KVR Audio

Scotrick · Post by **Scotrick** » Tue May 22, 2012 10:01 pm

Hi.
I use both Macs and PCs, and I am very familiar with a couple of Mac utilities to turn to if your operating system doesn't show up, but I don't know any reliable ones for the Windows platform.

Here's how I have my computer setup:
1 main drive for the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1 and all updates), the programs, and a folder for iTunes, etc.

1 secondary drive for samples and musical backups
1 tertiary drive for recording, which is where I record to before then transferring materials to the secondary drive for backup.

All three are periodically backed up to their own separate drives.

However, before my last scheduled backup, my main OS and program stopped responding.

I know it is not a drive failure because I can load this drive into another computer and see it fine. On a Mac, I would run a program like DiskWarrior to fix its Master Boot Record, or Directory, as the OS X folks call it, but on the Windows side of things, I don't know what utilities to use.

I looked into using the Command line of my secondary computer, but I wasn't sure how to use the various commands to diagnose the main drive.

Here's what I've tried so far:
I tried restarting from my original Windows 7 Ultimate disc, but it doesn't recognize that there is an operating system on the problem disc, and so won't run any repairs.

I did run a chkdsk on the problem drive from my other Windows computer, and it reported no problems on the drive.

Here's the stats from the non working computer:
Asus motherboard with an AMD processor, 16gb of RAM, an NVIDIA video card, and the three hard drives I mentioned earlier. I have a MOTU 828mkIII as an audio interface, using a PCI firewire card using a Texas Instrument chipset.

I'm puzzled that the non working drive won't even go back to a previous restore point.

Or that the problem drive doesn't show an operating system at all.

Worst case, is there anyway to get my data off without having to go all the way back to my previous backup? Like all people in this situation, it's been too long since my last backup, and it would mean days of reinstalling various programs... sigh. These things always seem to go at the worst time, eh?

My main question: out of all the various Windows Repair programs available, are any of them reliable? Likely to fix this problem? It seems to me that there's something wrong with the 'directory' on my problem drive.

t3toooo · Post by **t3toooo** » Wed May 23, 2012 4:03 am

generally speaking (not to blame you),it is impossible that windows is not starting without any ram,driver/bios or hardware issues but from my 10 years experience with computers,windows is much more sensitive with illegal software than a mac.

if you can install windows on this computer,something dodgy is going on, otherwise you need to test the hardware components like ram,etc.

Scotrick · Post by **Scotrick** » Wed May 23, 2012 5:30 am

No worries, I understand why you would ask, however, I have never used an illegally downloaded program, and all of my software is legit. I have been working with Macs and Windows computers for about ten years making music for my own hobbies and also several small film and gallery installation sound tracks. I've used Cubase since VST/32 and Reason since version 1.0.

This is the first time that I've ever had Windows do something like this to me.

The computer simply worked one day, and then the next day it did not.
I know, I know, the normal replies to such things are:

Well, you must have done SOMETHING...

The music computer is only connected to the Internet when I need to download a specific music update (and I haven't done that for weeks) otherwise the LAN port is turned off. All of the RAM is name brand, the hard drive is Western Digital Enterprise Class and the power supply is several hundred watts more powerful than what I need.

I was hoping that there might be a program on the Windows side equivalent to Diskwarrior on the Mac side that can repair dody boot problems, like when your main drive refuses to book but toerhwise seems to be OK.

So, please, if anyone knows of such programs let me know, or point me to a good walk through of what and how to attempt to use the command line to at least try and figure out what's going on. THank You.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:52 am

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20 ... ecord.html

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:36 am

http://www.pcworld.com/article/243190/h ... ation.html

KungKrille · Post by **KungKrille** » Wed May 23, 2012 8:36 am

Have you checked in bios that the drive with the OS is the boot drive? Maybe it has been changed at some occasion and if it has then it's good to check the cmos battery as well.

Scotrick · Post by **Scotrick** » Wed May 23, 2012 1:25 pm

The BIOS in the broken computer was the latest the last time I checked a couple of months ago, but I'll check again.

