[XP] Fans

There does seem to be some empathy between washing machines and computers. My old WM packed up at exactly the same time as my PSU a while back too.

:confused: I finally got a replacement processor, carefully cleaned and installed :confused: absolutely nothing changed. I still get power to the motherboard (fans all working well) power to the drives, and nothing ... no beeps no hard drive chuntering nothing :confused:

What is it that I have done wrong? what else can I check or change on this machine? It's becoming an expensive hobby trying to just get it to realise it really is a computer.

Virtual Patient ( soon to be transferred to intensive care )

Hmmmm, I lost my temper, but luckily I didn't throw the puter outta the door.

I just thought I'd try one last thing before contemplating suicide. I took out the new motherboard and seated the replacement processor into my old motherboard, after a false start (having rewired the power switch wrong :o ) it seems to have booted. I am about to start out on the journey of updates and checking out how it is coping.

Any idea why the processor wouldn't work with the other motherboard?

Virtual Patient

p.s. Thank you as always for your patience and help with my problems, I feel sure I will be back here within hours lol

I made the mistake of trying out my new ram stick, it didn't work, so I put back in teh old ram, now puter won't reboot..... I left it alone to see if anything would happen and eventually this message appeared.

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.

Please re-install a copy of the above file.

How do I do this?

Virtual Patient

Are you sure you have the right memory?

Supports DDR400/333/266 non-ECC, un-buffered memory.
Did you buy it off CRUCIAL?

I'm sorry but the compatibility of the ram is no longer a problem ... I put back the original ram that was working just fine, but am now stuck with boot problems and corrupted files that I can't seem to get around.

I have learned my lesson not to buy 'cheap' ram and will be looking into getting some decent stuff IF I can get the puter working to some degree.

thanks for the reply

Virtual Patient

Update.... I found a few instructions out there on the net.... using repair tool I tried to sort out the bootcfg /rebuild it didn't find anything to rebuild ... I tried bootcfg /list and it said there was nothing in there .... next I tried repair console and went one step further to set up new installation except I just wanted it to find existing windows installations ... it didn't find any existing windows installations on there....they were there earlier honest:(

I just seem to go from one problem to the next.

does this mean I've got to lose all my stuff and reinstall to fix this machine?

If the hal.dll file is missing or corrupt, you will need to do a repair install of Windows. You should not lose anything when doing this.

Thanks jdc, that's exactly what I have been trying to do, I really don't want to lose the data on this drive. BUT, seems repair console isn't going to work for me, when the repair is run from the recovery cd it says the usual stuff about it being a repair console ... then at the end ....
The path or file specified is not valid.
C:\>

I have tried typing all kinds of stuff in there but to no avail. Here's what the bootcfg /list says .......There are currently no boot entries available to display.

Then I tried going to the next stage and opted for install windows ... intending to opt for repair at the discovery of existing installations ... the result of that was that no installations were found ..... all it said was.... 76317MB Disk0 at ID0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
Unpartitioned space 39MB
Partition1 [Unknown] 76277MB (76277 MB free)

which is hopefully untrue ... as at least 34GB is used on that drive :eek:

I really have no clue what to do now.

Virtual Patient

Boot up with the XP CD in the drive and let Setup run. Go past the "C" and "R" repair options by pressing Enter just as if you're doing a clean install and you'll eventually get an option to "Repair an existing installation". That's the one you want. If it asks about formatting you've gone wrong, so start over.

You'll get to keep your existing apps & settings, but you need to re-install SP2, Windows Updates & any unsigned drivers afterwards. NOTE: Be aware that you'll lose any protection from Blaster / Sasser type worms. Don't go online without a firewall, whether the built in Windows one or 3rd party.

How to perform a re-install of WinXP

Repair XP

WinXP Non-destructive Total Rebuild

Thanks for the reply, that's what I have tried, there are two windows installation on that drive, but they are not found when I do what you say.

76317MB Disk0 at ID0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]
Unpartitioned space 39MB
Partition1 [Unknown] 76277MB (76277 MB free)

That is what is on the screen at the place where it should list the two windows installations that are available for repair :(

I have no idea why it is not finding anything on that drive, it was there when I booted the machine, I had access to everything, the computer seemed to work perfectly well through several reboots and died on a cold boot.

One prompt in the repair option said that I should run chkdsk but it will not run anything because it doesn't know where the drive is to run anything :confused:

Virtual Patient

If Setup doesn't find a Windows Installation, that is always because the files are so badly hosed that it is unable to recognise one :( Unfortunately all you can do is a clean install of Windows if that happens.

Is it worth trying to get any data off this drive by putting it as a slave in another computer? Most of the important sentimental stuff was backed up except more recent photographs.

A question? why would this error/corruption suddenly happen, what might have been the cause?

Virtual Patient

It might work using recovery programs.

PC Inspector

Restoration

TestDisk

Recuva

Thank you for the links Train, I'll see if I am brave enough to open up one of the other computers tomorrow, unfortunately I've got to go to work now to pay for all this stuff lol.

Hope to post back when I have a fully functioning patched up machine again.

