Bman

Plastic Nev, Yes the data is secured on a different hard drive on a different computer. Also, the drives are fine according to Western Digital diagnostics. Sad to have to redo windows entirely. Before reinstallation of windows on sound harddrives, I'm concerned that the motherboard is on its last leg. It seems to have been affected by the current problem. The memory though checks out fine. Perhaps the issue is with the bios but I don't think so. It seems that the bios doesn't recognize parts of the computer on an initial boot but does on the reboot. Thoughts on this? I hate to reinstall and then have to do this all over with a new motherboard. :confused:

Ok, feeling squeemish about doing a repair without pulling off my data first I tried Knoppix as suggested to pull off the data. No luck. So then I actually paid for DiskInternals NTFS Recovery and after a few tries was able to successfully copy all my data files to another harddrive. It was worth the money. I next moved the non-cooperative harddrive back to its computer and attempted to do a windows "repair" but while the bios saw the drives, Windows apparently did not as the following message was received after attempting a windows "repair": "The Path or File specified is not valid" and it went to an invalid c:\ prompt. Thoughts? :mad: :(

Tootech and Seth, no I didn't run WD diagnostics on my primary computer as it wouldn't boot up. What should I have done? The mirror array bootup notification indicated a problem based on my initial post. Going into the mirror array bootup software I was able to determine that the mirror no longer existed and wasn't recognized. Twice before I was able to rebuild the mirror when it had corrupted but this time while the software recognized the set it didn't allow the option to rebuild as it said it didn't exist (yet it must have to have recognized a problem). I tried to boot from both drives independently. Neither worked. Ultimately, the mirror software did allow me to delete the set and I didn't create a new one. I will try to repair windows n a few hours if there are no other responses. I suspect though that I'll find my mobo and memory shot. I did try earlier to boot via CD Active Boot disk for windows and for dos but it wouldn't finish loading in memory before crashing. But when the computer starts up the memory checks out fine. :(

Tootech, you and Goku are talking about a repair and not a restore. Okay, I get it. Will try later today. I've got guts for that. Seth, I agree with that my mobo may be fried. I have to reboot twice in a row everytime right now to get it up and it seems that I also have to reset my bios every third boot. Again, all this since my most recent problem. Both my computers acknowledge the drive but no files are observable. By the way, my drives are WD SATA. I'm not sure how to make a SATA drive a slave drive. Anything else I should try before repairing one drive?

I pulled the primary drive from the computer and attached it to my other computer to see what it would see. The computer recognizes the drive itself and determines it is healthy but it doesn't any content as the boot data and partition data is apparently corrupted.

I agree with you Harkin, hence the reason I mirrored. Sadly the mirror appears to have been too good. I did swap with the same result. I am not inclined to do a repair yet as Goku suggests as fear permeates my being about losing my data located on the drive, some in the same partition and most in a different partition. I don't trust microsoft repairs......should I? I have pulled the primary drive off and attached it to my XP64 computer and it does recognize the drive and WD Diagnostics finds it functioning but as expected it finds no files. Someone at the office suggested replacing the following files on the disk but if I can't access it I'm not sure how I can replace the files: Ntldr(corruption) Ntdetect.com, boot.ini, bootsect.dos (for dual booting)(corruption) Ntbootdd.sys(corruption) Ntoskrnl.exe(corruption) Does this make sense? Thoughts?:confused:

So I haven't necessarily lost my data?

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I do have the installation disks.

I've reviewed all related threads on the following issue: Disk boot failure insert system disk and press enter....without finding an answer to fit my situation. I've XP Pro with mirrored drives. Too often we have power problems in our apartment and blow the circuit breaker. I just reset the bios and all is well. Being tired of the problem I ordered a APC BR1500 battery backup. Yesterday morning the circuit breaker pops and the power for the PC, etc, are turned off. Resetting the power I left the computer off. Within the hour Fedex arrives with the battery backup. I'm hoping that this isn't a too little too late issue. But to my dismay resetting the bios didn't work this time and the "Disk boot failure insert system disk and press enter" message appeared. Uh oh. This is a first. I go to the bios and change the settings to try each of the harddrives and it doesn't work...same message. Of course the original setting is the only way for the mirrored image notification to appear. I go to the mirrored image settings and this time the mirror image isn't recognized between the two drives and it can't be fixed. It does allow the mirrored set to be deleted. I ultimately delete the mirrored set and retried booting from each drive. No go. Same message. I mirrored for the reason of not losing data....hoping this is reversable. :eek: