rolanaj Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 I am unable to boot into windows at all, I had thought that maybe the mbr was corrupted and that putting in a boot disk would allow me to do a repair. None of my boot disks work at all, says that there is a serious disk error. I put in the WinMe recovery cd (I don't need to hear about how bad Me is, believe me I know) I tried all the options without format, not enough space. So I told it to format and reinstall, it finished formatting the drive and then started to install windows at about 65% it said ATTENTION a serious disk error has occurred while writing to drive c retry ®selecting r and hitting enter did nothing at all so am I to assume this hard drive is failing, I say is failing because it boots into linux just fine. If this isn't a harddrive failure and just needs to be repaired is there anyway to repair it without installing windows?The reason I was booting into windows at all was that last time I used it I chose reboot instead of shut down, this is fine except when I am in linux and I try to shut down it reboots, this doesn't happen if I choose shut down from windows. So right now I have to choose shutdown and let it power down and then hold in the power button for six seconds so it actually shuts down, does anyone know how to change this is it something in the bios? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marsden11 Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 If you're not running at least Win2K or XP your options are very slim. I would try to get a hold of either of those install disks (CD-ROM) and boot from either of them.Select the Recovery Console and run chkdsk /R from the command line. Run it till it comes up clean with no errors. It may take several tries to get a clean pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 None of my boot disks work at all,Is your BIOS set so that the floppy drive is before the hd in the booting sequence? You should be able to boot to DOS on a floppy totally independent of the hd.ATTENTION a serious disk error has occurred while writing to drive c retryYou could have a bad spot on the hd in the area where the Win ME is being loaded. You need to be able to boot to DOS then run scandisk on the Win ME partition. Does Linux allow you to scan the Win ME partition? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 Hi Rolanaj,Greg, (The reformed Slacker) stated somewhere that installing Win after Linux was a PIG of a job to do.. tough it can be done! I agree with the others that you could have truncated files on the drive that need to be cleaned off, using scandisk/checkdisk whatever suits the DOS version. You may also want to PM Greg to find out what his opinion/experience is... else he may miss this thread. Before you decide to 'kill' the whole HD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 19, 2004 Author Share Posted September 19, 2004 I would try to get a hold of either of those install disks (CD-ROM) and boot from either of them.My dad has winXp, but I'm not sure, he might just have a recovery cd seems to be all they give with computers now a days.Is your BIOS set so that the floppy drive is before the hd in the booting sequence? You should be able to boot to DOS on a floppy totally independent of the hd.I am able to use a linux boot floppy so I must have it set like that seems to me it is floppy, cd, then hard driveDoes Linux allow you to scan the Win ME partition? I am not sure about this I think I need a linux guru for this one.Greg, (The reformed Slacker) stated somewhere that installing Win after Linux was a PIG of a job to do.. tough it can be done! I agree with the others that you could have truncated files on the drive that need to be cleaned off, using scandisk/checkdisk whatever suits the DOS version.This is an old install of windows. Also I know that the boot floppies work as I used one to format the hard drive on my laptop afterwards so not sure why they wouldn't work on the pc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 What make of hard drive do you have? I'd download the manufacturer's diagnostic software from their web site and run a test. This will quickly determine whether your drive is physically bad or just corrupted. Either way, this is a good starting point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 19, 2004 Author Share Posted September 19, 2004 Hda is a 20 G Maxtor harddrive, thanks for the suggestion it definitely sounds like the place to start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 19, 2004 Author Share Posted September 19, 2004 There seems to be one problem After downloading to your Windows desktop, insert a clean formatted floppy diskette into your A:\ drive. Double-click on the PowerMax diskette creator icon. When the Maxtor pop-up screen displays, click on the "Create Floppy" option.I don't have a windows desktop anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted September 19, 2004 Share Posted September 19, 2004 There seems to be one problemI don't have a windows desktop anymore. Hmm, that definitely is a problem. You have access to another computer? Even an Internet cafe or the public library? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 19, 2004 Author Share Posted September 19, 2004 You have access to another computer? Even an Internet cafe or the public library?I could probably use my dad's but he is in the process of moving and wont be online for a few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specmon Posted September 20, 2004 Share Posted September 20, 2004 Might I suggest that you change the IDE cable that the hard drive is attached to?Or at least unplug and reseat both ends?I have an old hard drive that gives me that "disk read error" every few weeks.Reseating the cable at both ends buys me a few more weeks. I assume that either the drive or the IDE channel on the motherboard is going bad, but I have been playing this game for months. Might also just be an oxidation problem on one of the many pins involved.This only takes a minute and it just might solve your problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 20, 2004 Author Share Posted September 20, 2004 I did a disk scan with linux or at least a check for bad sectors and found 0, actually I have never had any bad sectors show up with a disk scan in windows before. I have recently added a couple linux distros to my system and wonder if this may be the problem. Also is there a chance my windows cd might be corrupt? I can definitely try playing with the ide cable, but it seems strange to me that the linux distros that are on the same drive are working fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 I'm beginning to think that Windows is trying to write to a section of/or the MBR of the disk and finding it occupied by Linux.I doubt MS would have made allowances for this, and you may have to remove Linux and/or just re-format the whole drive and start again.Win first...I hope I'm wrong..... but something is screwing up what MS wants to see as a 'clean' disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marsden11 Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Again, get a hold of a Win2K or XP CD-ROM and use the Recovery Console to run FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozidave Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 Hi Rolanaj,you may want to have a look at this.. because I ended up suffering something the same. XP and Linux Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specmon Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 rolanaj:I agree that it is strange, but that is what happens to me too.I have three windows partitions on the front of the HD, and PCLos 7 behind them.When the drive is showing me "disk read errors" PCLos boots and works fine (using LILO) although it fails to mount the C drive.So manipulating the cable 'could' solve your problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rolanaj Posted September 22, 2004 Author Share Posted September 22, 2004 Hi everyone and thanks for the replies, I just had a couple minutes and signed on to check out this thread. Specmon I will definitely try wiggling the cables as this seems like a good place to start. Marsden11 I am trying to get a hold of a winxp cd but it seems to be packed away at the moment while dad gets moved. I am also planning on downloading the ultimate boot cd to see if that can help me out, sounds like a good thing to have kicking around anyway. I am also following Ozidaves thread in the linux forum. Anymore thoughts are definitely welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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