Windows won't start...disk problems

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Terry - 21 May 2004 10:49 GMT

Hello,

I'm having a problem with my Win98SE PC that has a Seagate 20gig Baracuda HD
(FAT32). On startup, booting to Windows just hangs at the start screen. I
can hear repeated audible little "bips" coming from the hard drive and the
drive light stays lit. I can boot to DOS from startup floppy and can access
the disk from DOS (list files, do stuff). When I do a "dir" on the drive's
root, among the list of the normal files are 7 files who's names are ascii
128 (like ? ? ? ? .? ?) with a size of 4,286,644,096 with the date/time
stamp of 12-00-07 19:60p. Obviously, the sizes of those funky ? "files" add
up to more than the 20 gig size of the drive. Ran Seagate's SeaTools and it
reports "Invalid media descriptor", everything else reports fine (disk
tests, surface scan, etc.).

Anyone know what happened, what those funky files are, and what I can do to
correct this?

Thanks in advance

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Terry - 22 May 2004 00:10 GMT

A followup...

Booting to dos prompt, I discovered my Windows directory has vanished!
"C:\windows" itself is gone. The only new files at the root are those 7 ? ?
? ? .? ? files. Any ideas as to what has happened? Will I be able to
recover my windows directory without reinstalling?

> Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> Thanks in advance

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AlmostBob - 22 May 2004 00:45 GMT

STOP USING THE DRIVE the more you try to do the worse it will get. those funky
files are the total of your hard disk, during the failure the disk was
damaged,, they dont really add up to more than 20meg, since a kb=1024 and a
gig=1073741824, much larger than the 1000000000 assumed. there are utility
programs to recover the disk by restoring the MBR, but you CANT use that pc to
download them not sure whether these are right but its a start
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/
use another pc

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| Hello,
|
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
|
| Thanks in advance

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Terry - 22 May 2004 06:59 GMT

Thank you for your reply.

Fortunately, I have my wife's PC, which is what I've been using since the
problem surfaced. I can't do much with the problem PC anyhoo since the
Windows directory has vanished. Will restoring the MBR fix the issue of
those funky files and restore my C:\Windows directory?

Seagate's SeaTools is only a diagnostic utility, and I wasn't able to locate
a utility on their site for restoring the MBR. I searched the web and
Usenet archives for an MBR restore utility, and all I found were for
utilities that restore the MBR from a backup it created of the MBR ( I don't
have a backup of my MBR). Some mention using FDISK /MBR to recreate the
master boot record. I'm running Win98SE, FAT32 (straight windows, no
special partitioning stuff or other disk stuff (disk managers, etc.)).
So... will doing a fdisk /mbr hose my existing files on the drive, or will
it keep the files intact? I hope to be able to retain my files as it would
take a week to get everything back to normal (reinstalls, backup restores,
etc.). Anyone know of any issues doing a fdisk /mbr with Win98SE / FAT32?
Can anyone recommend a utility for repairing my MBR? Any other suggestions
or advice?

Thanks.

> STOP USING THE DRIVE the more you try to do the worse it will get. those funky
> files are the total of your hard disk, during the failure the disk was
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
> |
> | Thanks in advance

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Lil' Dave - 22 May 2004 08:19 GMT

The symptoms that you noted I would think are partition boot
record/FAT/FAT32 associated.
Were you messing with the bios settings, or was there a power outage lately?

> Thank you for your reply.
>
[quoted text clipped - 71 lines]
> > |
> > | Thanks in advance

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Terry - 22 May 2004 23:11 GMT

Nope. Haven't touched the BIOS in quite awhile, and I run off a battery
backup. A couple of days ago, the PC locked up completely when I went to
close an IE window. It ran fine afterwards for a day or so, then the
problem arose.

The PC has drive drawers so I can cold swap the HDs between my general HD
and a few special ones I occasionally need for my work (my general purpose
one is the one with the problem). I haven't needed to swap in awhile
though.

The drive has AVG running, I had updated the sig 2 or 3 days before.

> The symptoms that you noted I would think are partition boot
> record/FAT/FAT32 associated.
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> > > |
> > > | Thanks in advance

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