Windows got corrupted
I bought a new case and moved my stuff into it. I hooked up the front usb to the USB 2 header, which is really close to the bottom PCI slot, and my ethernet card rubbed up against the cables. When I started up into Windows, everything was fine except the ethernet card wouldn't start.
So, I shut it down and moved the ethernet card. Except, I was lazy, and since I thought that my RAID card had better clearance around the cables, I just switched their places. Bad idea. Corrupted my NTFS.SYS.
So, I move the ethernet card into a new slot and put the HPT RAID back in it's original slot. I leave the mean bottom slot alone.
So, Windows recommends to run the repair install of the CD. So I give it a try. I get to the repair thingy (pressing R on the first screen, like it told me), and it asks for my Administrator password - EXCEPT I DIDN'T MAKE ONE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Just in case, I tried blank and my two most common passwords and none worked, and it told me it was gonna restart now since I didn't get the password right.
So, I get back into the setup program on the CD again, but this time it says some file is corrupt.
Restart again, and some other error.
So what the crap? It wouldn't surprise me if somehow I had borked my array, but now it can't figure out what's on the CD?
All this while I'm about to go to work (get back 8ish Central Time), and I need to have this thing working and all the other things I was going to do instead of fixing my comp. done before a ladyfriend comes over tomarrow. Grr.
Any ideas?
So, I shut it down and moved the ethernet card. Except, I was lazy, and since I thought that my RAID card had better clearance around the cables, I just switched their places. Bad idea. Corrupted my NTFS.SYS.
So, I move the ethernet card into a new slot and put the HPT RAID back in it's original slot. I leave the mean bottom slot alone.
So, Windows recommends to run the repair install of the CD. So I give it a try. I get to the repair thingy (pressing R on the first screen, like it told me), and it asks for my Administrator password - EXCEPT I DIDN'T MAKE ONE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Just in case, I tried blank and my two most common passwords and none worked, and it told me it was gonna restart now since I didn't get the password right.
So, I get back into the setup program on the CD again, but this time it says some file is corrupt.
Restart again, and some other error.
So what the crap? It wouldn't surprise me if somehow I had borked my array, but now it can't figure out what's on the CD?
All this while I'm about to go to work (get back 8ish Central Time), and I need to have this thing working and all the other things I was going to do instead of fixing my comp. done before a ladyfriend comes over tomarrow. Grr.
Any ideas?
0
Comments
Instead of using the recovery console.. just move onto to installation. Windows setup will detect you have an existing (if slightly borked) install.. and prompt you if you wish to repair it
That normally works 80-90% of the time for me
Ps.. if you didn't set an admin password.. just hit enter to carry on
Yeah, I tried just hitting enter when it asked for the password and it wasn't satisfied. Not sure what's up there. That's why I went ahead and tried my common passwords in case I really did put one in.
Good luck.. if it doesn't detect your Windows install.. don't continue it and allow it to format.. just quit out.. and report back for more suggestions
I told it I wanted to install Windows, and when it gave me the option to select which partition, the RAID I want to install to said "Setup can not access this partition."
I selected it anyway, and it tells me that there's already a Windows folder, and if I install it to \Windows, all my old stuff will be wiped. Didn't give me the option to repair the install. Likely because of that "Setup can not access this partition" stuff.
When it asks if I want to load any third party RAID drivers at the very beginning of the setup sequence, I don't. But, I did when I first installed Windows. It's just that I noticed that one of the drivers it loads is the HPT 370 driver, so I didn't think I'd need to this time. I wonder if that's making a difference?
BTW
I had that problem with the password once too. So ever since then when it asks during the install I just put "none". I figure it is better than leaving it blank and who could ask for a better default password where you normally don't use one.
When you have a chance, do a format and reinstall (a clean reinstall, in other words). Install all of your programs, drivers, patches, etc. and use Norton Ghost to image the drive to another computer, another partition, another hard drive, removable media, or an external hard drive. If you only have 1 drive/partition, make one. Keep all your important files on it (or at least back them up to it regularly) and then you can just re-image your primary partition using ghost, and have a "clean" windows install, WITH programs/drivers/patches/etc. in <1hr. I just made an image for my laptop a few weeks ago, used it last night. It took Norton 10 minutes to do a 3.x GB image over a 10/100... 10 minutes & a restart later, I had a clean windows install.
Essentially, you need to use the RAID card BIOS to reestablish the same array. Many times, RAID BIOS is on card, fully unplugging can cause BIOS array defs to wipe. Try same parms for array you had, with card in new place, and see if Windows boots.
Case in point:
I have a neighbor who got a new PEBT2 Intel board-- wife is a digital camera freak, good at media and photo editing, takes 20-50 pictures of same scene with varying filter and lense combos, picks 2-3 best after ALL are on the HD, and edits works of art out of them and prints on 13x19 printer (very HIGH end large format printer from HP). She uses a 5 or 6 MP camera, they take a laptop in the field just to view the pics at large size in between shoots of 5-7 pics so she can visually see at large scale what her cam is storing, in 12-20 MB increments (size per pic). In HER case, the DATA is 10 times more valuable than the OS install.
Um--- back to RAID and INTEL BIOS... We had card in, Windows XP already loaded on the boot drive, which was NOT in the array at all (ever seen a mirror for data only??) and instead on the Primary MAster IDE connect (120 GB Maxtor, quantity 3, two for data mirror and one for boot and OS). They got a card from Adaptec, coudl not afford SATA drives and Intel will not not support Serillel connectors on the embedded SATA RAID) and played. First thing they did was to define an array, on second time computer was up. XP promptly said the NTLDR.exe file was borked (not true, will explain as we go).
