What Are My Options Now?
- OK, so I'm installing Win7 onto my HDD (C:) drive which was partitioned (2nd partition is J:). I backed up all my data to the partitioned drive and went to install Win7 on the C: Partition. During installation it hung, multiple times. I tried formating the C: partition which seemed to work and installation got up to 22% before hanging again. I do have another IDE drive installed on this computer but it has saved data on it. Upon the first few install attempts I could see all drives including C: where WinXP was, D: an IDE drive also installed on this computer, and J: the Partitioned part of my Main HDD. After rebooting and attempting to reinstall, my C: drive is no longer available as an option. Now, the IDE drive is the only drive it sees. If I go to Install Drivers and Browse, I see the C drive (my main HDD) but when I click on it, it says I need to format the drive before it's usable. In the window I do NOT see my other partition! I'd go ahead but I'm aftaid it will format the entire drive which will wipe out all my data on the second partition! Anyone know if it will or not? My uneducated guess is that it tried to format the C; partition but it got messed up somehow. I could go out and buy another hard drive and install Win7 on that, or I could bit the bullet and dump all my data from the IDE drive I have there all ready but I'd rather not loose 100 Gigs of data that's not backed up anywhere. Is there a way to check the health of my drive from DOS? That J: partition has 300 Gs of data that's irreplaceable!!! I'm freakin out!
Anyone got anything I could try? And, I appologize for starting another string but this is a different issue than my original post titled, "Install Hangs, restarts, and acts WEIRD"
Any help is greatly appreciated!- Edited byDax Arroway Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:50 PM.
- Edited byDax Arroway Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:44 PM.
Answers
Oh dear!
It does indeed sound like the partition table on you main drive has become corrupted.
Have you another hard drive available to use? A 'sensible' path forward would be the following:
* Fit a spare drive as the sole connected drive in the system, and ensure that it is configured in BIOS as the primary boot drive. Disconnect all other drives.
* Install Windows to that drive, and then install a suitable partition management/data recovery tool.
* Fit the problemmatic drive to the system, and use the data recovery tool to restore that partion structure and the data on it. The less you use the drive in the interim, the more chance you will have of recovering data on the secondary partition on it.
* If you can recover the data, save it safely to external storage (or the drive you're using for this temporary Windows install).
* After you've recovered any required data, check the drive using the tools mentioned by Daniel, and if it checks out OK then delete all partitions on the drive and start over afresh, creating new partitions for ongoing usage.
* Refit the drive as the primary boot drive, install Windows again, restore your backed up data to its partition, etc etc etc....- Marked As Answer byAndy SongMSFT, ModeratorWednesday, November 11, 2009 8:07 AM
Hello Dax,
First you might unplug the HDD which contains the original data from the machine, which might help to prevent you from any data losing.
If you download Windows 7 setup media from the official website, I suggest you try re-download the files and refer to the following article to install OS via USB flash drive..
Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook
Note: don’t forget to set BIOS to boot from USB drive.
Good luck!
Andy
- Marked As Answer byAndy SongMSFT, ModeratorWednesday, November 11, 2009 8:07 AM
All Replies
- If you suspect that the harddrive is failing, you could infact download it's utility from the hd manufacturer site and run a test on the drive and if is indeed due to the drive, error would be display
Oh dear!
It does indeed sound like the partition table on you main drive has become corrupted.
Have you another hard drive available to use? A 'sensible' path forward would be the following:
* Fit a spare drive as the sole connected drive in the system, and ensure that it is configured in BIOS as the primary boot drive. Disconnect all other drives.
* Install Windows to that drive, and then install a suitable partition management/data recovery tool.
* Fit the problemmatic drive to the system, and use the data recovery tool to restore that partion structure and the data on it. The less you use the drive in the interim, the more chance you will have of recovering data on the secondary partition on it.
* If you can recover the data, save it safely to external storage (or the drive you're using for this temporary Windows install).
* After you've recovered any required data, check the drive using the tools mentioned by Daniel, and if it checks out OK then delete all partitions on the drive and start over afresh, creating new partitions for ongoing usage.
* Refit the drive as the primary boot drive, install Windows again, restore your backed up data to its partition, etc etc etc....- Marked As Answer byAndy SongMSFT, ModeratorWednesday, November 11, 2009 8:07 AM
Well more issues. I did go out and buy another hard drive, installed it, set it as primary hard drive, and I'm now trying to get Win7 onto it. It takes forever to get through the Starting Windows screen but once it get going it goes pretty quicky (20 minutes or so to get through All the Expanding Windows files stuff. But then it hung in the Completing Installation part. Didn't even get to any sort of percentage count. I tried restarting and got a message about not being able to load something or other (sorry didn't write it down) and I basically had to start the installation all over again. First time through I got another error message. Now it's hanging again in the Expanding Windows files section at 16%. Grrrr. I'll keep y'all posted if I make any progress.
