Hard drive crash. Recovery CD won't work. Please help.

[moltensilver]

Wow... I don't know where to start with this one but I am going to try. I also posted this at the infoarena forum as well.

I recently decided to open my 220A5 case to look at the internal routing of the Wifi antenna (Turned out to be a big mistake :( ). I was gentle (I thought) with the case to avoid any unloosening of the drive cables, etc. However, when I reassembled and rebooted the unit it would no longer boot.

The unit would come to the VPR logo screen, pause, blink the status lights, blink to a blackscreen and repeat. Occasionally it would stop on a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left hand corner (Similar to a system with no operating system installed).

After checking to make sure I did not disconnect any cables I decided to boot the recovery CD hoping it would allow me access to view the partions on the drive. When the the Easy Restore program started. I received an error noting that the partition table sizes did not match and the program could correct it; which I agreed. (I can post the exact message from Easy Restore if needed. I can't find my notes right now.) The operation seemed to complete so I then decided to abort the restore at the prompt that all my data on the my drive would be destroyed.

After the program said that it corrected my partion table the computer continued the same symptoms. I decided to look in the setup and and the Primary HD seemed to detect to garbage characters that did not make sense in relation to the drive. At this point I decided that perhaps my opening of the case may have damaged the hard drive and I decided to order a 7200 RPM Hitachi HD 60 Gig and external enclosure to continue the repair of the computer.

After the new drive arrived, I installed it and began the recovery CD on the fresh drive. The installation seemed to be going fine until approx. the 73% mark where I received Error #1500 Bad boot signature byte and the recovery quit to dos. I rebooted and tried the recovery once more and received to same error at the same point.

The next day I decided to install the new 7200 RPM drive in the external enclosure and install on my other working laptop. The drive mounted fine and I installed a working NTFS primary DOS partion on the drive and it in turn mounted a letter in My Computer.

After I saw the drive was working properly, I decided to again install the drive into the VPR and run the recovery cd. I again received the message that the partition table sizes did not match (The same error as on the the original problem HD) and would I like to repair the issue. After agreeing, I received the error Error #1513 Bad Attribute position in file record at about the 75% mark. I then went into the BIOS and disabled the 32 bit and DMA modes and tried the recovery CD again to no avail.

At this point, I have a computer that I can not load the recovery cd to restore the OS. I tried to boot the drive via the external enclosure but I dont think our BIOS revision supports it. My next step is to contact Phoenix and hopefully upgrade the BIOS. as I had another computer that had simaliar issues with ATA66 drives that a BIOS update fixed.

I have no idea of two things. First what happened to cause this laptop not to boot and next why I can I not reinstall the recovery CD? I am hoping that perhaps I damaged the ribbon cable and may order a replacement. However I think there is a chance that perhaps the motherboard or HD controlled was damaged or zapped.

I have been quite thorough (sorry to be so long winded) trying to figure this out. Please help me with any ideas or suggestions you may have as I am in a really bad spot here. If you need more info or details please post and I provide any info I can.

Thanks in advance.

moltensilver

[ECA]

WELL,
Im guessing.
1.Your bios hasnt Identified the drive properly.
Any static could reset the bios.
Any static could Wipe a control board.

Create a boot floppy on the other system, and set your BIOS to boot from floppy.
Go into the Bios and have the system ID the drive.

Can you search your Recovery disk... there may be a different install on the disk, try it.

Do you know how to FDISK, and format?

Other may have other ideas.

On another note.... DONT TAKE IT APART unless you know whats happening.

[moltensilver]

1.Your bios hasnt Identified the drive properly.
Any static could reset the bios.
Any static could Wipe a control board.

Yes it seems that the drive is not being indentified properly by the BIOS at least on the primary ide channel. Static is a definate possibility however, in my ten years of being a tech I have never zapped a part (To my knowledge....)

Create a boot floppy on the other system, and set your BIOS to boot from floppy. Go into the Bios and have the system ID the drive.

I am not sure why you want me to make a boot floppy. Please explain? I have access to the BIOS however, there is no option to redetect the drives. It does the drive ID upon initial boot.

Can you search your Recovery disk... there may be a different install on the disk, try it.

I don't think there is but I will try it. I also plan on trying a fresh install of XP pro from the original cd when I get a chance. However, I definately think I am having drive identification issues.

Do you know how to FDISK, and format?

Absolutely, in fact after I had problems with the restore cd I booted from a windows 98 cd and ran fdisk and I installed a primary dos partion (Fat32) the size of the entire drive and set it active. After a reboot (DOS/Windows Boot disk) it would not mount a drive letter ie C: after running fdisk again and viewing the partition info the drive appearred to be fine showing a 60 gig primary dos partition C:

On another note.... DONT TAKE IT APART unless you know whats happening.

Well.. gulp.. I think (hope) I have the proper experience and knowledge to work on this unit. Hopefully my initial post properly conveyed my thought process.

Thank you for your reply and I look forward to hearing from you.

moltensilver

[ECA]

I would go to the Drive site and get the info in the drive to insert into the bios. Cylinders, sectors, and tracks.
Inset them into the bios and see if that helps.

so far it only sounds like the bios reset.

Laptops are real pains, esp trying to ground the thing while you work on them. there are easy ways to ground Desktops and towers, by leaveing the power plug in and turned off. But this dont work with DC, as both channels are turned off and it dont ground when pluged in.

[moltensilver]

I would go to the Drive site and get the info in the drive to insert into the bios. Cylinders, sectors, and tracks.
Inset them into the bios and see if that helps.

Yes, that seems worth a try however I find it the strange that both drives have the same symptoms. Unfortunately they are drives of the same model (Hitachi). If I had to order over again, I would order another model/manufacturer. Honestly, I expected the hard drive replacement to be easy. I have been googleing and others have had garbage drive ID's in the BIOS when the cable is bad. Unfortunatly the cable (which seems to be proprietary) is in a drive kit and is 25 bucks from bestbuy parts (darn laptops). If I don't get it up with a bios upgrade from Phoenix I will order one.

Thanks.

[ECA]

The bios may not KNOW what it is.
you may need a bios update. NOT real hard, but DO copy the original BIOS, FIRST.

[moltensilver]

but DO copy the original BIOS, FIRST

I understand but the major problem is that there seems to be only one version of the BIOS (no upgrades from vpr). Therefore, there is no bios to download on their website to reflash the CMOS. Any suggestions?

[ECA]

just Id the drive in bios yourself, should be a 'user config'.

[moltensilver]

Still haven't found a solution. I would appriciate any help from the tech experts out there.

Thanks in advance.

moltensilver
(*crosses fingers*) :)

[ECA]

Ok, there is 1 other rescource.
The drive maker may have made an Install and Load program for it.
I have one on my Syquest, as my computer wont take 120gig drives. This prog formats and setup your HD anyway you wish and can be setup on a floppy if needed, but is easier from 2 HD.

[jacky_jose]

Hi, have you tried http://www.diskemergency.com it provides many ways to recover data from disk. You can submit your problem online and get solution in short time. Hope this will help you.
Good luck!