XP won't boot (since PartitionMagic)

bendybones · Joined: Mar 06, 2008 Posts: 13

Thanks for the suggestions and continued help.
I pulled an all-nighter and managed to reshuffle enough data from my 2 accessible HDDs onto various external caddies, laptops etc and was able to clear enough space to accomodate all of the data of the 3rd (invisible SATA) drive.

By accessing the 3rd drive in DOS using Paragon, I was able to copy the partitions from it one-by-one to the other 2 HDDs.

So at least now, I don't have to worry about losing the data from the SATA drive as I have it all copied (touching plenty of wood!!).
Does that throw open any more options?

As soon as the surface check is finished in DOS I'll reboot and try the mobo cd again.
Then I'll try initialising it in Disk Managment.

bendybones · Joined: Mar 06, 2008 Posts: 13

Still no luck. Tried all the different ways a few times now.
At one point, there was a diffrence though; the Device Manager didn't show an entry for Mass Storage Controller under Other Devices but instead shoed an entry for Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATARaid Controller (with the same question amrk and exclamation mark symbols.
That only happened once and has been back to the previous scenario ever since.

One other difference is that when booting the pc it now pops up "New Hardware Found". But following the subsequent 'Found New Hardware' wizard is the same as before.

alphanumeric · Joined: Jun 02, 2004 Posts: 647

???? Somethings not right, don't know what but it shouldn't be that hard to install a driver. I have no experience with SATA but I've installed RAID drivers for my IDE controller card and never really had any problems. It's a bit of a pain installing from a floppy with F6 during a clean install but it works. I've added the card after the fact and installed the drivers from CD too. I don't know what else to try? Does the BIOS detect the SATA drive? You haven't reset the BIOS or changed any settings have you?

bendybones · Joined: Mar 06, 2008 Posts: 13

Bingo!
Opened up the box in a desperate attempt to inspire new ideas.
There I saw that the SATA drive is not plugged directly to the mobo but to an PCI adaptor card Embarassed

.

So in fact it was the drivers for that card that were needed.
Which i found easily, ran the wizard on auto and... 3,2,1, nice!

Thanks very much for all your help alphanumeric.

alphanumeric · Joined: Jun 02, 2004 Posts: 647

OK

I'm glad you got it figured out cause i was completely out of ideas at this point. Good luck with your Ghost restore. Smile