Please Help! Boot nightmare won't end!

[jhawker23]

I'll start off by confirming that I have spent hours researching and trying several of the recommended methods of repairing the MBR. I have not found anything that works in my situation.

I would really appreciate any help with this!

Here's the rundown...

Lenovo T61 - Windows XP Pro

Downloaded a display driver, when I rebooted the Windows startup screen runs for approx. 20 seconds and goes to the blue screen stating unmountable_boot_volume and restarts.

Here's what I've tried...

1) Booted from win98 boot disc. Tried using chkdsk /r. Received a message to use scandisk.

2) After booting from win98, cannot change directories from boot disc to the hard drive.

3) Booted from WinXP boot disc. I attempt to use the recovery console. I press r and receive the message - Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

4) Boot from PC Doctor 2.0 disc. Selected Hardware Info... Physical Disk Drives... (info reported)

Disk 0: Size 80 GB
Partition 1
Bootable: YES
Tyoe: 6 DOS Large File System
Start: 32 Sectors from beginning of disk
Start: Track: 0 Head: 1 Sector: 1
End: Track: 66 Head: 63 Sector: 32
Size: 136015 Sectors (69MB)

Partition 2: Empty
Partition 3: Empty
Partition 4: Empty

5) Still within PC Doctor 2.0 - Running Diagnostics... (results follow)

Controller: PASSED
Linear Verify: FAILED
Random Verify: PASSED
Read Surface Scan: FAILED

The error log reads...

025-025-000-20100101-33-IDE Interface: Failed (Read verify error (Corrupted-Data) occured at sector 49152.)

025-199-000-20100101-35-IDE Interface: Failed (DMA read error (Corrupted-Data) occurred at sector 56769.)

So, I can only see and run tests on the hard drive by booting through PC Doctor. However, this utility does not offer the functionality of repairing the MBR or repairing bad sectors.

PLEASE HELP! I sincerely appreciate any ideas or suggestions!!
Thank you!
Brad

[hackerballs]

have you tried to go into BIOS and set your graphics to internal, take your graphics card out, and see if it's your graphics card drivers fault? then my next try would be a format of the HDD and see if it "see's" one. If you can't get that far, then might be HDD also

CASE> CoolerMaster
Power Supply> SeaSonic 700W
MB> Gigabyte EP45-UD3R
CPU> Q6600 OC'ed
Cooler> Zalman 9700
RAM> OCZ Platinum, 8gigs, 4x2g,PC6400, 5-4-4-15 @2.02v
Graphics> NVidia 275GTX
HDD> WD Raptor 150g main, WD 500g Black
Sound> Creative Fatility X-Fi Game Pro 5.1
Speakers> Logitech Z5500
Monitor> Samsung 275tPlus 1920 x 1200 @60
OS> Windows 7 Pro x 64bit

[jlreich]

This really has nothing to do with repairing the MBR or the video card. The tests you have run and the errors you are receiving all lead to the drive is dead or dying. This happening after installing the driver is coincidence.

You can try zero filling the drive and formatting but if it has gotten bad sectors on the beginning of the drive it will most likely fail again very soon if it works at all. ;)

1) Booted from win98 boot disc. Tried using chkdsk /r. Received a message to use scandisk.

2) After booting from win98, cannot change directories from boot disc to the hard drive.

Win 98/DOS cannot access an NTFS file system, which XP usually uses. Or if it is FAT32 but can't see the drive because it is failed/failing....

Time for a new hard drive and to reinstall windows. ;)

If there is important data that must be recovered then I suggest GetDataBack (http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm). Read the instructions and pick the one for the correct file system type (NTFS or FAT32). You can use it for free to recover one file at a time as long as you have a program that can open the file and save it on the host system, or if the recovery options look good you can buy it to recover a bunch at a time.

Edit- If the drive is intermittently not being seen by the BIOS then it is likely normal data recovery methods won't work. It would be on to professional data recovery at that point if the data is that important.