My problem started by receiving this message" Reboot and select a proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device". At this point I had the the chance of setting up XP again but I did not want to loose my data so I tried some other things such as running repair console. Then the HD with the os started making clicking sounds and now that I have decided to do a clean setup of XP I can't because the only things that I can see is the Intel logo and I can not acces the bios neither reading from my Dvd writer to setup xp. Can I have some advice.
If the HDD made clicking sounds, it's obviously on the way out. Get a new HDD and install windows on that fresh, then try to recover some data from your other drive, you may not have much success. Solution: Back it up next time!
Thansks for replying, and your are right. I got a new one and I just installed it. You mentioned about the possibility of recovering some date from it. Could you tell how.
just connect it into the computer as a slave drive and you should be able to read it from your new windows. If that doesn't work you can use the free "testdisk" it has a "photorec" addon that can be used to recover the data. This will only work if the drive is still spinning and the heads aren't damaged (that's what causes the clicking noise, when they go bad).
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec When you download the program, the actual program is in the "win" folder, both testdisk and photorec don't need to be installed, they run inside windows when you doubleclick the exe file. The programs can also be downloaded in a linux livecd and run from the bootcd.
Thanks everybody for helping me. Now I do have another problem, after I installed the new HD and XP, I connected the second HD, it was working before along the dead HD, it doesn't show on "my computer" but It is in "Bios" and shows in "Device Manager" and in "Administrative Tools" in "Computer Management" but without a Letter and it says "Unallocated. I tried to give it a letter but I cant. Please help me.
Unallocated means it isn't, or rather, doesn't think it is formatted, which is why it won't have been given a drive letter. You can format it if you like, but that will erase all the data you had on it before. Tough luck really, back up your data next time.
If it shows up as unallocated, you need to try and do a scandisk or chkdsk on it. Unallocated(raw) usually means that there is file corruption on it. All the data is still there. Don't reformat it, If the hard drive is still working try and get a scandisk or chkdsk done on it, that can ussually bring it back to where you can add a drive letter to it. If you can't get a scandisk or chkdsk done, then try testdisk, it has tools to recover damage partitions. If you reformat it, you won't be able to recover anything from it.
Jony218 as you said at this moment I am running Photorec and it seems that I am going to be able to recover all data from the HD. Thanks and I am going to let you guys know the final result.
I did recovered some files, mostly pictures, movies, and some Zip and rar. But I can recover the one the I need the most. Thanks anyway.
I got it, it's my bad never mind the former message. I was clicking on the wrong icon. Once I clicked the right one I got what I was looking for. Thank you so much for the great help.
