Windows 2000, SP4, Possibly a dead MBR.
Please forgive the general nature of the following error messages, I didn't write them down last night, and I'm at work right now so I'm going off of memory.
Yesterday I was downloading a few game demos to see what I've been missing since I bought my last computer game (Aliens Vs Predator 2....it's been awhile)
I had just finished downloading Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and was in the process of installing it. About halfway through, the progress bar stops, and I get the message: "cannot write to drive C, disk is either missing or corrupt". So I cancel out of the installation, and go to My computer. It won't load, gives an error message about a required DLL file being missing. I shut down the computer, and get about 40 more of those missing file, corrupted file, missing disk errors. Eventually it does shut down.
I restart, and after the POST I get the blunt message: "cannot load Windows, Cannot find WINNT" I throw in the windows 2000 install disk and go to the recovery console. I run CHKDISK /R, and all it checks is the A Drive (i don't even have one installed, must be the simulated drive the recovery console was using).
I go to display the drives, and it shows disk C as having a capacity of 159 gigabytes, with 158.9 free. For all intents and purposes, Blank. Running Dir /c shows four files, none of which have names I recognize, and none of them topping more than a few KB each.
Now, I know it takes nearly 40 minutes to format this thing (EIDE....waah!), so there's no way it wiped that drive clean, unless the whole install process was a format in disguise. Even so, the hard disk light wasn't going blink blink blink before the install, not until I actually started it. The install only had been running for about 5 minutes, certainly not enough time to completely erase the disk.
I suspect a virus piggybacked on the install program, thereby getting through my firewall and into the system. I suspect it punched a hole in my boot record, and convinced the drive that it was blank. If that's true, all I need to do is convince the drive that it isn't.
How do I do it?
Yesterday I was downloading a few game demos to see what I've been missing since I bought my last computer game (Aliens Vs Predator 2....it's been awhile)
I had just finished downloading Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and was in the process of installing it. About halfway through, the progress bar stops, and I get the message: "cannot write to drive C, disk is either missing or corrupt". So I cancel out of the installation, and go to My computer. It won't load, gives an error message about a required DLL file being missing. I shut down the computer, and get about 40 more of those missing file, corrupted file, missing disk errors. Eventually it does shut down.
I restart, and after the POST I get the blunt message: "cannot load Windows, Cannot find WINNT" I throw in the windows 2000 install disk and go to the recovery console. I run CHKDISK /R, and all it checks is the A Drive (i don't even have one installed, must be the simulated drive the recovery console was using).
I go to display the drives, and it shows disk C as having a capacity of 159 gigabytes, with 158.9 free. For all intents and purposes, Blank. Running Dir /c shows four files, none of which have names I recognize, and none of them topping more than a few KB each.
Now, I know it takes nearly 40 minutes to format this thing (EIDE....waah!), so there's no way it wiped that drive clean, unless the whole install process was a format in disguise. Even so, the hard disk light wasn't going blink blink blink before the install, not until I actually started it. The install only had been running for about 5 minutes, certainly not enough time to completely erase the disk.
I suspect a virus piggybacked on the install program, thereby getting through my firewall and into the system. I suspect it punched a hole in my boot record, and convinced the drive that it was blank. If that's true, all I need to do is convince the drive that it isn't.
How do I do it?
0
Comments
Fixboot
fixmbr
If that doesn't work, your drive got quick formatted which takes a couple seconds.