DoronF

Hey guys, what’s up?


So I bought a new computer a few days ago, a little gaming monster that can help me shoot a few North Koreans… (“Crysis” reference…) but apparently someone up there decided that it’s time for me to pay for all my sins so he struck my HDD with some kind of a temporary “stroke” and I could really use your help now…

Here are the details:

Motherboard: Asus P5Q LGA775 P45 Chipset

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 1333FSB 3ghz
HDD: WD 3200AAKS SATA2 320GB
Memory: Adata 4GB DDR2 1066
Graphic Card: Gigabyte nVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 512MB PCIe
DVD: LG Light Scribe
OS: XP Pro (I tried Vista Ultimate SP1 32bit, got burned, now I only try XP Pro).

And here’s the story:
I got my computer ready for OS installation. I installed Vista Ultimate SP1 32bit; became DEEPLY disappointed, so I decided that the 50GB I gave to the Vista in drive C can now be converted into 20GB because I’m moving back to the good old XP Pro.
I used “Partition Manager” to take 30GB from drive C in order to make a new partition out of it. (C=20GB, D=270GB, E=30GB).
After applying the changes Partition Manager restarted my computer and from that point my computer stopped working properly.

Next, I inserted the XP Pro CD (very old version) in order to format drive C and install the XP, so I tried doing that, but it could only find one partition of just a hundred and something GB. I said “what the heck” and formatted it.
After formatting, it copied the files, restarted, and instead of continuing the installation process it started it (the installation) from scratch. Again. If I change the booting sequence to start from the HDD after this restart, it starts regularly and a few seconds later, when it’s time to load the OS it doesn’t find anything useful and without writing anything it resets. If I don’t stop it, it can repeat that forever.

Next step I tried the Vista again (32 bit SP1) but every time I try to install it (32bit AND 64bit) it doesn’t find drives or partitions (show’s an empty list) and it tells me to find some driver. I tried from the motherboard’s CD but nothing fits. Somehow from the Vista installation I got to DOS, so I formatted the HDD again. This time it seems that it actually turned all 3 partitions into a big one.

The next one I tried was XP Pro with SP3 in it – a newer version, which DID recognize that the HDD has 305GB, (supposed to be 320,) but the situation right now is like the last time I tried installing the XP: it formats, (I tell it to do that), copies the files and then again, when it naturally needs to restart, it always goes back to square one of the installation (boots from the DVD, configures my computer’s hardware…) instead of continuing the installation process.
And again, if I change the booting sequence to the HDD it just boots and restarts after about 15 seconds. Over and over again.

I hope that someone here with a huge brain can help out a guy who just wants to shoot the bad guys …
(The last game I played and dominated was “Soldier Of Fortune 1”…)

If you need any more details, just ask. I’m here.

Thanks in advance, guys.


Doron.

raptor_pa

305 is probably about right a formatted 320 - my Maxtor 320 shows 301 under XP Pro SP2. Vista uses a different partition table than XP Guid Partition Table ( GPT ) rather than MBR. Even though it is supposed to preserve the MBR information I'm beginning to doubt the success of that. Best thing you could do is download a copy of DBan, 0 wipe the drive, select the OS you prefer and repartition and reformat then install. No real performance increase with multiple partitions on the same physical drive.

DoronF

Thanks for your reply, raptor, but the DBan (the old and new version for core 2) can't even find my HDD. (The connectors were all in their places and I didn't change anything in the bios or something.

Can anyone think of a better solution for my situation? My LAST resort will be going back to the store and change the drive, but I don't want to do that just yet because before formatting the HDD I had ALL my personal stuff in it (not just a couple of word files, I'm talking about an entire unpublished musical CD production, tons of personal files of all kinds with sensitive stuff in it and lots more) and I don't want anyone in some HDD laboratory retrive my stuff. Hey, maybe it's not even formatted... remember, it's not recognized at all...


Oh, man, can anyone PLEASE think about something I can do?

Thanks.

Doron.

linderman

you need to zero fill the drive .............. end of story


focus on that task .......................

try Killdisk ................

or use the hard drive manufacturers free utilities ............. in the hard drive diagnostic package they have a zero fill utility ................

see if you can get that version to zero fill your drive ..............

Dban is the only wiper I personally would bet my "freedom" on as far as cleaning a drive .............. so once you get it wiped with killdisk or other single pass wiper ............ then run Dariks Boot n Nuke (dban)

linderman

worse come to worse ......... connect your drive to another machine and wipe it from there

DoronF

Thank you very much linderman, I'll try that.
:)

DoronF

Hey, it worked. The Western Digital 0 thingie worked!

Thanks a lot guys, you're life savers!

linderman

happy to see you have things sorted........