gracie Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 hello folks, I have been given a laptop to try and fix. Its owner is very anxious not to lose the pics of his new baby. It is an Amilo M 7400 running XP Home.The owners story is that he was chatting with his mates on the web when the computer suddenly crashed and shut down, and when he tried to reboot it only loaded for a few seconds, never reaching the Windows screen before it just stopped. No messages, no beeps.I have persuaded it to get to recovery console via the cd . Then I tried for FixBoot, which said it was successful but it isn't and now I get the 'NTLDR is missing' message.When I went into Recovery Console it didn't find XP, just went to the C: Prompt, and I also noticed, when I was going down the commands to see what might be useful, that it is reporting that C: is FAT 16 - eh??.Chkdsk /p says there is one or more unrecoverable problems.Do you think this is a hard drive issue or corrupted files or what? I tried to check the BIOS details on the Fujitsu-Siemens website, but they are opting for the automatic update thing that checks your computer for you, which of course I can't use, so I can't get any BIOS updates to compare with what is already on there.I would appreciate any help you can give me; laptops are not my favourite beast and I feel less able to sort it than if it were a machine with get-attable parts,but I would like to help this young man without losing his pics if at all possible.I can't rebuild the boot.ini as a scan doesn't find anything, I could write another one and try and copy that in via cd I spose, but I have not done that before...is that all it would take or are we talking major damage do you think?Ah, I have just run chkdsk again and noticed that it says the volume serial number is 0000-0000, and that the total disk space is 10 mb. Setup tells me the drive is 40 Gb btw.what does this mean I wonder? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
martymas Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 first xp is run in ntfs not fat and needs to be convertedin your command prompt.second try the file reovery command run-type cmd-at the promt typesfc/scannow press enterit will ask for the xpcdwhich has to be legal or it wont workif you can get to the bios go in and try and change the boot sequenceto boot from the c -cdrom -floppyi havent a clue how this will work but xp may have to be reinstalled if file recovery dosent recover those missing filesmarty Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gracie Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 (edited) When you boot to the xp cd and go to recovery console, at the prompt can you run chkdsk /r?yes spider person, it still gives me the message of unrecoverable problems Edited March 17, 2006 by gracie Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gracie Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 first xp is run in ntfs not fat and needs to be convertedin your command prompt.second try the file reovery command run-type cmd-at the promt typesfc/scannow press enterit will ask for the xpcdwhich has to be legal or it wont workif you can get to the bios go in and try and change the boot sequenceto boot from the c -cdrom -floppyi havent a clue how this will work but xp may have to be reinstalled if file recovery dosent recover those missing filesmartywith respect marty, XP can accommodate both FAT and NTFS - but FAT 32 not FAT 16, so I understandI do not think I have seen the sfc/scannow option in recovery console, though I will check. The boot sequence is already set for the cd-rom to be found first ( there is no floppy drive on this model). Thank you for your help Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 You receive an "NTLDR is missing" error message when you start your computerBesides fixboot have you tried fixmbr? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gracie Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 (edited) You receive an "NTLDR is missing" error message when you start your computerBesides fixboot have you tried fixmbr?yes terrorist I have tried fixmbr, fixboot,copy ntldr and ntdetect ( couldn't do the second one) um, bootscan (?) chkdisk /r...nothing works.I am about to try and write a new Boot.ini and get it on there, not sure quite how to do it yet. I also tried setup again but setup said it would have to reformat, so that was a no-no. how can I get the boot ini I have written onto the machine without a floppy? Edited March 17, 2006 by gracie Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 (edited) Do you have a Knoppix Live CD? You could boot with that to see if you can access the drive. You could also use it to retrieve any files and burn them to disk. If not you could get an adapter and slave the laptop's hard drive to a desktop computer and retrieve the data that way. Edited March 17, 2006 by TheTerrorist_75 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gracie Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Do you have a Knoppix Live CD? You could boot with that to see if you can access the drive. You could also use it to retrieve any files and burn them to disk. If not you could get an adapter and slave the laptop's hard drive to a desktop computer and retrieve the data that way.Great minds think alike! I have Bart's PE builder - would that do it do you think? I don't have the one you mentioned but I will make a note of it for future ref. Plan B is slaving the drive to another - I just don't want to have to be the one to tell him his drive has died... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TheTerrorist_75 Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Bart PE has Deep Burner included. If the laptop has a CD/DVD burner it should work fine. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
gracie Posted March 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Bart PE has Deep Burner included. If the laptop has a CD/DVD burner it should work fine. I couldn't get it to fire up. Haven't used it for a while, disappointing. Plan B is looming . Thank you terrorist Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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