Grandma really needs help bad! I have a 200 G hard drive that has been partitioned off into 4 drives. I successfully converted one of the drives and was attempting to convert the drive that has my win XP Professional on. Everything seemed to go ok, until I shut down the system. Then the real nightmare occured. The puter rebooted itself and all I get is this error message. A disk read error occured press ctrl + alt+ Del to restart. This error keeps repeating and I can't get into my puter at all. I'm presently in a panic situation. My life is on this puter, what to do now? TIA
Try to start your Windows in safe mode. http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm If you can get into Windows that way you can right click on your drive and select Properties. You can then select the tool tab and run error-checking with both options check. If that doesn't work then you will have to boot using your Windows XP disc and enter the recovery console. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314058 Use CHKDSK CHKDSK C: /R If that doesn't work then you will probably have to install Windows again. You may have to Format that drive partition again if the above disk checks and repair's did not work. Of course you will lose any data currently on that drive partition. I hope you backed up any data that you didn't want to lose or at least moved it to a partition you were not converting.
BTW - XP needs Service Pack 1 in order to read drives larger then 120GB. You have that installed right?
Veblin: My computer will not even allow me to get to safe mode. I have tried to use the f8 but the computer does not respond. Also tried the f5 key, nada. It does not recognize my hard drives. I made a dos boot up disk from my husbands computer. The A: drive is working but the boot disk won’t access anything. After inserting the boot disk and pushing the f8 key several times I get a screen that allows me to use Normal mode, when I use the enter key, it just takes me back to the error message. Doe not even show a choice for safe mode. At the A prompt I have tried just about everything I could to try and access anything. Nothing, just an error message that those drives don’t exist. Now what. I spoke with a tech and he said that I will probably need to go someplace where I can get data recovery. Said it would cost hundreds of dollars. I have also tried booting with my windows xp professional, but nothing, the lights come on my drive but nothing else. Guess I need to take it in to a shop, was told that they would try and use a boot disk normally used for Linix? Denzien, Yes I do have service pack 1 on my system All of your help is very appreciated. I’m just in a quandary.
If it doesn't boot the XP disc then you need to enter the BIOS and change the boot order so that the CD boots before the hard drive. To check your BIOS boot order, restart your computer. As soon as the first screen comes up, hit F1 or F2. It will depend on your computer, but one of these should work. You can look for a message that says to hit one of those buttons to enter "set up." You'll have only a few seconds before it's too late to catch this, so act fast. A Good boot order would be. First Floppy Second CD Third Hard Drive
Had the same prob a while back... not sure if this will help cure your problem but.... I had a security feature, anti virus and recovery genius all enabled in BIOS. After disabling all of these items the sys booted fine with no probs. Hope this workd for you !!!
Hi!!! I too have had this problem when I tried to upgrade my system from FAT32 (Windows ME) to an NTFS system (Windows 2000). I did manage to get out of the problem before I go on I ask these two questions on the error prompt does the message say something about a boot partition or seperate boot sector and secondly have you formatted these partitions, if you havn't done the latter then first what I suggest you do is try to get hold of your Windows operating systems emergency boot disk and type A: press enter and then press DIR, look to see if there is a program called FDISK then you can be saved. But!!! before you do copy any information that is small enough onto floppy disks before using FDISK. Ideally you can also the PC's recovery disk to fix the problem as Windows will let you install just an upgrade on a clean (formatted) system. If you are trying upgrade systems in the future stick with the FAT32 file system as I find the NTFS system has many problems.
I don't know if you should follow that information. pkoontz has 4 partitions that have data on them. 1 partition may have a problem when it was changed to NTFS but to suggest the use of the FDISK command for anything other than to just check what partitions exist would completely wipe out any chance to save the information on any good partitions. To suggest saving data from a 200GB hard drive to floppy disks would seem a waste of time even trying. Transferring data to another hard drive would be about the only way to back up any reasonable amount of data at this point. Best of all. That seems to be pretty uninformed opinion and I don't think that you will find many people who would support you on that.
Okay, here's the skinny, took my puter to a friend that works in the school district. He called a buddy who loves a challenge. All of your suggestions were wonderful but I was not able to get to any prompt other than a: drive. After 5 hours, It's all back and up with the help of a tech, it appears that when I tried to convert the c: drive to ntfs (the one that has my operating system on it) all H_L_ broke out. Apparently the partition had a problem with the overlay???? This had to be re-built. Also I was told that the Caps on my motherboard are stressed and he suggested I backup all data, Like Yeah! After all this I am racing to get this done. He tried using knoppix?? used for Linix, this showed an empty 30 gig hard drive, and actually I have a 250 gig HD, after several calls to me he then booted with a partition disk. Oh he did mention that partition magic does not recognize a HD that large and could have been why the Fat 32 was used in the first place. The total cost to me $207.00 and a day and a half of fretting. Now looking into another motherboard and CPU. Any suggestions out there. I thank you all for the wonderful suggestions and links to other sites, I truly learned a lot for a 60 year old great grandmother. Live and learn, right?
Sorry to hear about you expensive experience. Did you get all the partitions converted or do you still just have the one NTFS partition? I guess one is all you really need but it would be better if all were NTFS. But I would wait until you upgrade and have all your data backed up. As for upgrading the hardware you should ask on the PC Hardware forum. Be sure to give all the information you can about what you currently have. http://forums.afterdawn.com/forum_view.cfm/111
Granny koontz, don't let this discourage you, stick with NTFS, it is the only way to go working in video. Big difference between 4g's and 10g's and we all know how large video files are! Robert's statement reflects a bad experience maybe,(as veblin said , unfounded). As we all know, that's easy to do with "puters", after all they are tempramental. I have 280g -3 hard drives total, all NTFS, no problems whatsoever. Good luck, I hope everything turns out well.
I had my 200G running of just Windows XP with no Service Pack... Basically if you couldnt without Service Pack, how could u install windows XP onto it ? :S or get the point of installing Service Pack 1...... Regards CoZZa
veblin: Question: Did you get all the partitions converted or do you still just have the one NTFS partition? I guess one is all you really need but it would be better if all were NTFS. But I would wait until you upgrade and have all your data backed up. Answer: Actually after all the problems, my C drive, the one with the operating system on it did convert to ntfs, so I now have two of my four partitions running ntfs, the other two still have fat32. For the time being, I will leave well enough alone. I am backing up all data and researching another motherboard and cpu. bigorange: I am now picking up items to have another system built. Just got a 250 Maxtor HD for $109.00 B-4- tax. Looking into another LG burner, I really like the one I currently have, it’s a 4x- model 4040B. I will make sure that the tech who sets this up for me sets it to ntfs so I won’t run into these problems again. Because of all of the excellent advice found on these boards I was able to backup better than 50 movies, made 3 coasters (operater error-he he he!) so guess I’m not doing to bad, ya think? I do have a question that haven’t been able to find the answer. I have been backing up in the iso format, what is the difference between this and the vob extension. Can I watch these backups on my puter in the iso format? Thank you so much for all of your help, I really appreciate it. Maybe this ole great-grandmother can keep up with technology with the help of this board and people like you.
You should Be able to watch the films in ISO format if you treat them as they are... Images. IE Mount them in a virtual drive such as the one installed with Alcohol 120% or CloneCD (Can't remember which version). I think theres something called Deamon tools that does the same but i'm not 100% on that. You simply Mount the image and it should play jst as if it was burnt to disc !!! Hope this helps !!!
I prefer file mode and VOB. But then, I don't burn with decrypter. I use nero or lots of times the app I'm working out of. (IC 8, dvdcopy 2, etc.) I only use decrypter to rip, if I use it.