Virtual Patient

I just might have to pick up a side job to get something newer myself.

tearing my hair out with this hard drive now :(

I have it wired up (albeit kind of externally) to a computer running windows me. Hooked it up as primary slave, with the existing hard drive as primary master, checked jumper setting for cable select on both drives. But whatever I do the bios is detecting the dead drive as primary master and the operating one as primary slave, although it is booting from the working drive :confused:

How can I force the dead drive into being primary slave? I think I need to do this to run PC Inspector which seems not to detect the dead drive even though bios sees it.

Virtual Patient

Cable Select can sometimes be a bit flaky. If you set the drives explicitly to Master and Slave then it should work OK.

Thanks SuperSparks, but how do I do that? as far as I know the jumper setting for master sets the slave to off?

I am not sure what I am doing with this stuff :(

Virtual Patient

There should be a label on the drives which tell you what jumper settings to use. Set the original drive to Master and the one that you have temporarily rigged up to Slave. The Master jumper setting won't affect the other drive as long as you don't try and mix and match CS and Master/Slave on the same channel.

Thanks SuperSparks but whatever I did it wouldn't act as a slave, so I did what any sensible person would do in the circumstances ... I stuck it in the secondary ide and no problems at all :o I should have thought about that a few hours ago

I am now battling with the PC Inspector program to try to retrieve files, but even with it's fancy GIU it's not obvious what to do, I managed to get it to locate the drive and even admit that there is stuff in there, directory listings and everything :)...but I have yet to work out how to get hold of that stuff to back it up to the good drive.

Virtual Patient

Try Recuva, I find that one is both effective and intuitive.

Thanks SuperSparks, I'll download recuva and take a look at it.

Virtual Patient

uh oh ....hit a hurdle almost immediately with recuva, it doesn't seem to have the ability to find a lost drive :(, I can only see options to recover deleted files etc, and not those on drives that have damage to the boot sector. The drive is listed in the device manager but is not listed in my computer and is not accessible in any normal way.

Virtual Patient

I sat for 7 hours babysitting this machine through a PC Inspector scan on that hard drive, clicking to abort on read errors (retry and ignore didn't help either), finally got a list of the directories found but to no avail .. all the parts I need weren't there :eek:

I was willing to lose everything except the contents of one folder (two if I was lucky) but I cannot get there.

Losing the will to live with this machine.... anybody out there got anything else I can try?

Virtual Paitent

I think you are heading into the realms of pay-for recovery solutions, or data recovery specialists. Mucho dinero :eek: I've had excellent results in the past with Easy Recovery Pro, but it isn't cheap. You can download a demo version though, to see whether it will be able to recover the files, before you have to spend any money.

Ontrack

Thanks SuperSparks, I agree it's looking that way, but I can't afford to do that right now. I will take a look at Easy Recovery demo and see if it gives me more than PC Inspector did.

Virtual Patient

kinda resolved :confused:

I had to finally give up on data recovery, I really couldn't afford to have it done professionally or pay for software.

So I guess the problem is resolved ... the dead computer is now (so far) a fully functional system again. Oh and the ram upgrade works now too.

I am really grateful to all you guys that have helped me through this, I am not quite bald yet and hope the machine will settle down and work nicely for a while now, especially with it's nice new ventillation system :)

Thanks again :D

Virtual Patient

You're very welcome :)

Hopefully you also gained the valuable knowledge (the hard way, as most of us did), of backing up your data.

We have all lost stuff and had to start over when things get scrambled so bad we can do nothing else.

Makes one feel bad, but there is nothing we can do about it, except to back up more often. :( :(

Back ups to backup, etc.

A last question for the experts of back up. What program should I use to make back ups or should I simply back up to dvd/cd as I did in the past (just not often enough :o )

Virtual Patient

Programs are nice, but can be limiting in some aspect or another.

For myself, I copy/paste to other hdds on the same computer, to other computers in lan and back up to data dvds.

Fact is, in the last month I backed up enough to fill about 130 single layer dvds. Worth the time and expense in my book.

Plus while browsing older cds, checking to see if they still opened without hesitation, I found and was able to present a family member some pictures she thought were long lost do to a fire which I knew nothing about.

With earlier versions of Windows I used to store my data on a different drive to Windows (which makes reinstalling a lot easier if it becomes necessary), then I would burn very important stuff to DVDR and use Acronis True Image to back all the data files up to an external drive.

Since I've been running Vista I still store the data files on a separate drive, and I use the built-in data backup utility to back the files up to a 3rd separate drive that is purely used for backup purposes. I then copy the Vista backup files to an external drive.

Thanks guys, think I'll go for the DVD back ups (only one hard drive in this machine at the moment), and maybe upload a few to the massive hotmail accounts just as a second back up.

Virtual Patient

That is a start, and it will take a bit, but we can figure out a system that works for our own needs.

Do you have a second PC? Another alternative is backup up to the other machine(s) on the LAN. I used to do it that way, and very successfully too. The only reason that I stopped was that I found an external drive was a bit more convenient.

SS posted 2 more options for you.

I have 4 pc's on my lan plus a lapper.