Boot loop HELL.....SAVE ME!!!

[IBM]

Happily working away, clicked something in Outlook. Computer freezes, taskbar active, everything else dead. No biggy, happened before...it's Windows after all.

Reboot. Everything seems to be running fine. Gets to the windows load screen and....hangs.

Okay, seen that before, reboot and go to safe mode. Boot loop. Try last saved configiration. Boot Loop. Try Safe Mode again.

BOOT LOOP.
BOOT LOOP.
BOOT LOOP.
BOOT LOOP.
BOOT LOOP.

AAAAARRRRGGHHHHH!!!

Boot tells me that my RAID is fine, so is it just an XP reinstall issue?

Help please....panicking like only a person with a dead computer and weeks of not backed up files can....

[IBM]

And what's 'Automated System Recovery' when booting from the XP CD?

And how much data am I going to loose if I do a repair from win XP when I'm already on SP 2?

[IBM]

Using XP CP I've tried to repair through recovery console. Running CHKDSK gives me 'one or more unrecoverable problems on the volume'.....does this mean it's a disk issue rather than a OS problem?

[megah0]

Any chance you can bung the drive into another machine to get the data off first?

Either that or use an Ubuntu liveCD to try back stuff up onto a usb stick or similar first.

[IBM]

Part of a RAID array, so no....

This is looking exceptionally bad....anyone know if those data recovery guys can retireve data from RAID 0?

[megah0]

Ah, RAID 0.

Quick google throws up some utils, no idea how useful they might be.

Good luck.

[shaithis]

Data recovery people will be able to get info off of it, thats for sure.

The question is: Is the data on the drive worth the 4-figure number you will be paying for the service?

[kalniel]

Using XP CP I've tried to repair through recovery console. Running CHKDSK gives me 'one or more unrecoverable problems on the volume'.....does this mean it's a disk issue rather than a OS problem?

Not always, but certainly possible.

Definately try the disks in another computer if you can.

[IBM]

While I've been looking for an excuse to build myself a new PC, is it even possible to insert two RAID 0 disks into a pc and run them so the data is readable?

And I was actually quoted around £650 for a full data recovery in 5-7 days....but it's not even that. I did a fairly comprehensive backup onto the secondary drive about a month ago....

[IBM]

So who wants to bet that BartPE and RAID reconstructor aren't going to be able to do jack?

[IBM]

Here's an interesting (and worrying) turn of events....can't save the data on the primary disk, so I'm going ahead with a reinstall. Only when I get to the xp setup, I'm told that setup did not find any hard disks installed on my computer.

Now, by my count there are three....two WD 75Gb raptors in RAID 0, and one 250 for backup. What on earth would cause the system to see none of them?

[alsenior]

use repair on the windows cd . it wont overwrite any of your data it will recopy all the windows files. and reset windows config files

[IBM]

The repair route is the same as the reinstall. The xp cd can't see any drives, to install onto, or to repair.

Anyone know why the install can't see ANY disks? Even the secondary disk?

[alsenior]

have you added the drivers at the F6 install part?

[IBM]

Which drivers? Which F6 install part?

I was about to use the WD data lifeguard boot disk to reinitialise the drives, but that means total data loss and I'm still holding out for a miracle...

[muddyfox470]

As you have a RAID setup, windows before the install, the first thing it asks is do you wish to install any 3rd party drivers press f6 (then later on it will ask you for the raid drivers for your motherboard...)

Ian