Windows XP Will Not Boot, Not Even In Safe Mode

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IT may not be that the drive is dying. IT could just be a corrupted sector or a lost partition. Jsut because the test gives you data that it cant access the drive doesnt necessarily mean the drive is dying that fast.

I have a 6 year old Dell and even my original hard drive is going well. So i would not jump to that result that fast.

I would hook it up to a different PC as a slave drive, namely on the PC you are using to post here, from there try to access it and see what happens.

Cheers,
Mak
 
Just a quick update to let you know I haven't solved the problem and forgotten about the help you gave me:

I went ahead with the plan to install the corrupt drive as a slave into the old 2001 machine.

After spending hours backing up all data from the old machine (I know there's no real "risk", but i'm not taking any chances anymore!), I opened it up to find that the master/slave cable was not compatible with my 2006 corrupt hard drive! The connector plug was much too large for the socket on my hard drive! :mad:

So tonight, I will hopefully be attempting this again on a much newer machine - which I pray will be compatible!
 
The "incompatible cable" your talking about is called a SATA cable. Almost all new hard drives are being made with this now.

Have you tried repairing the drive with Windows repair installation or used a hard drive utility like SeaTools?
 
Thanks for the info - so i'm basically hoping that the SATA cable inside the computer tonight is of the right model/generation to fit into my hard drive, or i'll have to buy one (I know they're very cheap, but it adds more time).

I assume SeaTools is "recovery" software?

Surely, it's still more sensible to be trying this method first rather than "recovery" or "correction" software? I've been told that there is a possibility of attempted recoveries and corrections through BIOS actually making things worse if they fail to sort out the problem...
 
If you aren't fully comfortable with computers then don't touch the system's BIOS. You can do permanent harm to your computer by adjusting the wrong settings. The BIOS cannot recover anything for you if that is what you're implying.

SeaTools is a hard drive recovery tool but not for data. It checks the drive for bad sectors and repairs them. It won't recover your data for you.

Try what you are going to now and we'll help you through that. If your newer computer is around 3 years old or younger, it should have SATA ports available to connect your new drive.
 
I'm basically doing what I did yesterday - posting to this forum from work, discussing what exactly to do when I get home.

With the info i've gathered today, it's looking very likely that the machine I was to use for testing tonight is unfortunately going to have an IDE motherboard. It was bought in January 2005, so was likely produced in late 2004. I've contacted Dell and they've told me they began using SATA technology in early 2005 (the machine is not a Dell - I do not know the brand, but I assumed Dell were amongst the first to utilise the new standard).

If this is the case, can I ask for an opinion on using SATA to IDE converters?

Thanks again for all the continued support.
 
Thanks for the info - so i'm basically hoping that the SATA cable inside the computer tonight is of the right model/generation to fit into my hard drive, or i'll have to buy one (I know they're very cheap, but it adds more time).

I assume SeaTools is "recovery" software?

Surely, it's still more sensible to be trying this method first rather than "recovery" or "correction" software? I've been told that there is a possibility of attempted recoveries and corrections through BIOS actually making things worse if they fail to sort out the problem...


I wouldn't run any repair utilities on that drive until you find a way copy your important data to a safe place. Once your data is safe you run any test/repair software you want.
 
I would suggest trying to boot into a virtual windows environment, which can be loaded from a cd/dvd. This would then allow you to see if you have hardware problems, such as HD.
 
I wouldn't run any repair utilities on that drive until you find a way copy your important data to a safe place. Once your data is safe you run any test/repair software you want.

SeaTools does not affect data whatsoever and is safe to run no matter what is on the drive.
 
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