2 things I'm wondering about. First is someone mentioned something about setting Hypertranport or something close to that to speed things up. I'm running an ASUS intel P5Q3 Dual Core machine and I don't see anything like that in my BIOS. Am I misisng something? The other thing is what program to use to see if I can't reset the partitions on my other drive (guess i can go to the manufacture's website when I finally get this going. Never mind about that one.)- I suggest you to try swapping to another cd/dvd rom drive and see how it goes since you mention you have infact change to a new drive and similar incident occurs
- Comment endorsed. Many, many people have reported coming unstuck trying to install windows 7, only to find that replacing an older DVD drive resolved the problem for them.
Hello Dax,
First you might unplug the HDD which contains the original data from the machine, which might help to prevent you from any data losing.
If you download Windows 7 setup media from the official website, I suggest you try re-download the files and refer to the following article to install OS via USB flash drive..
Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook
Note: don’t forget to set BIOS to boot from USB drive.
Good luck!
Andy
- Marked As Answer byAndy SongMSFT, ModeratorWednesday, November 11, 2009 8:07 AM
- Thanks for all your help guys! I've unplugged and unmounted my original hard drive. I'm taking it to the tech shop to have it looked over ($120) and if need be I an send it to the HDD Brain Surgeons ($700-$2400 *GULP!*) but hopefully it won't come to that. I'm keeping my finders crossed that everything is retreavable (obviously). One thing I think I might not have done in hindsight (besides just going out and buying a vanilla HDD in the first place) was not not format the partition. I'm guessing here and really don't have a clue but after installation hung a bunch of times I decided to format the partition. For clarity, I had a 1TB drive with 2 partitions. One set to 200GB with the OS on it and the other at 800GB for simple data storage. When I attempted to install Win7 it asked me which partition it wanted me to install it on and I could see both partitions. When I formatted the smaller, OS partition I noticed the available memory almost match the available space on that partition. Seemed logical to me that this formatted that partition and cleared my old OS files and whatnot. After hanging a few times during install again (forcing me to 'hard shut off' the computer) it no longer offered that drive to me and that's where it's stuck.
The format seemed quick (20 seconds). I'm hoping this small length of time indicates that most of my data is still there. I have over 300 Gigs of data and I can't see how a quick format like that could whip out all of it. I'm taking it in, wish me luck. I hope it will not cost me $700-$2400 to recover this data.
If my obviously limited thinking in this area is correct, the word to the wise is, "Don't format the partition on install of Win7 unless there's nothing else on the drive." Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seemed like it would work but 'seeming' and what actually happened are two entirely different things.
Again, thank you all for your advice and help. I did actually get Win7 installed. Now it's crashing over and over again and I'll post a new thread on it in another forum.
Thanks again,
Dax Thanks for all your help guys! I've unplugged and unmounted my original hard drive. I'm taking it to the tech shop to have it looked over ($120) and if need be I an send it to the HDD Brain Surgeons ($700-$2400 *GULP!*) but hopefully it won't come to that. I'm keeping my finders crossed that everything is retreavable (obviously). One thing I think I might not have done in hindsight (besides just going out and buying a vanilla HDD in the first place) was not not format the partition. I'm guessing here and really don't have a clue but after installation hung a bunch of times I decided to format the partition. For clarity, I had a 1TB drive with 2 partitions. One set to 200GB with the OS on it and the other at 800GB for simple data storage. When I attempted to install Win7 it asked me which partition it wanted me to install it on and I could see both partitions. When I formatted the smaller, OS partition I noticed the available memory almost match the available space on that partition. Seemed logical to me that this formatted that partition and cleared my old OS files and whatnot. After hanging a few times during install again (forcing me to 'hard shut off' the computer) it no longer offered that drive to me and that's where it's stuck.
The format seemed quick (20 seconds). I'm hoping this small length of time indicates that most of my data is still there. I have over 300 Gigs of data and I can't see how a quick format like that could whip out all of it. I'm taking it in, wish me luck. I hope it will not cost me $700-$2400 to recover this data.
If my obviously limited thinking in this area is correct, the word to the wise is, "Don't format the partition on install of Win7 unless there's nothing else on the drive." Please correct me if I'm wrong. It seemed like it would work but 'seeming' and what actually happened are two entirely different things.
Again, thank you all for your advice and help. I did actually get Win7 installed. Now it's crashing over and over again and I'll post a new thread on it in another forum.
Thanks again,
Dax
It would cost you a bomb if you send for data recovery. If is not serious you might wanna used some data recovery utility to recover it yourself. Since you mention you finally managed to get win 7 install but it crashes again. Just a thought is it the same old hd you're using previously?
If it isn't i suggest you to run memtest.The drive I finally got it loaded on is the drive I went out and bought. I've unplugged and dismounted the "invisible" drive. If I remount it and run memtest on it, will that help recover my data? It seems like I might have lost my partition table but being a noob at this I actually have no idea what that really means and I'm hoping that there's some sort of message that might come up saying, "I recognize this drive, it's readable, but your partition tables have been corrupted. Would you like to rebuild your partition tables and restore them to what they where?" And then I'd hit OK and the sun would come out and the birds would start siniging and all would be beautiful in the world but I'm afraid it's not quite that easy. Any help?
Any help?
http://tinyurl.com/y8ol2bh
Click on that. Have a good read through the results. Go find one of your choice. Use it on your b0rked drive. Go chasing down a professional service if you don't have success, and if the data on the drive is valuable enough to justify the costs involved.
:)
