Natterjak
asked on
"Error loading operating system" on Windows XP, with RAID1
Greetings - I have a problem with one of my PCs - it is an HP/Compaq desktop running Windows XP (Pro, I believe). It crashed the other day (no BSOD, just an message stating that an unexpected error had occurred - unfortunately, I did not see it myself, as it happened when my colleague was using the PC - when she closed the message, the PC simply shut off). When we tried to restart, it gave the message, "Error loading operating system..."
The PC has two 40gb hard drives on a RAID controller - the array is configured as RAID1(mirrored). The Primary Master shows its status as Hidden, and the Secondary Master is set to BOOT. I don't see anything in the boot utility that suggests something is wrong with either the array or drives. I tried to run recovery with the Windows XP CD, but it gave me the message the the hard drive could not be found.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong?
The PC has two 40gb hard drives on a RAID controller - the array is configured as RAID1(mirrored). The Primary Master shows its status as Hidden, and the Secondary Master is set to BOOT. I don't see anything in the boot utility that suggests something is wrong with either the array or drives. I tried to run recovery with the Windows XP CD, but it gave me the message the the hard drive could not be found.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Ah okay, I understand now. Okay, doing that allowed me to finally access the recovery panel. At the C: prompt, I typed in chkdsk. The message it returned was, "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems." What do I do from this point? Thanks!
ASKER
I just tried chkdsk /r and received the same message. chkdsk /? returned /p and /r as the only options, and both gave me the "unrecoverable problems" message.
did you look in the raid utility after the bios?
one or both of these drives is physically failed. chkdsk /p or /r is going to make the data unrecoverable if you run either. It needs physical care, in a clean room environment. Try DriveSavers data recovery www.drivesavers.com - they're the best in the business and were able to recover my data for me when my RAID 5 crashed...
good luck.
good luck.
ASKER
Thanks everyone for the help. It looks like both of these drives went bad, but we were able to at least recover the data from one of the partitions (the other partition, that had the OS, only prompted us to format the drive). The data recovery was the most important part, so it looks like we'll be getting new drives. Thanks again!
ASKER