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Answer» Here's a tough one for ya'll.
Friend of mine's laptop stopped working all the sudden. MBR Not Found; which I know is the Master Boot Record. I assumed this would be an easy fix, but Recovery Console stated the 'Hard Disk could not be found'. So, I poked my head into the BIOS and sure enough the dumbed-down version of HP's BIOS couldn't tell me anything. So, I pulled the HDD out and hooked it up to my computer. I would've used an external case, but the one I have for 2.5" is a little older and only works with Parallel, not SATA. So, using the internal SATA on my computer I connected it and checked the BIOS. Hey, looky, there it is. So, I boot to my Hard Drive and for some reason my computer hung on the WINDOWS 7 Logo. Couldn't say why 'my' OS would hang because of another Hard Drive (slaved, like it should be) having a Boot Sector malfunction.
I really would like to try it with an external but I have a FEELING it would only crash my Disk Management Utility or, for no other reason than to TICK me off, get a Windows STOP message.
My analysis; The HDD got Degaussed. This is the only assumption I can make for the MBR's corruption, but the HDD still showing up in my BIOS. However, it doesn't explain why it would keep my computer from booting up unless there's some unnecessary reason Windows needs the boot sector working on an HDD that it's NOT installed on.
I even tried moving my HDD down to SATA 5 and putting the failure of an HDD on SATA 0 (because 0-3 are the only ones affected by this next step:) and changing the settings in the BIOS to Raid Legacy...because who knows what that laptop is programmed to unless I call up HP and argue with their worthless support staff.
Any ideas would be super awesome sauce.1. PROBLEM Hard Drive.
a. Use the bootable hard drive diagnostics (CD-R or FLOPPY disk) from the manufacturer's website to test the drive.
b. What operating system(s) were installed to the hard drive?
c. What is the disk structure (primary partition(s), extended partition)?
d. Is there also a recovery partition on the drive (hidden or visible)?
2. Boot to a Live CD, e.g. SystemRescueCd, containing TestDisk and PhotoRec to see whether they can read the disk.
Quote from: dahlarbear on November 29, 2009, 03:06:40 AM 1. Problem Hard Drive.
a. Use the bootable hard drive diagnostics (CD-R or floppy disk) from the manufacturer's website to test the drive.
b. What operating system(s) were installed to the hard drive?
c. What is the disk structure (primary partition(s), extended partition)?
d. Is there also a recovery partition on the drive (hidden or visible)?
2. Boot to a Live CD, e.g. SystemRescueCd, containing TestDisk and PhotoRec to see whether they can read the disk.
I actually 'have' TestDisk and though I didn't think to use it, I do not believe I can. Or, it's unnecessary. I actually got Recovery Console to work on 'my' computer. Same XP disc that I tried on his laptop, but for some reason my computer was more willing to cooperate.
All I could get in Recovery Console was the HP_Recovery partition and even 'that' wasn't working. It wouldn't even give me the option of working with the partition the OS was on (XP, so I assume the structure was NTFS.). So, I tried DiskPartition and found out that the partition the OS was on had an UNKNOWN label (no structure info or anything) with 84,XXX Bytes and 84,XXX Bytes available...so that answered a question right there; the OS was just 'gone'.
The owner of the laptop is going to provide me with his Install Discs and Charging cable tomorrow and I'll attempt to format it hoping that the drive was only magnetized and not physically damaged...which I can't see it being that if Recovery Console can identify every sector and account for every byte.
It's not every day you get a computer that's been magnetized... One of more rarer PEBCAC errors.
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