I was fitting a new cd drive, when i rebooted my boot drive would not start ,i dont know how but i guess the boot sector is buggered ,can irepair this and get my computer working again on this drive?

THe error message at boot is that I have an invalid boot drive , even though its the one i've been using for years........

HELP HELP.............

Dave, I'm hoping that your hard drive cable just came loose (could be either end). Another possibility is that you crisscrossed the cable connections to the CD drive and the hard drive. You might also check your power connections.

99.44% sure that your hard drive is OK, and that it's a connection problem of some kind.

Pete

first thing to do is check the HDD cable, if that's no go, remove the cd drive.

if it's on the same IDE (ribbon) cable as the HDD, it might be that the jumper on the cd drive it set wrong.

Most likely it's a loose cable or the jumper (on either the CD or the HDD) is set wrong.

If you only have one hard drive and one CD-ROM, the best bet would be to put each on it's own cable, and leave them both jumpered for single-drive (master)
If you only have one cable, you'll have to jumper the HDD as master and the CD-ROM as slave.

I tried to put a cd rom on a pcchips mobo as a slave to the boot drive and it just won't accept anything on the same channel, set to slave or cable select didn't make any difference. It works fine as a slave on IDE1 or in my old test machine.

In a desperate attempt I reloaded win 98, over the drive , result it works but all my data has vanished even though i did not reformat.

The used space is reading incorrectly ,so i believe the data is still there but not available to me.

Data recovery software?

Any good FREE ones around ?

[Edited on 19/7/04 by Surrey Dave]

Are you sure it's all gone? Have you looked at the directory tree in My Computer or Windows Explorer?

Could be that you nstalled Windows in a new directory so none of your programs show, or work.

I dont believe it gone but I cant access it, there's not enough free space being shown.

and there's only 1 instance of windows.....

I have no idea without a first-hand look.

Right about now I think I'd plunk down the $35 for a call to Microsoft, but even then you can get a bum steer. Hope someone can roll over to your place to check it out.

A couple things I'd try:

--Looking at file structure in the DOS shell or from a boot disk

--Configuring your drive as a non-booting drive in another machine and trying a recovery proggie if necessary.


I would NOT run ScanDisk yet.

Thanks,

That what I was thinking, do you know of any good FREE recovery programs.

Here's a free program Steve Gusterson recommended a while back, looks good to me:

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Whatever you do, don't install on the bum hard drive (it will overwrite the missing files). In fact, you shouldn't be using that computer for anything, not even web surfing.

Best to install the program on another PC (one with a CD burner so you can copy directories/files that you want), and install your HD in that machine as a non-booting drive.

When it's all done, you can format your HD in your computer, install Windows, copy in your recovered files, and re-install all your programs

Good luck!!

Thankyou,

I've got my broadband up and running on another computer now.

the main one when wrong again, if youuse a boot disk and then look at the C drive ( C: dir/p) there are some corrupted looking files again, this happened last night with my Config.sys , could it be a virus, can that virus be in my mobo bios now , I'm going to upgrade the bios anyway.

I found that I could not install my usb modem on the new load of win98.

With this monitor its like typing into a Goldfish Bowl.


regards

Dave, get msn messenger, and ask ChrisW, he sorted my comp probs over the net

Jason