Help! - Dont know what to try next.

[Trippledence]

After trying out some overclocking on Ramedges computer windows desided it didnt want to boot any more, this resulted in it loading the xp logo freesing then nothing else happening. All the difrent kinds of safe mode resulted in the PC restarting.

We reset the bios to default to make sure nothing was getting at it there.

Didnt help. So the windows cd went in, tryed to get to revovery console and again it froze on "examining" the harddrive. Tryed as the next step to do a repair istallation or formatt of the harddrive, but before anything could happen, the computer blue screened with a Driver irql not less or equal error. Alsos quoteing ntfs.sys (sounds bad eh?).

The disk is a 200gb Seagate SATA, unsing the onbord controler of an Asus A8n SLI -Delux, this is a silicon image controler iirc.

Really dont know what to try next, really we want to recover the dad from the drive, but seen as we cant to anything to it, someitng would be a start.

HELP!

[herulach]

Try another controller, but if you did indeed use the Sil controller not the nforce one then youre prob fubar as it isnt frequency locked on most boards.

[Trippledence]

Great, the black ones are the Sillicon image? or the red ones? i'm not sure which one its in, as theres 2 on the bord.

The bios, and the rais setup picks up the disk in both sets of ports. So i'm inclined to think that there ok.

[EvilMunky]

sounds silly but i would try the following thing :

grab an ide disk and connect that up and see if that allows any form of boot.

put the original hard drive into another known working machine


You sure its not heat related?

[herulach]

Great, the black ones are the Sillicon image? or the red ones? i'm not sure which one its in, as theres 2 on the bord.

The bios, and the rais setup picks up the disk in both sets of ports. So i'm inclined to think that there ok.

Its the left hand bank as youlook with the cpu at the top.

[Trippledence]

Trying to get an IDE disk to work with it now, but all the ones we have seem to be a bit nackerd. I dont think its heat from the harddisks POV, as there cool to the touch all the time with a fan blowing over them. Putting the harddrive in anoter mashine would be my next call, but dont have any others with sata. *crys*

Found a 40gb old IDE thats full of bad sectors, if i can get that to work, will give it a go.

herulach: it was in the nforce controler then, tryed the silicon ones as well. But to no avail.

[ifyouknowme]

sounds prity nackered try it in a different sata port

[Trippledence]

sounds prity nackered try it in a different sata port

Tryed and in both controlers.

[Trippledence]

Ok, got another hard disk in. Boots into windows. Then with the SATA in as well, bluescreens. The second time we tryed to boot, nothing happed. Tryed safe mode, froze while booting.

[herulach]

Only thing i can reccomend is hit up the manufacturers website, see if they have any tools on there, they usually are dos mode, but assuming the drives not completly dead (have heard of it happening while overclocking) then they might be able to give you some of the data back.

[Trippledence]

I know samsung do alot of nice tools, i still have there boot manager thing installed on my spinpoint. I'll have a look in the seagate website thanks. Can any one recomend any thing else that would do the same thing. The funny thing to me is that its not working at all in windows, but is detected fine in the bios.

[herulach]

I know samsung do alot of nice tools, i still have there boot manager thing installed on my spinpoint. I'll have a look in the seagate website thanks. Can any one recomend any thing else that would do the same thing. The funny thing to me is that its not working at all in windows, but is detected fine in the bios.

Which makes it sound like maybe a partition table fubar. So you might be able to get something back off it, although usually you would still be able to see the disk, doe sit appear in device manager?

[Trippledence]

Not in device manager, which gave me the willys a bit. But its been detected by the bios still, and it does start to load windows. Which makes the think the drives not broken hardware wise. But then why wont windows detect it! Or sometimes it jsut wont boot with it in.

[nez]

sounds like the partitions are a bit farked, this may sound like a weird idea, but either install a small version of linux on the IDE drive, or run a live cd and then plug in the sata, u never know it might let u see it, 'm not and expert in linux but there must be some good software like partition magic for linux.

or just try partition magic or similar with the IDE drive and plug in the sata, it might be able to show it wher windows would hide what it knows, and it has some useful tools in it as well.

nez