HELP-expert advice needed

[paul1672]

hi there

i've just wasted the entire evening trying to help out my parners brother repair a pc he has been given.

it came minus the hard drive.......

god knows why..

anyway,the pc in question is an emachine.

he purchased a brand new ide seagate barracuda 160gb drive and i've installed it and set it as master.

the bios recognises it fine so all looks good.

the pc came with a system restore disc that puts the entire image onto the drive.

that works fine and seems like its installed xp.

thing is,when its installed it asks you the various set-up questions.....username etc,tells you you've finished set-up and then crashes saying the system is unstable.....

now i've tried the same system using my own xp media centre edition operating system and it worked fine so there's nothing wrong with the new h/drive so why is it crashing when i use the emachine restore disc?

it also says summit bout turning off bios shadow in the error screeen.

when the pc boots up it does say the vga is shadowed and also the bios is shadowed....
is this relevant and if so how do i change it?

also,the weird thing is when i do the system restore disc it says the destination drive is local drive (1) should that not be local drive (c)????

anyway,asny advice would be hugely appreciated.

many thanks in advance

paul

[stu.artd]

Destination drive (1) is OK. The drive is numbered at that stage and the drive letter only applies uder the OS such as Windows.

It sounds to me like a driver issue. The image could be loading a graphics (or other) driver that is crashing the PC after installation. That's why the CD you have works because that will contain different drivers.

You could try removing the graphics card (but I have a feeling it's going to have integrated graphics) and using a different one if possible.
Also try disabling VGA shadowing along with other features such as write combining if that's an option in the BIOS as well.

After the PC crashes restart it and after the BIOS screen and before the XP loading screen appears start pressing F8 for a boot menu and choose safe mode. Once in safe mode go to add/remove programs and get rid of any graphics driver and restart to see if that will let XP load properly.

Good luck.

[paul1672]

hi there
many thanks for your quick reply.

i have forgotten to mention something the error screen said

it mentions the reason its crashing is : UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DRIVE

i have pressed f8 and got to the advanced boot menu screen but when i select safe mode it just crashes again.....

i cant seem to find anywhere where i can disable VGA shadowing/bios shadowing or any other features such as write combining....

the graphics card is a geforce4 mx440.....in agp slot.

if i took it out i wudne see the screen.....

i suppose i could swap it for my own fanless nvidia 6600gt but i cant see how it would change anything as it would still probably use the same drivers????

and i cant really see what it has to do with the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DRIVE message.

it just seems to me lkike it doesn't recognise the h/drive being there...

could it be anything to do with being a new h/drive and this being an emachine????

sounds crazy to me but plucking at straws right now...

this is driving me nuts....

many thanks in advance

paul

[Uridium]

Make sure the Hard drive is connected using a 80 wire IDE cable, have seen this fault a few times on older PC's that had the HDU connected with an older 40 wire cable. 40 wires are still OK for Optical drives

[paul1672]

i will also add i had to purchase a new ide cable as the previous owner hadn't left one for the h/drive.

sorry to sound thick,but how would i be able to determine which ide cable i purchased?

i'd assume it would be an 80 pin.....



many thanks

paul

[paul1672]

i've just tried swapping over the ide cables and the system wouldn't even recognise the cd drives or the h/drive.
i made sure they were set to correct spec ie primary master for h/drive etc but still no luck...

it's like the operating system aint there,but it is as its recognised in safe mode all be it that it crashes

im totally confused

cant understand how it works fine with my xp media centre edition cd but not with the emachine restore disc.....

help....

paul

[crocodile]

It's just the number of phisical wires in the cable. The attached thumbnail is 40 wire. An 80 wire will simply have 80 strands in the ribbon instead of 40. The connectors are 40 pin regardless.

Rather than look for BIOS options, see if there is a setting to Load Defaults. Also from the F8 menu try Start in VGA Mode rather than Safe Mode as this will eliminate all display options/drivers.

Check out this site to ensure that you have the correct recovery disk & that the graphics card is what was originally fitted. There's even an option for Live Chat to support.

[crocodile]

If the IDE connectors are not keyed, it is possible to connect them in reverse. Pin 1 in the cable should be identified by a coloured strip on the edge of the ribbon. This should be connected nearest the power connector on the device & should be identified as pin 1 or an arrow on the motherboard.

[paul1672]

hi

yep,i tried starting in vga mode,still crashed

the pins can only go in 1 way so i guess ive got that correct.

can someone advise me why i cant format the drive when im in ms-dos?

i've tried to change ther drive letter from drive A drive C but it doesnt recognise it and ive also tried the command: FORMAT C:

still no luck.....

whats really doing my head in is why is it fine with a fresh install from my own xp media centre edition discs and yet plays up with its own restore disc...

this must clearly indicate all is connected up fine surely????

so weird

[crocodile]

The recovery disk may well have created an NTFS partition that a DOS diskette can't read. You could run FDISK & delete the Non DOS Partition but I don't think there's any merit in that. You've already proved the hardware by installing your own OS.

As I said in the previous post, check that the recovery disk is the right one & that the motherboard & graphics are original. As Stu.artd said, it's almost certainly a driver issue although it now sounds more like an issue with the IDE drivers. If the disk matches the PC then it could be that the motherboard has been replaced at some time for one with a different chipset.

[paul1672]

i'd of thought if i ran fdisk and then just redid the restore it would do the same thing wouldn't it?

so basically i'm knackered.....

would there be any point in me trying my own graphics card in it then?

i have a gforce 6600gt

just dont understand this unmountable boot drive error....

many thanks for the advice

paul

[crocodile]

Well I guess the options are to pursue it through Emachines Support or pick up a native copy of XP.

I don't think you'll gain anything by swapping graphics cards.

[stu.artd]

If you're getting the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DRIVE message then forget swapping the graphics cards as that's not related to this.

First make sure there sre no floppy disks, CDs or USB drives attached to the PC in case it's trying to boot from that.

Boot from your Media Centre CD and after setup starts there is an option to press R for the recovery console. Choose that and the display will change to one similar to a DOS screen, enter the administrator password when requested.

Type chkdsk /r and hit return, let it run until finished
When that's completed type fixboot and hit return,
Type exit to exit recovery console and then reboot the PC. Hopefully windows will boot OK next time.

[batty]

Often system restore discs that come with PCs do not have windows on them. They are just a way of accessing a hidden partion on the hard drive which has the full disk image of windows and all the other drivers / program that came with the PC.
I wonder if the restore disc is looking for this hidden partion and not finding it - as it is no longer there.

If you can install your copy of XP OK I wonder if this could be the problem.

[BrokenArrow]

Originally Posted by paul1672

whats really doing my head in is why is it fine with a fresh install from my own xp media centre edition discs and yet plays up with its own restore disc...

Batty has got it.

The clue is in the name. "Restore". As in it restores the OS that's already there. Except it's a new hard drive so it doesn't have the operating system on it. Is the restore disc for XP Home or XP Media Centre? I'm not sure if it would work anyway, but if the restore disc is XP Home then there would be a conflict if you're trying to use it to restore your copy of Media Centre. (Possibly a conflict between serial numbers as well)

You'll most likely have to buy a new copy of Windows.




I learnt about restore discs the complicated way. I had an old PC with XP which was "cleaned up" by the IT guy at dad's work who decided to do a fresh install of Windows 2000 on it. A couple of years later I decided to go back to XP and used the restore disc. Woops. It messed up the computer so I couldn't use it at all.