Technology, Support, and News Forum

[yeshuas]

The cable was just a thought as they can go bad

[JabbaPapa Profile]

OK, try this for a messy hack ...

1) unplug the HDD and go into BIOS

2) in BIOS, for boot device priority choose CD/DVD, and make sure that booting from the hard drive is actually DISABLED, and that boot from another device/search for bootable devices/whatever it's called in your BIOS is also DISABLED

3) shut down, put HDD back in, and try to boot from your CD

4) TRASH the system partition if it works -- just delete it.

Then reenable booting from the HDD and reinstall and blablabla

[bbarry Profile]

Jabba, I did all of that, but once I reconnected the HDD I couldn't boot. I think I've screwed up this HDD beyond repair, so I'm off to buy a new drive. Hopefully I will be able to restore using my Acronis image. If not, I will just have to reinstall Vista. I assume Microsoft will let me do that since all the other hardware remains the same on this PC.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

[JabbaPapa Profile]

OK

One last thing to try -- buy a cheap (empty) external USB hard drive case (make sure to get the right type, either IDE or SATA depending on your drive type), and install the bad drive into this.

You should then be able to plug it into your other PC and attempt some repair operations that way.

[bbarry Profile]

OK

One last thing to try -- buy a cheap (empty) external USB hard drive case (make sure to get the right type, either IDE or SATA depending on your drive type), and install the bad drive into this.

You should then be able to plug it into your other PC and attempt some repair operations that way.

I never thought of that......will do. Thanks.