XP Box Died

Post by **thibodeaux** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:15 pm

Here's the deal. I had XP Home running on a laptop. It is no longer running. When you power it up, you get the hard drive light, hard drive noise, and that's it. Black screen. Nothing.

But here's what's odd: I've got a Knoppix CD, and that'll boot right up and mount my hard drive partitions no problem. I've saved almost everything off the hard drive that I need, except for the stuff the wife saved on the Desktop (which I bitched at her about doing; saving stuff on the Desktop annoys me a great deal, because I don't backup the Desktop). The reason I can't get the Desktop stuff is that where the Desktop folder should be is a 0-byte file with absolutely no permissions (remember, this is Knoppix).

Because the laptop manufacturer appears to be some sort of totalitarian organization, I don't actually have a WinXP CD. I have some sort of "system recovery" CD which promises to wipe my hard drive entirely and reinstall the factory image. Some recovery.

Anyway, my question for the experts is: What's wrong with my computer? Is the boot sector hosed or something? Should I waste my time trying to find a Windows XP CD, or is there some nifty util out there I can run from Knoppix or put on another bootable CD that will fix my damn computer?

Thank you.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:16 pm

"Stay off the porn sites."

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:21 pm

So, nost POST info? Or does it go past all that and when the OS should load, it stays black? I'm assuming you never get asked if you want to boot last known good, and stuff like that.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:24 pm

I mean nothing. The only thing that shows up on the screen is the manufacturer name, for like 2 seconds right after the power comes on, and then black.

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:27 pm

But with that Knoppix thing, you get POST and a prompt?

Is this like a Compaq where you have to hit a key to see POST info?

Edited By Cakedaddy on 1115263671

Post by **thibodeaux** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:31 pm

I don't know what POST is.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:33 pm

Oh, Power On Self Test.

No, that never displayed before, either, now that I think of it.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:36 pm

I can get into the BIOS by tapping F2 when I power on.

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Wed May 04, 2005 11:52 pm

Did you format NTFS or FAT32?

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:22 am

I really can't remember. I suspect it's FAT32, but I just don't remember.

By the way, when I hit F8 right after power-on (trying to get into safe mode), it says "Operating System not found."

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:36 pm

If it's FAT32, I would try putting the 'sys' info back on the C: drive. But man. . . I haven't done that in so long that I don't remember exactly how to tell you to do it. With format, you do it with the /s switch. But, that's not what you want in this case! I believe if you put sys.xxx (don't remember if it's .bin, .exe, or what) on a bootable floppy, (It may already be there given it's a bootable floppy) you can type:

sys C:

and it will copy the boot info onto the drive.

There's also a switch that will rebuild the MBR, but again, been too long to remember.

Other questions:

Did you add/remove any hard drives? This could change the drive ID and cause XP to not find it's system files. I'm pretty sure boot.ini contains the drive ID/partition info XP (and NT) uses to find it's system/boot files. If you add/subtract drives, that info could change.

If it's NTFS, I have no idea. . . . The add/remove drive question would still apply, however, MBR/SYS stuff would not. At least, I've never messed with those things on NTFS.

One way to find out if you have FAT32 or NTFS is to boot with a floppy, and then see if you can see the drive contents. If you can, then it's FAT32. If not, then it's NTFS. Or, put FDISK on the floppy and run that.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:46 pm

We haven't done any hardware fiddlin' ever. I'm planning to try some stuff tonight with a floppy.

Post by **GORDON** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:57 pm

thibodeaux wrote:I'm planning to try some stuff tonight with a floppy.

I'll bet.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:28 pm

Hey, when the hard drive is broken, you gotta make do.

Post by **TheCatt** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:32 pm

Your hard drive is broken.

As for the POST, if you enter your bios, you should be able to turn the POST back on.

It sounds like your hd got corrupted in some way (either a physical issue with partial corruption, MFT or just the c:\ directory, which contains your boot.ini, etc) My laptop hard drive died a similar-sounding slow death.

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:33 pm

Ohhh. SOmething else I just though. Oh, wait, you don't have an XP CD. NEver mind! Was gonna suggest a repair cause XP cds are bootable.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Thu May 12, 2005 10:04 pm

Looks like the hard drive is fux0red. How big a pain is it to replace those things?

Post by **GORDON** » Thu May 12, 2005 11:16 pm

Not a pain at all as long as you don't want to save anything off the fux0red drive.

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Fri May 13, 2005 5:36 am

The hard drive should be pretty easy to change. Remove a few screws to take the panel off. The drive should have a little ribbon, or plastic handle you can grab to pull it out. It might have a set screw holding it in, so check for that. The little IDE ribbon will be self explanatory as well. I'm SURE you'll be able to handle it. Hard part will be finding a replacement drive at a decent price.

On the other hand, some laptops let you remove the hard drive by holding a 'switch' and sliding it out. Much like you would remove the battery. This is so you can easily have multiple drives for extra storage and stuff. Use to use a Gateway laptop with multiple drives. Had different OSes on each drive. Was super cool. Anyway, haven't seen a laptop like that in ages though. Not since drives got bigger than 1GB. So, not knowing how old your laptop is, I wanted to throw that out there.

Post by **TheCatt** » Fri May 13, 2005 8:24 am

5-10 minutes on 99% of laptops. A few screws to get it out, a few more screws to get it out of the caddy. Most laptops I've opened lately have the ATA interface screwed directly onto the drive, no IDE cable/ribbon.

You can get a 40GB 5400 for just over $70 at newegg (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152501)