Anyway, now I just have a looping reboot - comes to a blue screen with some text but gone too quickly to read. Safemode doesn't work either. Windows Diagnotic (I think that was what it was called) indicated a boot disk error.
I afraid my main HDD bit the dust (seagate) because when I make the second (maxtor) the master I can get it to boot. Just to the wrong OS and files - aaargh.
is a boot disk error correctable?
how can I find out if the seagate is toast?
if it is, is there any way to get my files off it?
I'm desperate for a fix. Thanks for anything you can offer.
Go here SeaTools and use Seagate's diagnostics utility.
I can't answer all the questions others may, as far as recovering windows files a Linux live boot cd is often recommend see link and stand by for other input.
See if I can get a better link but it pretty much covers the main Idea.
Last edited by zep516; 03-22-2009 at 06:41 PM.
got it - that's great. DLing now.
update: I reinstalled the seagate as slave which prompted a scandisk upon reboot and it is running endlessly with the following: "replacing invalid security ID w/default security ID for file # ...,... " into the hundred thousands now. Just let it go?
prior to that I downloaded and tried to install the seatools utility, install failed - requires NET 2.0 (or similar); downloaded seatools DOS also ... try that?
anything else while all this waiting?