windows XP boot disk

I have a gateway windows XP disk, but when i try to launch the recovery console it tells me that it cannot detect any harddrives installed on my system. I thought this was a hardware problem so i replugged in all the plugs and cables, still no progress. I assume its the CD now because my computer recogniizes my single 200GB harddrive, connected via a pci card, when it runs the DOS boot agents before windows kicks in. Are gateway's disks only programmed to detect gateway harddrives (the disk is from a freind who has a gateway laptop.), or is my problem somewhere else?

thanks

Gateway's OS CD sounds as if it is just XP. As such, it may fail to see the drive since:

a. It's on a PCI controller card.
b. It's over 127GB.

Item b is noted why XP (the one without SP1 or SP2) may fail on over 127GB drives at http://www.48bitlba.com

As it stands you need to rethink this system. I'd move the hard disk to the onboard controller (no PCI card) and see if your XP sees it.

It would be far too dangerous to borrow a Gateway CD if you don't have a Gateway. You could loose what's on that hard disk in one boot.

Bob

My hard drive configuration has been working for the past year or so, sorry i forgot to mention that. I cannot see why windows suddenly would not recognize the disk. What happened was that my computer was running noticeably slower, but NIS2005 did not show any virus threats. I thought that I just needed to defrag, but didnt have the time then. I shutoff my computer, and the next morning i got an infinite boot sequence.
I think its the gateway CD because i can hear my harddrive powering up, and it recognizes it in the boot sequence when it scans the drives.
What i think happened was that one of the system startup files got corrupted, but without the recovery console i cant fix it. Am i completely wrong about this, or what should i do? (Im looking for a non-proprietary XP disk)

When you get your XP Pro CD, the repairs can begin.

What this also brings up is your backup. What backups do you have? Are you ready for the eventual hard disk glitch?

Bob

No i dont have any backups, but the harddrive was fairly new. It was only maybe a year old, and it doesnt have the ball bearings of the old harddrive. I had a drive actually crash on me before, that i knew it when it happened, i could hear the thing chipping when it powered on.
Im a student so the only thing i really have on my computer are word documents that have already been turned in and the random assortment of games and *cough* legal videos and music.

i have always found external harddrives to be too expensive for my needs of backup

No i dont have any backups, but the harddrive was fairly new. It was only maybe a year old, and it doesnt have the ball bearings of the old harddrive. I had a drive actually crash on me before, that i knew it when it happened, i could hear the thing chipping when it powered on.
Im a student so the only thing i really have on my computer are word documents that have already been turned in and the random assortment of games and *cough* legal videos and music.

i have always found external harddrives to be too expensive for my needs of backup

Go get yours, no need to do much else than wait for you to get the right tools.

Bob

PS. Sorry to hear you have no backups. Even what you can't lose on CDR is cheaper than losing it all for most.

oh yea, forgot to mention:

I had thought it was the pci card when i reset the connections in the box, so i plugged it into the motherboard and the computer wouldnt even move past the opening drives scans
It didnt recognize the harddrive and gave me a "disk not ready" error message

It's unlikely to go far.

The real fix here is:

1. The XP Pro CD.
2. The drivers for said PCI card to offer XP during boot of the CD.

My computer was bought from a computer store, but i have had so many different people fix it I dont really have one place to refer to for software. I dont think i have any drivers for my PCI card, would it be possible to find these drivers online?

thanks

Just identify the PCI card maker and go to their web site.

Bob

OK, well i opened up the box and found that the PCI card was an Ultra ATA 133 card by maxtor, so i went to the support site and downloaded and made a driver floppy.
After booting windows (yes, again with the gateway cd, it has worked in the past on non-gateway systems)
i pressed f6 and installed the drivers. It told me that the windows drivers should be used because they were less recent or something to that extent. So i said ok, and i went into the recovery console option, which now suddenly works.
However, when i went into the recovery console i didnt get a list of current windows XP installations and wasnt given the option to enter my administrator password. instead i just got the "windows xp recovery console" dialoge followed by a C:\> prompt
i tried CHKDSK, but it said that the drive appeared to be fine, and then BOOTFIX \SCAN but it didnt work. (I think it said something along the lines of not being able to find any windows installations)

Now is this the result of using a Gateway cd, or what should my next course of action be? (i get an access denied whenever i try to access any windows files to fix the system32 folder.)

sorry instead of bootfix i meant bootcfg /scan

I've seen very odd system damage when the wrong OS CD is used. Sadly, most of the time the drive contents vanish.

There is a lesson here.

Bob

I agree, using the wrong operating system probably wasnt the best idea, but i dont think it corrupted the entire drive: I havent tried to repair or re-install windows with the disk, only launch the recovery console. I figured that sense boot disk sets and downloadable utilities can launch the console, using the wrong disk probably wouldnt make the difference.

Anyway, there was an old desktop floating around here with a bootable harddrive on it with windows XP, so i borrowed that harddrive and threw it in my computer. I think there must be something wrong with the operating system because everything is running really slowly. I attached the drive in question and tried to access it, but it said "F:\ is not accessable" "The request could not be processed because of an I/O error"
Any ideas other than junking the entire drive?

