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Is there a law against murdering your computer?
I am about to destroy my computer. I thought I'd post here first before I literally start breaking things. I have never been so frustrated.
It all started this morning when I turned on my computer and it complained that my hal file was corrupt. MS says that it is a corrupt registry file and I need to replace it. In order to replace it, I need to get into the WinXP console. I can't get into the XP console because I don't have a bootable WinXP disk. I try to go to the console via safemode but it hangs there as well.
OK, so I gave up on replacing the corrupt registry file. I thought, I'll just use my ghost backup and I'm all set. So I lose a few emails and maybe a couple music files, and possibly some pictures. I throw the bootable ghost disk in, boot the disk, tell ghost to load the image onto one of my 40GB hdd. The CD drive doesn't exist as an option to load the image from even though I booted off the CD, wtf?
I try all options under ghost and it just won't show me the CD drive to get the image off of it.
OK, so I give up on using my ghost backup. Since I don't have a bootable XP disk, I have to load an older OS first, then load XP on top of that OS. I stick in my Win2k disk, tell it have a RAID controller, load the driver, and it complains that it can't find any HDD on the raid controller (bangs head against wall several times at this point). I try this several billion times, checking connections, trying different cables, banging my head against the HDD and nothing changes, still no HDD recognized.
OK, so I give up trying to load Win2k then WinXP. I have now resorted to Win98SE. I boot off the win98 disk, it tells me it needs to format th HDD and I need to reboot, so I reboot and it tells me it is going to format the HDD, but it needs me to stick the win98 disk in the CD first. It's ALREADY IN THERE! I try this several billuion times just for the hell of it. I tweaked this, loaded that, fdisked this, formatted that, blah blah blah. Finally, I get to the point where I boot off the Win98 disk, go to the cli and run setup. It hangs on scandisk. I run setup again with the /is option and it hangs on scanning the registry. I now hold the knife to my throat and contemplate suicide. I realize it's not worth it and continue on.
OK, so I have been reduced to a shadow of a technician that has his A+ cert, CCNA, and tons of experience with networking and PCs in various different forms. I finally give up on the Win98 scenario and decided to see if I can get striping to work with my two drives. Why? becaues nothing else works. After some struggling, I get the array setup, format the array, try win2k, win98se and various different things and nothing works.
Oh, I also tried putting my HDD on the non-raid controller and win2k actually found the drive but it won't boot off the drive. It complains that the ntkernel isn't loaded. But that was from my old setup, I haven't tried it again since I nuked the HDD 10,000 times. Ok, if you've gotten, this far, I really appreciate you reading this. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears because nothing I have tried has worked. This afternoon I am going to burn a copy of my buddies XP disk that is bootable and hope that solves all of my problems.
BTW, I realize after typing all of this that it sounds like a bad HDD(they are both IBM Deskstars(cringes)) and they are atleast 2 years old(cringes again). Possibly a bad raid controller too. BTW, I have tried many things but it would take too long to type it all, so I'll just leave it at this.
Dave
It all started this morning when I turned on my computer and it complained that my hal file was corrupt. MS says that it is a corrupt registry file and I need to replace it. In order to replace it, I need to get into the WinXP console. I can't get into the XP console because I don't have a bootable WinXP disk. I try to go to the console via safemode but it hangs there as well.
OK, so I gave up on replacing the corrupt registry file. I thought, I'll just use my ghost backup and I'm all set. So I lose a few emails and maybe a couple music files, and possibly some pictures. I throw the bootable ghost disk in, boot the disk, tell ghost to load the image onto one of my 40GB hdd. The CD drive doesn't exist as an option to load the image from even though I booted off the CD, wtf?
I try all options under ghost and it just won't show me the CD drive to get the image off of it. OK, so I give up on using my ghost backup. Since I don't have a bootable XP disk, I have to load an older OS first, then load XP on top of that OS. I stick in my Win2k disk, tell it have a RAID controller, load the driver, and it complains that it can't find any HDD on the raid controller (bangs head against wall several times at this point). I try this several billion times, checking connections, trying different cables, banging my head against the HDD and nothing changes, still no HDD recognized.
OK, so I give up trying to load Win2k then WinXP. I have now resorted to Win98SE. I boot off the win98 disk, it tells me it needs to format th HDD and I need to reboot, so I reboot and it tells me it is going to format the HDD, but it needs me to stick the win98 disk in the CD first. It's ALREADY IN THERE! I try this several billuion times just for the hell of it. I tweaked this, loaded that, fdisked this, formatted that, blah blah blah. Finally, I get to the point where I boot off the Win98 disk, go to the cli and run setup. It hangs on scandisk. I run setup again with the /is option and it hangs on scanning the registry. I now hold the knife to my throat and contemplate suicide. I realize it's not worth it and continue on.
OK, so I have been reduced to a shadow of a technician that has his A+ cert, CCNA, and tons of experience with networking and PCs in various different forms. I finally give up on the Win98 scenario and decided to see if I can get striping to work with my two drives. Why? becaues nothing else works. After some struggling, I get the array setup, format the array, try win2k, win98se and various different things and nothing works.
Oh, I also tried putting my HDD on the non-raid controller and win2k actually found the drive but it won't boot off the drive. It complains that the ntkernel isn't loaded. But that was from my old setup, I haven't tried it again since I nuked the HDD 10,000 times. Ok, if you've gotten, this far, I really appreciate you reading this. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears because nothing I have tried has worked. This afternoon I am going to burn a copy of my buddies XP disk that is bootable and hope that solves all of my problems.
BTW, I realize after typing all of this that it sounds like a bad HDD(they are both IBM Deskstars(cringes)) and they are atleast 2 years old(cringes again). Possibly a bad raid controller too. BTW, I have tried many things but it would take too long to type it all, so I'll just leave it at this.
Dave
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