experienced this in all my years using Windows...
Machine was running fine - 100% stable. Turned it on Saturday morning and WinXP wouldn't boot. The ASUS/BIOS splash screen came up, but then when it tried to load the OS nothing happened - black screen and no hard drive activity. Went into BIOS and the hard drive was recognized. Chucked the drive into another PC and could access the data on it no problem. Ran a chkdsk and gave no errors - checked the S.M.A.R.T. readings and everything came back 100% healthy.
Used the WinXP install disk to get into the recovery console - obvious conclusion was the MBR had got nuked. Used fixmbr and fixboot commands - still nothing. Tried a repair installation of XP - still nothing.
At this point I ran out of ideas and decided to try and install Win7 - had been putting it off for a while because XP was working fine. Win7 installed fine. Have been thrashing the machine the past couple of days just to see if everything is happy - seems absolutely stable again.
Now, the only thing I can think of that may have destroyed XP was that I had run Defraggler just before I turned the machine off the previous day. Maybe Defraggler somehow completely fouled up the boot sector beyond repair? Have been using it for years with no issues though. My first thought was that the hard drive (Spinpoint F3 500GB) had died after Defraggler had worked it hard.....but the drive seems totally healthy.
Thanks for reading this far
Any other ideas on what might have happened?
Machine was running fine - 100% stable. Turned it on Saturday morning and WinXP wouldn't boot. The ASUS/BIOS splash screen came up, but then when it tried to load the OS nothing happened - black screen and no hard drive activity. Went into BIOS and the hard drive was recognized. Chucked the drive into another PC and could access the data on it no problem. Ran a chkdsk and gave no errors - checked the S.M.A.R.T. readings and everything came back 100% healthy.
Used the WinXP install disk to get into the recovery console - obvious conclusion was the MBR had got nuked. Used fixmbr and fixboot commands - still nothing. Tried a repair installation of XP - still nothing.
At this point I ran out of ideas and decided to try and install Win7 - had been putting it off for a while because XP was working fine. Win7 installed fine. Have been thrashing the machine the past couple of days just to see if everything is happy - seems absolutely stable again.
Now, the only thing I can think of that may have destroyed XP was that I had run Defraggler just before I turned the machine off the previous day. Maybe Defraggler somehow completely fouled up the boot sector beyond repair? Have been using it for years with no issues though. My first thought was that the hard drive (Spinpoint F3 500GB) had died after Defraggler had worked it hard.....but the drive seems totally healthy.
Thanks for reading this far
Any other ideas on what might have happened?