"Hard disk boot sector invalid" msg during start

Post by **Lawndart** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:14 pm

Was at work today, played around on the lappy during lunch. Then I flew to our destination and now, about three hours later, the puter has come to a screeching halt.

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"Hard disc boot sector invalid. Press 'H' to retry Hard Disk, any other key for floppy"

This message appears as soon as the BIOS splash screen goes dark immediately during start-up!

I have extremely limited troubleshooting options here on my overnight and no way to create any kind of bootdisk or CD, but anyone have any ideas of what would cause this (harddrive crashing or boot sector getting fried) or seen this before?

[EDIT: Changed message, was inaccurate before]

Burner · Post by **Burner** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:55 pm

This is most likely a real dumb question, but do you carry your Windows disk in your laptop bag? If no then the only option would be the off chance you already have the recovery console installed on that drive. Which unless it asks you which installation you want to boot off of everytime you turn on the PC then no its not installed...

Soooooo....... maybe there's an off chance of you actually going out into the world and oh... IDK.... letting go of the internet for a trial period of like 3-4hrs b/f you pass out in a panic in front of a closed Best Buy or CompUSA

Sorry bud but booting off the WinXP disk into the recovery console is the only way I know of to fix this type of error. Granted I don't know exactly what's wrong or exactly how to fix it (I'd start with a "chkdsk /p" command) but if you can't get into Windows period then that's pretty much the only route I know of.

Post by **Lawndart** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:54 pm

The message is actually:

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"Hard disc boot sector invalid. Press 'H' to retry Hard Disk, any other key for floppy"

That's all! Simple line of system text before anything what-so-ever loads from the harddrive. I didn't have the lappy with me last time I posted using the hotels puter, so the phrasing was wrong.

No bootdisk, no CD, no recovery method with me and even if I had one on the drive it is completely useless right now as I cannot do anything with the computer (harddrive or OS) aside from accessing the BIOS prior to any attempt to access the drive or load the OS. In other words, cannot even choose a startup option such as safe mode, DOS etc... I need an outside media source to attempt to access the drive (if it even works)?

My hunch says the drive took a nose dive and crashed, but it is always wierd how these things happen so suddenly. One minute it works fine and shuts down properly, the very next start and you're in computer hell!

Or more unlikely, but also a possibility, it could be an electronic nastygram (virus)...

...and a Merry (bleeep'ing) Xmas! Ho ho ho!

P.S. I tried the real world... It's no fun! I like the virtual one better!

Tailhook · Post by **Tailhook** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:25 pm

Lawndart wrote:My hunch says the drive took a nose dive and crashed, but it is always wierd how these things happen so suddenly. One minute it works fine and shuts down properly, the very next start and you're in computer hell

Nah, if your computer was fine before and is now crap, I would have to say somebody hacked it or something like a command prompt was inserted in your boot settings which can disable your hard-drive making it unavailable to access. If you "can", try opening up your laptop, plug your PC's HD into the laptop motherboard and unplug the old one and see if then it will start correctly on your main computers drive. If NOT, then yes, something fishy happened to your BIOS load-up and your looking to a new board.

Post by **Lawndart** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:58 pm

Long story short. I'm away from home, no other puter available aside from the ancient hotel machines that barely run anyways.

I used a friends Win XP CD to boot-up and the drive was completely unrecognized by the computer. I could get to the command prompt using the boot CD, but there was nothing to even list when trying to access the C drive. It even gave me an error upon attempting a directory listing. I tried running "chkdsk" via the boot CD, it couldn't find the drive. Then after giving up on that, I tried "fixboot" and got some life in it afterwards, but when I was able to list the root directory of the C drive it threw out only garbage and scrambled code and the entire file allocation table was messed up as well. The drive seems to work (maybe?)... I'm re-formatting it now. Yeay! We'll see if it really works in a bit??? That's the one positive. On the negative side, I won't have time to re-build this system for quite some time and lost over 50GB of data in the process and tons of media, songs and videos...

Rhino · Post by **Rhino** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 10:55 pm

Just like keeping your disks in order, ALWAYS BACK-UP important information!

Rotorblade · Post by **Rotorblade** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 10:58 pm

"He's... dead, Jim!" -- Bones

If its worth it you can always get an identical drive and try swapping the boards, that is pretty easy to do. It all depends on how important the data is to you I guess. There is a place here in Minnesota that is world renowned for its data recovery abilities and speed. The place is called OnTrack in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Post by **Lawndart** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 12:58 am

No backup? Oh, heck no! I have three rigs and one dedicated backup drive with the most important stuff, so all is not lost aside from the "road stuff" I carry on the laptop only. The worst part is putting the OS and all the software back together again. Can't begin to describe that headache after so many tweaks and changes done to it. Think I'll save that pain for next year sometime. Not going to let this ruin Christmas right now!