computer boot error--urgent help needed!

[EricB]

Dam. I just thought of something. you could have use an erd commander cd to restore your computer before the updates. it's too late for that now.

do you have another computer and a usb hard drive?

my last resort now is to borrow my friend's legit copy of winxp cd. not sure whats gonna happen to the vaio-specific features. my drivers are going to go beserk!

they aren't that important. I've been wiped my old sp1 viao computer with a sp2 disc

 

[Link68759]

I think you should bring this one to geek squad at best buy; I have a few friends who work/ed there, they said just about everyone knows what they're doing unlike the other tech guys lol.

It sounds to me not that your cd is scratched, but maybe a hard drive error or memory error.

I agree that you should try another XP cd. I always found that The normal windows CD you buy for custom computers, not specific hardware, works better. If not an XP cd, try a portatable operating system like slax.

Definately run memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/)
I have never tried this myself, but it looks good. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
If nothing is wrong, just to be safe I reccomend formatting all partitions and everything. If slax (http://www.slax.org/) boots, back up what you can.

 

[calgirl2]

thanks for the help guys!

well i tried my friend's xp cd and my computer doesnt load the cd. i can hear it running, but the autorun doesnt load and i get the same error message "Missing operating system" (bc i had 29% recovery installed) that i would have gotten if i didnt have a cd in it.

im not sure if my computer can boot from a usb drive. its not on the list of bios boot options. i will try the memtest and all that when i get some free time at work!

my recovery cd is not that scratched, but my friend advised me to buff it out with toothpaste to see if that helps. i will try that when i get home, unless i can find toothpaste in my office (fat chance). my recovery attempt always stops at 29% though, so is that indicative of cd damage and not drive failure?

my friend said i probably have to hire someone to do a harddrive recovery, which sounds very $$$ to me... at this point, ive given up on having a working vaio anymore. i just want to get all my precious personal files (pictures, correspondences, important docs) from my partitioned D:\, and then buy a new macbook!

(thanks again for the input guys, i really appreciate it!!)

 

[Bruce]

You most likely dont need HD recovery if you didnt format D, just pick up a usb enclosure for laptop drives, they go for as cheap as 10 bux, plug it into ur desktop and go.

PS Do you really want a mac??

 

[calgirl2]

my D:\ partition would be accessible as a mass storage device even though the operating system on C:\ was wiped out??

(i like macs yes hehe. ive been wanting one for awhile. so tired of glitches and lags on windows)

 

[Bruce]

Yea sure, as long as you left that partition alone accessing it shouldnt be a problem. You don't need an os on the drive if you just want to access the data. Unless you encrypted it or something.

I liked the macs too, before I started having to work on them. lol

 

[calgirl2]

sweet! i will look into this! thank you so much! will update you on how that turns out! =DDD

 

[EricB]

get erd commander 2005 to recover those deleted files if you put it in a usb enclosure

 

[calgirl2]

ok, so ive put my hd inside the usb enclosure and i can see the contents! however, i dont see my partitioned D:\ contents. i see a lot of the windows system and vaio recovery files that my recovery partly attempt generated, but nothing that looks like my D:\ files. the files i see are:


folders:
art
createcd
Documents and Settings
minint
Recycled
RECYCLER
SONY
Support
System Volume Information (dimmed out, Access is denied)

files:
autorun.exe
bootfont.bin
appinfo.ini
bitindex.ini
blids.ini
module.ini
snydrcv.ini
ntldr
sony.i01
sony.i02
rcvprt.img
sony.img
SONYDNT.IMG
Bootdisc.iso
ntdetect.com
sony1p_0317507.pac
sony2p_0317507.pac
Autorun.ini
DFVer.txt
P1Ver.txt



now where do i go?

 

[Bruce]

I believe .pac's are proxy autoconfig files. It's lookin like it blew out your entire HD instead of just the C: partition.

Is it called D when you look at it??