XP is from the NT family of OS and doesn't support moving the hard disk from machine to machine. In most cases it just fails to boot.

The road to recovery is to wait till you have time to reclaim you original OS CD and repair it properly.

The other road is to backup what you can't lose and install the OS you have handy.

Bob

The computer the harddrive came from was broken and windows wouldnt boot on it, so thats why I was able to borrow it so easily. I did a repair install with the gateway cd (again i know, but there wasnt anything on the drive that would be lost) and it starts up fine, but is VERY slow. I bet this is the reason it cannot detect my harddrive.

Im not in a rush now, i have 30 days with this harddrive till the subsrciption expires (i know this probably violates too many copyrights, but its just so that i have a computer for the week or two i have left of school)

When i get my computer home, would it be a good idea to try to put the harddrive into another windows XP pro computer as a slave drive and try to correct the registry that way? Id rather not do a repair install as i've heard that it severely decreases the preformance to have another windows install over a previous one.

thanks for all the help.

A repair install is not a duplicate install, it merely copies the Windows files, replacing what is already installed. If any files are corrupt, they are replaced with a fresh copy.

It's a great tool to help sell more XP installs. The user can test drive XP to see if they like it. It is not a violation of the license.

BEWARE THIS ONE THING!!! If it is XP without SP2 such installs fall prey to the old worms since you can't patch a 30 day trial. At least I haven't tried it recently and succeeded. Also it's time consuming so I won't try it soon.

Next the slowness is likely due to lack of drivers. Most are still learning the drivers are not on the XP CD or from Microsoft's Driver Update button. It's still 1995 where you go get the drivers.

Bob

to be honest im not really worried about viruses and worms, as long as I can check my email and access the internet for the next two weeks, when the drive will probably be reformatted.

are non-proprietary XP disks all the same? for example, if I were to find a regular windows XP pro cd would it be the same as if i were to use my windows xp disk at home? Also, the windows I am using now is the result of a repair install. If I were to repair my old windows installation with the right disk would i have the same driver problems, or would the harddrive still have all the drivers on it?

Thanks!

But the one I like the best is the full retail XP CDs and license. It gives me the least headaches of keeping a qualifying other windows CD with the system.

Why is this an issue? You have your XP CD at home or somewhere that you used to install before. Just wait till you get it.

Maybe I was not clear about drivers. No Microsoft CD has all your drivers. It never has.

Bob

Just for fun i downloaded and burned Knoppix, the linux program that runs off of a cd without copying anything to your hard drive. It runs alot smoother than the installation of windows XP i was on before, but takes a while to boot. Takes some getting used to, though. Anyway, i was wondering if anyone knows if it is possible to access the data stored on your harddrive with this program?

Knoppix must not support my PCI attached harddrives, because I cannot see any hard disk partitions on the desktop. I clicked under "personal files" and then "devices" there are alot of harddrives that show up, but most of them seem like they have to do with linux. I see do (hde and hdf) but when i click on them it says "/dev/hde: Input/output error
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified
Please check that the disk is entered correctly."

what should i do?

What I learned a long time ago is to never use those PCI IDE cards if possible. Data recovery can be "iffy".

Try connecting the drive to an onboard IDE channel and see if Knoppix sees it.

Remember that all this conversation is the same lesson about backup and keeping your CDs handy.

bob

Attaching the harddrive directly to my motherboard doesnt seem to work, in knoppix I dont see any harddrives and those two I listed earlier of not working dont even appear. (one i assumed wouldnt appear, the borrowed drive isnt connected, just the old one i am trying to fix)
Would i have to run a driver or other such program before the drive would work, or is it just that my bios is too outdated?
The reason I have almost no software or documentation for my computer is because my family got it a long time ago from a local vendor, and it used windows 98. I then had to upgrade my harddrive and we had another place do that, who installed windows XP and the PCI card. Also I upgraded my graphics card myself, which is one of the only parts i have full documentation and software for.
obviously I wouldnt take that road again, but it was cheaper and less painful than having to deal with large companies.
Im thinking that my next computer i will build myself, so i know that I will always have all of the software and documentation for it. I heard one of the main downfalls of building your own is that you lose customer service, but judging how the quality of these services is generally poor and I have never needed them in the past, i think I could make it. That and the possiblity of destroying your components.
I guess now I will just use Knoppix for the rest of the time im at school, after which i will go digging through my computer supplies from back in the stone age when i got this operating system.

Such a driver is from the PCI card maker.

Again, much of this is a lesson about such cards. I rarely use them.

-> It will be best to continue this when you obtain a proper XP CD.

Bob

I tried plugging only my old harddrive without the secondary one into my PCI card and booted knoppix, and the program recognizes it. I can see and access all of my files on the disk, but i cannot write to it. This means that i cannot reset the boot registry.
I believe this is because knoppix doesnt know how to write to NTFS, but now at least i can access all my files.