So, we had to get back into RAID BIOS to fix, but the Intel board defaulted to Silent Boot mode (and this very unhappily left the Intel Logo full size splash screen showing when the RAID BIOS would normally be visible, ending in a "corrupt NTLDR.exe" message). Why was this bad??? Turned out the RAID card defaulted the source drive for the mirror to be the boot drive-- XP was finding the bootstrap routine on the IDe master, the PCI RAID card BIOS came up, and guess what??? It overrode the IDE drive booting.
Step one to fix, enter BIOS, in Boot menu DISABLE Silent Boot, go to peripherals submenu, make sure embedded SATA was DISABLED, save and let it reboot.
Step 2 was to then go into the RAID BIOS, tell it NEITHER drive was bootable, and bob's your uncle the XP booted hunky dory off the IDE drive.
Step 3, reinstall XP, I need to go over there tomorrow and get rid of the base install that was there for testing with PM 8 (I will not tell you they tried to use XP on two computers, but if that happened it will change tomorrow as they now own two legit copies of XP Pro). If you use an Adaptec RAID card, best with XP to stick it in beofre the XP install, here is why-- first, the underlying drivers get loaded into XP at install time, when it askes if you have a floppy with drivers you indeed load those underlying drivers then-- this never happened, so the upper layer drivers WILL NOT load as the lower level drivers were not there to tell XP what it had in first place).
Let's see how parts of this scenario apply-- first, you need RAID BIOS access(see Step one if you get a splash screen and no RAID BIOS after the main BIOS loads). Second, depending on how you do that, the Intel board BIOSs will dynamicly change the boot order options to reflect the card BIOS settings. So in your case, if you boot off of the RAID array, one drive gets set bootable if you are mirroring the drive adn booting off of the array (quite possible).
Now, how does this apply to a REPAIR Install??? Well, the first ACTIVE thing the Repair process does is to try to find the boot drive for XP to see what is there-- no findum, big string of corrupt file messages results, but in this case the problem is NOT XP data, it is CD not finding BOOT HD(I bet array is a mirror or mirrior variant, and hope it is not also logical volumed with HD bridging by software as that kind of array is a major PITA to fix). Second, it tries to parse the registry-- no find, you get another string of bad file messages. No find both, it gives up and restarts or locks completely. But problem lies with RAID BIOS array settings(probably not one proper array parm is there after pulling card), about 85% sure, not in XP itself-- XP never got "repaired," probably is still on array, and probably can be recovered simply by reestablishing array exactly as it was and THEN rebooting.
My neighbor(one with the RAID situation) is an Electrical Engineer, retired, and kept thinking power problems, impedance, but he is not an Electronic Engineer or a Software Engineer. Assuming things actually work out right, he will have two 120 GB drives storing many large digital pictures (oh, a hundred gig or so), and one non-array boot drive which he plans to back up on DVD. Turns out core reason wife let him buy big new adavnced toy was not having to retake pictures lost when she overflowed older box's HD many times in three months (another set of stories for later). Not nough pics would fit on CDs, box was not fast enough also, but they do have an interesting RAID scenario that many could benefit from understanding and which the OP might be able to use parts of to figure out what REALLY happened.
John.
IF you have Norton System Works, boot from the CD and run Norton Disk Doctor (I believe it's ndd.exe).
With any luck it will find the partition and fix it. this has bailed me out on my Abit KT7A-RAID, which has the embedded Highpoint controller.
Good Luck!
John.
I know I read this in another thread only a couple of days ago, but what are the free alternatives to Norton Ghost (and are they as good?). I had Ghost once, but I've lost it.
I don't know... I'm not aware of anything else that does drive imaging...
Really? I thought they just made Photoshop and Office
CRAP!!! I totally forgot! I'm in such a hurry to get the thing up and running again so I can take care of other stuff around here. I'll get a Ghost image up soon and give those RAID settings another go.
Another question: Windows installed on the RAID as the D:\ drive because I forgot to unplug the drive on the mainboard before I setup Windows. I wanted Windows to be on C:\ so my Ghost image would be a little more useful. Is there any way to change the drive letter without Windows having to be reinstalled?
I can't believe this.
I just restarted after installing SP1. Now NTLDR is missing.
Sigh...
Well, I guess tomarrow I'll delete and re-create the array, and then format and reinstall again, this time with the 80gb disconnected for good measure.
I think I'd rather install Windows to the 80gb drive (amazing what screwing with an array all night will do to you
But for now, I'm stressed and sleepy. Thanks again for the help so far guys.
Any other advice, besides "buy a Dell?"
John.
If you don't have anything on that other drive or if it is easy enough to move it to a second partiton or something I have a better Idea. Just install Windows to the 80GB drive and don't mess with the RAID at all right now. That way you will have an O/S in place to test your controller, cables and drives outside the system. It will be much easier and we can get it all sorted out and find out what config and latency will work best after we get the rest fixed then install Windows on the array last when we know it works right.
All in all, if you can find an OEM of NSW 2003 Pro (Hint: http://www.glob2000.com/ ) for what they are being dumped on market for right now, you will have enough Ghost to last you a year and a one year NAV subscription from date of install, etc. Yes, this guy's price is real, and yess they regsiter, and no they are not hacked in any way-- they are official Symantec CDs en toto.
John.
http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4153&highlight=free+ghosting