sorry it's kind of long.. i took my post from other forums and put them on here so they are really about 5 small posts put together.. please read it i really need some help..


ok so.. it's kind of a long story so i will try and make it short. so about 3 months ago i had this 2002 dell computer. i had for obviously about 5 years and it was a pretty good machine.. didnt give me to many problems until one day the spawn of satan came apon me. my virus protection was wicked OUTDATED and the hardware was fine so i'm assuming its a virus... i call it the windows xp boot loop. it's probably the most frustrating thing i have ever delt with on a computer. the problem was, when i started my computer it would go to the power failure boot menu. no matter which option i chose it would always end with the same result.. the computer would restart and do the exact same thing. it would usualy get to the windows xp logo screen and it would start to load and then shut down and restart again. i did everything there was to do. i posted on this site to try and get some help.. but nothing.. so after about a week a gave up.. i needed a new computer anyways. my aunt had a computer about a month old that she thought was broken.. turns out all it needed was more ram and a replacement power source. so it was pretty good. i also took a few parts from my dell, the ram, video card, the harddrive, and the cd burner. the computer worked great. i thought my the hardrive from the dell was corrupted but i put it in my pc as a slave and there was no problems. i got the nortan virus protection and scaned both HDs for viruses and it took of a few from the old HD.. and all was fine.. it ran smoothly for the last 3 months until last night. i have been just getting in to remote desktop sharing, so i could use my computer at a friends house or from my laptop at school. so since i wasent sure about the kind of protection my RDS program would offer me from intrusion, i desided to download a folder lock. i have used this kind of program in the past so i thought it was ok to DL...definitly wrong.. once i DL it i clicked instalation and it started.. i noticed that it said that only 94% finished DLing and if i tryed to close the DL screen it was say something like "do you really want to exit now? 1 file will not be downloaded.".. this was kind of weird considering the program was already instaling so i just thought it was a glitch.. then my computer kinda froze on me. the instalation screen and DL locked up. i tryed to hit control+alt+delete but it didnt work. task manager didnt come up so i went into run to try and get task manager to open from there but it didnt work. it said something like " cannot open taskmgr. it is being used by another source or program." ok i was a little confused by that.. so i thought it was just a glitch to i shut down my computer and tryed to reboot. i then contemplated taking a hammer to my pc after what i saw. the windows boot loop was back. i couldn't believe it. frusterated after many trys to reboot, i went into the bios menu and reset all the settings, didnt work. i tryed a few other little things.. nothing.. then i started to do pointless things in desperation like replacing the cmos BATTERY. now having no clue what the problem was.. i thought it might be coruption in my HD so i switched my master and slave around so maybe i could do a virus scan or something on the HD.. but that sure as *censored* did nothing.. the same god *censored* thing.

a few days later...

heres an update.. i got the cd-rom to work and i booted up the recovery console. so i type in chkdsk /r and it went through the recovery process.. after about 4 and a half hours later it stoped at 50% and said "volume contains unrecoverable problems"... greatttt... so i tryed all of the other commands chkdsk /p, /f, /x, and then i tryed fix boot... it stopped and said cannot open the partition1.. so for the *censored* of it i restarted my computer and booted with the instalation cd again and this time i went into the windows installation option just to check things out.. it said that there was 2 parts to my harddrive.. one was like 76317mbs or something and the other was only 8mbs..are HD normaly like that? or could that be the cause of all this? since chkdsk wont work, will pc repair and Knoppix still work?
well after i was finished with that i desided to see if i could get anything out of my slave drive.. (both HDs are 80g's and where both effected by the virus) i booted it with the XP installation cd and i went to reinstall windows but i saw another option.. it was something about a repair reinstall.. so i could keep my files and user profiles but reinstall everything else.. i did that and after about an hour i was ABLE to log on..but it didnt really run to well because my slave HD has a sort of symbiotic relationship with my master. (they share a lot of the same files so a lot of things where missing) anyways i thought since i was able to do that with my slave.. why not my master? so i tryed that process with my master but the option of repair reinstalation didnt even come up. like i said before, the first time i entered the installaton menu with my master it was cut into 2 parts the 76317mbs and the 8mbs, well just to see what would happen i click the 76317 one and it said "an error occured while setup was updating partition information on 76317 mb disk 0 at ID 1 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]... cannot continue..." then my computer restarted and said hard disk fail. so i restarted my computer and booted with the xp insallation disk again to go into the recovery console i type fixmbr \device\harddisk0 and nothing happends.. it justs moves on to the next c>: or w/e.. well i have no idea what to do from here it's getting close to 1 in the morning and i got school in the morning.. i think i am going to run chkskd /r or /f while i am sleeping..(didnt work, hat wa slast night) i keep getting further and further away from booting my computer up witht the corupted HD..it's like everytime i try to do somethign the problem gets worse..

i dont know. if anyone has any other ideas please let me know.
That "hard disk fail" message - there's your clue. ""volume contains unrecoverable problems" - there's another. Sounds like at least one of your disks was gradually getting more and more flaky.

well thats the thing.. i dont even think the HD is even a year old.. but if it is "flaky" is there any way to get my files off?Try copying them in DOS.
Pull the hdd / take it to your aunts & slave it again / copy the data / replace the hdd

Alan <><  a few things...

1. my master drive is the drive with the problem..

2. contrex, how can i get my files off in dos? if that would require a dos boot disk then i have tryed that.. for some reason my computer wont boot from the disk, i have tryed with 2 different ones..i will try another one when i get home today..aslo for some reason i cannot switch the master and slave around... when ever i try to boot it RUNS until i get to the windows logo screen (or sometimes before that) then the screen goes black and i have to restart my computer.

3. alan, i took my aunts whole computer so i can't slave it to hers... but do you know of any other ways to copy the data from my HD to another?

thank you all for your replys Quote from: mikelost5 on April 20, 2007, 10:12:54 AM

for some reason i cannot switch the master and slave around... when ever i try to boot it runs until i get to the windows logo screen (or sometimes before that) then the screen goes black and i have to restart my computer.