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[TimB]

My desktop PC is causing me some trouble.

I've been trying to run chkdsk on my C: drive for awhile but XP requires that you reboot to do it and when I did reboot XP told me that it couldn't activate "Direct Mode". I'd read about this being an SP2 fix so I installed SP2. CHKDSK still didn't run so I forgot about it.

Just now my PC rebooted (for no apparent reason) and ran CHKDSK. It found a bunch of bad files completed part 3 of 3 and then rebooted and ran CHKDSK again with no problems.

EXCEPT that now when its booting, after XP starts up and just before the desktop comes up the PC restarts.

After trying out a number of things I thought maybe my XP had been screwed up so I tried booting my XP CD from the CD drive (and changing my BIOS to use the CD drive as the first boot drive). When I try that I get the message "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM"
"No emulation"
and it jumps to try C: again.

Any good ideas?

-=Tim=-

[paulr]

How far do you get when booting from the XP CD?  Do you get to any menus at all?

[TimB]

How far do you get when booting from the XP CD?  Do you get to any menus at all?

No the PC gives the error message when it tries to start reading from that CD!  

-=Tim=-

[paulr]

It's starting to sound to me like a hardware failure, possibly using the BIOS jumper to clear its memory would help to nail down a cause.  Have you tried clearing the BIOS?

[Omni]

Just now my PC rebooted (for no apparent reason) and ran CHKDSK. It found a bunch of bad files completed part 3 of 3 and then rebooted and ran CHKDSK again with no problems.

EXCEPT that now when its booting, after XP starts up and just before the desktop comes up the PC restarts.

Well, FYI, chkdsk can't repair/restore lost data.  It only updates the FAT so it will no longer refer to the bad sectors.  It also takes those bad sectors and copies them (if it can) to those near useless *.chk files.

Anyway, it sounds like some system files got corrupted.  Using the repair option from the Windows CD's setup menu should fix things, but that brings us to your next problem.

The "no emulation" message is normal.  Windows' boot CD doesn't use emulation; it actually uses a image file to serve as the mini-filesystem.  Your BIOS should be giving you the option to "press any key to continue booting from CD," but perhaps your CD is also somehow corrupted.   ?  (Make sure it's nice and clean with no finger prints or scratches.)

Since you are able to access this forum, I suppose it's safe to assume you have access to some sort of working computer and the net.

Here's a link to program (from Microsoft) that will create a set of boot floppies you can use in conjuction with your Windows CD.  If you don't have a floppy to boot from (some people don't these days), then I'm sorry, I don't know how else to help.

[TimB]

Thanks all, here's an update:

If I remove power from my C: drive I can boot off the CD.  (Could this be something to do with the MBR?)  Anyway, I had an empty drive and I'm installing Windows XP on that drive and hoping that I can then re-power the C drive and at least get the data off of it.  I understand I'll have to reinstall all my software.

Does this make sense?

-=Tim=-

[Omni]

Does this make sense?

Yeah, but if you would have just created the boot floppies I pointed you to, then you could have saved yourself the trouble of reinstalling everything.  

Oh, well, doing a fresh install of Windows every once in a while is always a good thing anyway, so I'm glad to hear you found a solution.  (Also, "repairing" Windows sometimes leads to crash-prone systems, so again, doing a fresh install is probably your best option.)

[TimB]

OK, so lets say I can boot from my new drive.  Will my PC get confused when I power up the old boot drive as well as the new drive.

Thanks!

-=Tim=-

[Omni]

OK, so lets say I can boot from my new drive.  Will my PC get confused when I power up the old boot drive as well as the new drive.

If you make no jumper changes or at least switch drives around if they are both masters, then yes, it will.

When you tell BIOS to boot from the hard drive, it does it in order:

(1st) IDE Channel 0, Master
(2nd) IDE Channel 0, Slave
(3rd) IDE Channel 1, Master
(4th) IDE Channel 1, Slave

The first one it finds with a boot sector, it will boot from.

[paulr]

That depends Omni, some BIOSes allow you to define which physical hard disk to boot from.  Mine does (nForce 2 chipset).  I have been able to dual boot using this method (not that I would recommend it, but it works).

[Bill Ko]

Just now my PC rebooted (for no apparent reason) and ran CHKDSK. It found a bunch of bad files completed part 3 of 3 and then rebooted and ran CHKDSK again with no problems.

EXCEPT that now when its booting, after XP starts up and just before the desktop comes up the PC restarts.

Well, FYI, chkdsk can't repair/restore lost data.  It only updates the FAT so it will no longer refer to the bad sectors.  It also takes those bad sectors and copies them (if it can) to those near useless *.chk files.

