HD weirdness

[Snee]

When I woke up today my brother's psu had just taken a dive.

After going through each component with another psu installed, we found that the floppy appears to have gone bye bye.

It won't even post with the floppy connected.

That's cool tho', I got a couple of old floppies so it doesn't matter.



Buut...

It wouldn't boot from hd, so I tried knoppix, and all files on both his hds seem to be intact..

Ok

So then I tried sticking in the xp cd, and lo and behold: It starts just fine, no probs at all, it's set to boot from cd-rom first but I didn't select to start up with cd-rom support, it just booted without a hitch without me pressing a key.

Ok

So then I try booting up again, without a disc, and ntldr is missing. Hmm.

I try and repair it, but ntldr is missing.

I format C: and reinstall, but ntldr is still missing whenever I try and boot without the cd-rom in a drive.

Could the master somehow be fried halfway, so it won't boot? I mean, it's there in bios, and whenever I use a disc, knoppix or Windows, it's all there, and it appears to be perfectly fine.

Could it be something dodgy with the partition, even tho' it works?
Or the ide controller on the mobo, the cd-roms are on a separate channel after all. Or a bios corruption.

It's really weird what works and what doesn't.

Gonna' try repartitioning tomorrow and I'll swap the hd's and roms around, but if that doesn't work, has anyone seen anything like this happen? 'cos I haven't.

[Storm]

my guess is there is a lil scratch on the cd, and that's your problem..........

it wont (correctly) copy the file to your hdd.......
try a different copy of xp.........

[peat moss]

my guess is there is a lil scratch on the cd, and that's your problem..........

it wont (correctly) copy the file to your hdd.......
try a different copy of xp.........

Ya or try fix mbr on cd boot .

[Snee]

It's a possibility.
But I used the cd on my own system just a couple of weeks ago and it worked fine. haven't used it anywhere since then.

And if the hd is ok, I don't get how the mbr got toasted in the first place. It appears to be in perfect condition, no errors during install, and no errors during startup (with the cd). Yet it won't boot without the cd.

Anyhow, had to put the psu I was using back in another comp, and the replacement I had lined up won't work past the posting, so i got nothing to test with ATM.


Fixing the mbr was the first thing I tried btw.


EDit: Turns out one of his hds was busted.