And I too thought of the CMOS battery,

, but it seems to be good, as I replaced it with a new one.

The other two links I'll be sure to check out today.
Thank you so much for the thoughts and efforts. That's why I love KVR: the generosity of strangers. It gives me faith in people.

I'll be back to let you know how it goes.

Scotrick · Post by **Scotrick** » Wed May 23, 2012 1:54 pm

KungKrille & WhyteRabbyt -

Thank you for your suggestions, but one of the mysterious parts of this whole thing is that I can't get the disk to reboot into ANY kind of Windows.

I can't get the Windows 7 disc to recognize that there even ever was a Windows 7 install on the drive.

***

And of course, WhyteRabbyt that means that I can't manage to get to the stages of your repair suggestion either.

I'm afraid that I may have to give up on this install. Sigh.

If I do manage to get the computer to recognize this install, I'll give y'all's advice a go. Thank you again.

alexfalcao · Post by **alexfalcao** » Wed May 23, 2012 2:10 pm

I had once a virus that affected the master boot record on my kids PC, Norton bootable recovery tool help me fix the issue.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Wed May 23, 2012 2:24 pm

Scotrick wrote:KungKrille & WhyteRabbyt -

Thank you for your suggestions, but one of the mysterious parts of this whole thing is that I can't get the disk to reboot into ANY kind of Windows.

I can't get the Windows 7 disc to recognize that there even ever was a Windows 7 install on the drive.

Hmmm, thats not good.

The one thing I would suggest there, since you said you can still read the disk on another system is to make a ghost image of your drive onto a removable drive with Macrium Reflect Free. Backup any other partitions if you have them. Then, after you have your safe copy, try the following:

Reinstall the original drive onto your non-working system.
Confirm there are no low-level issues with the drive by running SeaTools or the WD equivalent and doing a proper low-level check.
(Note if you get issues with that, try swapping out the SATA cables, and/or using a different SATA port. If that still fails, get the fail code and replace the drive under warranty)
If that works out, do a new, clean install of Windows 7. If you pa
make sure that new install boots. If it doesnt summat really aint right with the drive/controller/BIOS.

Now boot from the Macrium standalone CD and restore the ghost image of your original install over the new clean install,. One step in the restore will probably ask if you want to restore the boatloader; do -not- restore it, leave what's on the disk as is. Also at the appropriate step, ensure that the system does an automatic disk check when the image is restored.

See how that goes.

Its not guaranteed, but I administrate about 60 PCs, and have done this countless times for failed Windows installs. The main difference, unfortunately, is that Im usually working from a premade ghost image on a known-to-be-working machine, whereas you'd be working from an image of a non-booting system. But it will prove whether (a) you can install and boot windows, and maybe isolate where the problem lies a bit more, and potentially, if that still fails, you can always try booting from your Win7 media to do the repair install again. I'd hope that after this this clean install and reimage process would mean that the Win7 repair tools will see the drive properly, though.

KungKrille · Post by **KungKrille** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:04 pm

Scotrick wrote:The BIOS in the broken computer was the latest the last time I checked a couple of months ago, but I'll check again.

And I too thought of the CMOS battery, , but it seems to be good, as I replaced it with a new one.

I meant that you should check the boot priority which usually looks something like this. Make sure the OS drive has a higher priority than any other hard drive or USB. The CD/DVD may be first on the list though

skitchy · Post by **skitchy** » Wed May 23, 2012 7:38 pm

Try putting the hard disk from the broken PC into the working PC as the main drive (remove the HDD from the working PC entirely).
If it doesn't boot you know its something on the HDD that is corrupted.

If it DOES boot, put the drives back as they were, and on the broken system unplug/remove EVERYTHING non essential from the system - DVD drives, soundcard, LAN card, extra HDDs, etc. If the motherboard has onboard graphics, you can even remove the PCIe GFX card (if you have one). If you can get it to boot with a 'naked' system like this then the problem lies with something you removed.

I bought a USB hub recently that stopped my PC even getting to BIOS, so it can happen

Help! Main Windows 7 Ultimate failure! Are there any fixit utilities?