Recovery console question

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With the problems I had last night with Windows not booting from the hard drive or windows cd. I decided to run recovery console, everything seems to check out ok.

I did a fixmbr and I got the message. This volume appears to have a non standard partition attempting a fix could loose the partition already there.

Does anyone know what it means by non standard partition?

 

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Have you partitioned the drive? IE have C, D etc etc?

Is it running NTFS?

 

the only partition is the c: drive and yes its NTFS

 

There is no hidden partition as far as I can see.

 

Does you PC have a floppy drive? If so, get a blank floppy, put it in, right-click on the A: in windows Explorer and click on format. A new dialog should pop-up. In this dialog check "Create boot disk" then click OK.

Restart the faulty PC and go to your BIOS settings. Find the boot order in your BIOS menu and ensure that the floppy drive is the first boot drive. Put the floppy in the drive and save and quit the BOIS settings.

Now your PC will boot into the DOS prompt. Run your diagnostics like chkdsk etc. from there.

 

havent got a floppy, but once I got the pc running I did that with the windows boot disk.

 

If the worst comes to the worst, get hold of a floppy drive and install it. Sometimes CD-based media don't do the job, but as floppies use legacy hardware functionality they are more likely to work.

 

Think I'll do that because I just tried to use the update bios utility and wouldn't allow me to download from the internet for some weird reason there was no option even though there should have been an option to do it.

So I'll download it a copy to a floppy.

 

erm not sure where your all going with this but he can run chkdsk from the recovery console no need to use a dos floppy besides I'm not even sure that dos chkdsk has ntfs support so lets forget about dos boot disks. I think we need to focus on the message "This volume appears to have a non standard partition attempting a fix could lose the partition already there" and not finding some legacy workaround that isnt going to fix the master boot record if that is really the problem. I assume you can still access the recovery console from the xp cd if not disregard my comments.
When you ran Fixmbr did it say "The boot sector cannot be fixed". In which case your screwed or did it just warn you that you may lose data in which case you can risk it. Sorry I cant offer a solid solution here but you could always mount the volume in another pc thats working and see if the disks data is accessible/recoverable that way.
I hope you've already eliminated bios (try resetting) and cabling as the problem. I had a similar problem in the past and it was the bloody cable. Worst case its you hard drive. How does it sound when it spins? If there is a hidden partition it would be listed in the xp setup if you try to reinstall/repair. Good luck and consider implementing your own regular backup shedule if your unlucky enough to lose valuable data.

Let us know what it turns out to be. We should all learn from eachother


just finished reading your post from yesterday. Glad to see we're all thinking along the same tracks

 

When I ran fixmbr all it said that I may loose data because of the non standard partition, I have eliminated a hidden partition and have reseated all the ram and cables and have ran memtest 86. Which came up ok.

 

Well I'm as stumped as you and its home time now. I'll check back tomorrow see how you got on. I feel for you though. I lost alot of photos in a similar situation a while back

 

Er - what sort of box is this? And how was it installed in the first place?

You mention that there *was* another partition. This normally appears on machines like HP and Dells, and is used in conjunction with recovery disks. The MBR blocks on such machines are often non-standard to allow the recovery system to work.

Harry.

 

Instead of the two separate threads I will just use this one, heres the link to the other one http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/thread22004.html

I think it is definatley the PSU now I have done some readings and 12V reading is dipping to 11.93, all the other measurements are fine. I don't want to risk any other dips in power so I am going to order another PSU.

 

no other partition Harry as far as I am aware, my copy of xp pro will arrive at the end of the week so I shall be formatting the drive totally then and Installing from new.

 

Erm *cough* - Yes it does. A simple google check confirmed this, in addition to me using it myself.

That bit is good!

 

Er - <cough again> - No it doesn't.

Why the disagreement? There are two different versions of chkdsk being mentioned here.

Version 1 - that found on a 'DOS' disk. By DOS disk I mean Win9x (including ME). That version *does not know about NTFS* - strictly FAT only.
Version 2 - that found in XP etc. That *does* know about NTFS.

Basicaly - don't use Win9x tools for Win2k and later - it will go pear-shaped. The confusion is compounded by people calling the Win2k/XP console 'DOS'.
It isn't DOS.
Better to call it the 'console'.

Harry.

 

Both chkdsk versions work, both return the same results.

When I format the hard drive before installing XP Pro I will check the partition status, I will delete whatever partition(s) are on there, then create a new one.

 

Why go to all the effort? XP contains all the tools you need. Just boot with the CD and blow away all the old partitions and reformat.

In addition - XP tools know about newer large hard drives - older tools (like from Win9x) don't.

Harry.

 

cool cheers harry