I always thought that NTFS automatically allocates a certain percentage of sectors as "hot fix" sectors upon formatting that, if a sector is found to be bad, automatically reads the sector a few times and writes the data to a hot fix sector, redirecting all references to the bad sector to the hot fix sector.  Something to do with "fault tolerance."

Bill

[Alex B]

Will my PC get confused when I power up the old boot drive as well as the new drive.

If your new drive has only one formatted partition (C:), then you see your old drive as D: (and E:, F:, etc if you have more partitions). Windows won't mind, because it uses only the new boot drive and system folders on it. You can change drive letters once you have started Windows.

I suppose you have ordinary IDE drives. Just make sure that you don't have two master drives on the same IDE cable. Use another cable (and the second IDE connector on the motherboard) for your old drive.

If you use the same cable for both, the jumpers on the old drive must be in the slave position (instructions are usually printed on the drive). A slave drive should be connected to the middle connector. Some drives have also a position "master with slave present". That should be used on your new drive if exists.

Another thing is if you have changed the boot order in your BIOS, but I assume you have the default settings.

[Omni]

Just now my PC rebooted (for no apparent reason) and ran CHKDSK. It found a bunch of bad files completed part 3 of 3 and then rebooted and ran CHKDSK again with no problems.

EXCEPT that now when its booting, after XP starts up and just before the desktop comes up the PC restarts.

Well, FYI, chkdsk can't repair/restore lost data.  It only updates the FAT so it will no longer refer to the bad sectors.  It also takes those bad sectors and copies them (if it can) to those near useless *.chk files.

I always thought that NTFS automatically allocates a certain percentage of sectors as "hot fix" sectors upon formatting that, if a sector is found to be bad, automatically reads the sector a few times and writes the data to a hot fix sector, redirecting all references to the bad sector to the hot fix sector.  Something to do with "fault tolerance."

Bill

I'm not aware of that as a "general" rule.  Unrelated, but it does make automatic backups of the registry.

Anyway, if you go to Administrative Tools --> Computer Management and then "Disk Management" under the "Storage" branch, you will generally see "Fault Tolerance" set to "No."  The only time I have seen it set to "Yes" was when and if the drive/partition was part of a Raid 1 or Raid 5 setup.

Also, I think if you create a dynamic drive, then you can enable fault tolerance, but by default, ordinary IDE drives (NTFS or not) are not fault tolerant.

<shrug>

Then again, there may be some hidden system tweak I am unaware of.

[Omni]

That depends Omni, some BIOSes allow you to define which physical hard disk to boot from.  Mine does (nForce 2 chipset).  I have been able to dual boot using this method (not that I would recommend it, but it works).

Yeah, that's true, but it's not common, so I made a presumption in Tim's case so not to burden him with information overload.  (For instance, I didn't talk about the case were you manually force another partition to be the "active" partition. )

[paulr]

so not to burden him with information overload.

Understood, and I generally agree with this sentiment, but in this case, it might have saved some fumbling around with cables and jumpers...  But your presumption is most likely correct, especially if his motherboard is older.  

I always thought that NTFS automatically allocates a certain percentage of sectors as "hot fix" sectors

I don't believe that this is the case although NTFS will move data on questionable sectors to good sectors, I don't think it pre-allocates them.  NTFS is, however, much more difficult to mess up than FAT.

One thing though, maybe I missed it, but we don't know what file system TimB is running.  He could be using FAT32...

On a side note, a boot manager might have allowed him to regain control over his computer.  Risking information overload , I can't recommend highly enough BootIt NG ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html ).  It is a boot manager, parition manager (resize, create, etc), backup paritions (to disk, USB, CD, DVD), backup MBR...  It fits all on one floppy disk. (note:  I don't work for them, I just love the product).

In this case, I think booting from the BootItNG floppy, regaining control of the boot process and restoring the MBR may have fixed the problem.  If it was the MBR that caused it...

[TimB]

I'm back on my desktop after 5 1/2 hours!

Fresh spankin' new install of Windows XP. Everything is running very fast. Got a load of software to install tho'

Former boot drive is still viewable, I'm thinking that a Windows file got corrupted by CHKDSK.  (grrrrr)

Apparently no data lost (tho' I did have backups.)

I put my new boot drive on (1st) IDE Channel 0, Master
and the old on:                   (2nd) IDE Channel 0, Slave

and switched the master/slave jumpers and all was hunky dory.

Thanks for the ideas, tho' there wasn't a direct "oh that's it" kinda thing the ideas in THIS forum got me thinking in the right direction.

-=Tim=-