Non System Disk Or Disk Failure


  #1  
Old 05-06-01, 06:14 AM
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My HD is detected at boot up fine. When HD goes into booting up it says NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK FAILURE.

I have a boot disk. I boot up to drive a:\
When I try to switch to drive c or d it says Invalid Drive Specification.

I think I got a virus on this HD because just before this happened I downloaded some program and ran it without checking it for viruses.

I know the data on the HD is still there I just can't access it. I had a dual boot system on it Windows 2000 and 98.

How can I fix this problem without loosing my data?

I've read about fdisk /mbr command will that do the trick? Would I still be able to dual boot between windows 98 and 2000?

Should the boot disk be from Windows 98 or Windows 2000?

When I go into fdisk is says NO PARTITIONS ARE DEFINED

Thanks.
 
  #2  
Old 05-06-01, 07:30 AM
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I just ran PowerQuest's Lost and Found program.

It said that my FAT and Boot Sector was OK.

The problem it found was "Master Partition Sector is Invalid"

How can I fix this? Norton Utilities, Partition Magic, fdisk /mbr?

Thanks.

 
  #3  
Old 05-06-01, 09:09 AM
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Non-systemdisk - DualBoot

Howdy pwtg,

What U have happening is a problem with the dual boot up manager. U mentioned PowerQuest. I apologize I do not recognize that one.

What a dual boot manager does is that it utilizes the Partition0 to allow U to select which OS U wish to use. Windows is very territorial and does NOT like letting something else control how the bootup sequence occurs. Consequently, when new programs R installed and then reboot the system, the Boot manager may B bypassed and consequently the physical addresses of the OS is lost.

How to fix? Depends on what U R using as the Boot manager. Some older systems made prior to Hard Drives bigger than 4GB are NOT able to recognize drives bigger than 8.4GB without using a boot up manager. These systems must use a 3rd party boot manager to compensate for the BIOS limitations. WesternDigital has an excellent one called DataLifeGaurd {used to B EZ-Drive}.

One other tip, when a boot manager is used, U MUST boot up with the floppy OUT and then insert the floppy when U select to bootup from a floppy. Bypassing this step when booting from a floppy also bypasses the interface needed to define the HardDrive parameters and using fdisk or even trying a DIR on the hard drive will say not accessible or non-existent.

Hope that helps guide U some. Remember, the accuracy of an answer is dependant on the accuracy of the quest {grins}.

 
  #4  
Old 05-06-01, 09:28 AM
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Thanks for the info.

But I'm not using any Boot Up Managers.

I'm using the Windows 2000 default boot loader.
So I have an option to windows 98 or windows 2000.

My MB and HD are new. Updated to late 2000 info. So that's not the problem with that.
 
  #5  
Old 05-06-01, 06:50 PM
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I got that same message when my Primary IDE controller went out.
 
  #6  
Old 05-06-01, 07:54 PM
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I know it's not the controller because other HD's work fine.

Any other ideas?
 
  #7  
Old 05-06-01, 08:05 PM
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If you have a legal copy of windows 2000, contact microsoft support, it might be something that have come across before. If it is a copy then don't ask microsoft. I never tried out the a dual boot or used it with windows 2000. I have heard of partitions just disappearing and they had to be reinstated but at the cost of losing your data and redoing the system.

Did you tried booting up on a boot disk and then typing
DIR C: to see if you can see a directory listing. Was windows 2000 on a different partition of the same drive ?
 
  #8  
Old 05-07-01, 08:09 AM
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if you have access to the net, try one or both of these programs.

V-buster:
http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0...st-7-1.1859768

if this link does not work go to http://www.download.com search for boot sector.

and

ERD Commander http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0...st-7-5.4808100

also at http://www.download.com search for disk repair.

g'luck
 
  #9  
Old 05-07-01, 08:24 AM
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Thanks for your advice.

I will try those programs.

I can't go into c or any other drives. It just says Invalid Drive Specification.
 
  #10  
Old 05-10-01, 10:40 AM
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Have you tried the culprit hard drive in any other machines? I wanted to make sure it was not my drive, it has 2300 MP3 files on it which I would hate to lose, so I installed it as a slave drive on another PC. It works just fine.

When I got the same error messages that you got I could not run fdisk properly. I tried on another older HDD. After reboot, it would not allow a format. Still the same error message "NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK FAILURE"

So I called the motherboard manufaturer. They suggested trying the HDD on the secondary channel just to see if it would detect. It did. So now I know that the primary channel is not working. Warranty time.
 
  #11  
Old 05-10-01, 01:47 PM
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Did you try fdisk /mbr
This sometimes repairs the master boot record.

If fdisk says no partitions found then you may have already lost everything on that drive.
 
 

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