[Trifling]

Hi, I have encountered rather a frustrating problem and am quite desperate for any help. Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to make sure to include all the relevant steps of how I reached the point I'm at now.

Yesterday, running Windows XP Home Edition SP2, I tried out Google's new "Lively" program (3D interactive chat; mostly integrated into a web browser--Firefox in my case) for the first time. Later on in the day, just before bed, I decided I should defragment the C hard drive, as I had not done so in quite some time.

I started the defragmenter while I was still tinkering with Lively, which was probably a bad choice, and perhaps very silly of me. A few moments after starting the defragmentation process, I clicked an option in Lively (to alter my avatar I think) and the system hung; both the mouse and keyboard no longer got any response from the computer.

I waited for a little while, then I was able to move the mouse pointer again. I clicked in my browser window a couple of times to test responsiveness, but the system froze once more. After several minutes I gave up on waiting and went to bed, leaving the system to hopefully sort itself out.

Next morning, upon switching on my display, I was greeted with a Blue Screen of Death, mentioning the following error:

KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

I noted that down, but did not take any more information, as this was the only time I saw that particular error message. I rebooted, and after (I think) the Windows logo faded, I was shown another blue screen, this time with a different error:

SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED

I did not yet note down any additional information, and tried rebooting once more. However, every bootup from that point on has shown the usual screen displaying system information, followed immediately by an otherwise black screen with this message:

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.

I gathered from this message that the computer was having trouble accessing the C drive, on which Windows is installed. However, when I press F11 on bootup to reach the boot menu, the Windows drive is selectable for booting from. In all, the boot device choices are the floppy disk drive, internal hard drive, external USB hard drive and CD/DVD drive. Pressing F2 on bootup to enter the BIOS will also allow me to view these four boot device choices.

I have tried booting from XP CD and entering the Recovery Console to see if I can access the hard drive with Windows. I was brought to "C:\", which looked like a good thing at first. However, I entered "dir" and was shown the contents of my external USB hard drive, instead, which I presume means the internal hard drive could still not be accessed, and the USB hard drive was being labelled as "C" in its place.

I have peeked inside the computer case and the hard drive appears to be connected correctly, though I may have overlooked something. Anyway, I doubt anything could have came loose overnight when the computer was not being moved at all.

Short version:
Windows XP hung while defragmenting, when I was also tinkering with another program. It eventually crashed to a BSOD, followed by another BSOD on bootup; KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR and SESSION3_INITIALIZATION_FAILED, respectively. Now the internal hard drive with the Windows XP installation cannot seem to be read from or booted from, ("Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.") despite being selectable as a boot device.

My biggest hope is to somehow revive this poor 40GB internal hard drive, purchased in 2002, and recover my data from it, even if the hard drive may need replacing afterwards. However, the symptoms make this hope seem pretty bleak, though it still may be possible for all I know.

Does any kind soul have the time and knowledge to help me achieve my wish?

[johnebadbak]

enter the bios and see if your Hdd is listed capacity even redetect it if you can. reboot enter safe mode F8 hold down this key to enter this menu and select last known good configuration..
If the drive has died then you may have to install it in another pc as a slave and try access your data off it.

[Trifling]

Thanks for your reply, johnebadbak. Sorry for my delayed response; my access to working computers is somewhat limited at the moment.

I entered the BIOS and found a page of settings for the HDD which was able to correctly list the capacity. In all, the page showed the following information about the HDD:

Primary IDE Master
Device    :Hard Disk
Vendor    :ST340810A
Size      :40.0GB
LBA Mode  :Supported
Block Mode:16Sectors
PIO Mode  :4
Async DMA :Multiword DMA-2
Ultra DMA :Ultra DMA-5
S.M.A.R.T.:Supported

As shown above, the capacity was correctly displayed as "40.0GB". Is this significant, and do you know if this gives any indication of the state of the hard disk?

I tried, but I absolutely could not get the F8 key to produce any response on bootup, even when holding it down the whole time. F2 for BIOS settings and F11 to select a boot device still work fine, however.

I have personally not connected a drive as a slave before; I have previously read into it a little but unfortunately am not really very familiar with how it works. Are you saying it would actually allow me to access the data when running the drive as a slave, even though the computer currently cannot seem to read from the drive?

Many thanks.

[johnebadbak]

the hdd is a seagate model if you remove the hdd and put it in another machine you may access it. as its master you will find a "jumper" installed to make it master also there are settings on the drive top showing the jumper settings for slave its no jumper installed.

when hdd won't boot i have used a win98se boot disk to run the machine and at the prompt A: fdisk /mbr this will correct the master boot record..Im still thankful i haven't done away with the floppy disk drive...

You can also download seagate "tools' for checking the drive for operation would give you a good indication on its condition.

if F8 don't work on your machine then try F5 hold it down till the safe mode window opens if you let it go it won't go to safe mode.

[Trifling]

Since I don't really have a machine conveniently available to run the HDD as a slave, I decided to try fixing the master boot record. However, after researching it a little, it seems that to do this in XP, I'm supposed to enter the Recovery Console and use the command "fixmbr".

I tried this, and now I get the message "Invalid partition table." on bootup instead. I think I just broke things even more.

Holding F5 does not seem to get a response, either.

Did I just destroy any chances of recovering the data using the HDD as a slave, when I used the "fixmbr" command?

Thanks again for your reply. I really hope this can be fixed eventually.

[Trifling]

Bump.

I tried downloading and installing the Seagate tools on a working computer, but the program crashes whenever I try to run it on said working computer.

As mentioned previously, the Recovery Console could not (seem to) access the problem hard drive at all, yet the problem hard drive's capacity is correctly displayed in the BIOS settings.

1. Does anyone have any useful input that may help save the hard drive's data, or make the hard drive useable by the computer again?

2. Would the "fdisk" command be more useful than "fixmbr" at this point?

3. Could I still run the problem hard drive as a slave even though I get the "Invalid partition table" error?

[johnebadbak]

you download the seatools for "dos' not windows to check the disk if its running or trying to run windows..
if you don't have a floppy disk drive then you can't run the tools or fix the mbr as a floppy disk is required to run the "tools"dos program
if you want to check the partition table then a disk partition program is needed like acronis disk manager or partition magic.

[Trifling]

Thanks, I found the version for DOS now. I had been under the impression I was meant to install the Windows version, then use that to write the required tools onto a floppy disk. There is a floppy drive in both this computer and the other one, so I'll see what I can do with the tools now.

I wasn't especially wanting to take any extra unnecessary steps, but since I tried "fixmbr" I've been getting "Invalid partition table" on bootup, so I was just wondering if I've made things more complicated for myself by doing that.

Thanks again.

[Trifling]

I got SeaTools onto a floppy disk, though the first disk I tried was bad, so I had to switch to another one. When I finally got SeaTools running, it turned out that my USB mouse and USB keyboard seemed unusable with it, so I dug out my old PS/2 mouse and that worked fine.

I ran a "short test" with SeaTools to check the state of the HDD and it passed with no errors.

I still get "Invalid partition table" on bootup, however. This was a result of using the "fixmbr" command, as I mentioned. If I could somehow get the "fdisk" command to work, do you think that might solve this problem?