Acer laptop recovery failed cannot boot

Help required, please, with recovering data on my laptop. Apologies for length of post but I want to give all pertinent information.

System: Acer Ferrari 4005, Windows XP professional, 100Gb drive partition by Acer with C: for software (45Gb), D: for user data (45Gb) and hidden recovery partition.

Original problem: Booting normally gave ‘file missing or corrupt system32\drives\ntfs.sys’ error. Also Windows could not be started in Safe mode (did not get that far). Booting a friend’s Windows XP CD gave ‘ntkrnlmp.exe could not be load error’.

Fixes tried: a) Acer Alt F10 option to recover from hidden partition gave option to recover but just kept rebooting when selected (obviously unable to access hidden partition).
b) I used my Recovery CD (made using Acer recovery facility when I purchased laptop) to try to recover. It spend 40 minutes copying files until 100% done, then restarted and went to a black screen for a while, then powered itself off.
c) I also tried the original Acer supplied disks – 1 system disk, 2 recovery 2 – which also brought up the recovery menu. I have no tried this as it should be similar to using the recovery CD which I have already tried.

Current errors:
Booting normally gives ‘windows cannot be loaded’ error with options:
1. start windows in safe mode – choosing this option just reboots back to same position
2. start windows normally – choosing this option cause the laptop to hang
3. start windows with last known good configuration – gives file missing ‘windows\system32\config\system’ could not be loaded error
Booting from another Windows XP Pro CD (not from Acer) gives ‘setuppdd.sys could not be loaded – error 4’.

Diagnosis: It seems to me that the boot sector on the disk may be corrupted as it seems to be unable to read files on the disk and to access the hidden partition.

Options I am thinking about:
1. Remove disk and try to recover data – send off or take to shop. Is this possible?
2. Remove disk, buy disk caddy and try to read on another pc. Are these available for small laptop disks? Would disk be readable if MBR is corrupt?
3. Send to Acer to fix. Will they try to save the data on the D: drive before they either put in a new disk or reformat it. If they put in a new disk will they at least send back the old one to me?
4. Boot from CD using another operating system (Linux, DOS?) – could use knoppix – and copy data to usb drive. Is this safe? I know nothing about Linux.
5. Try swapping/replacing memory. People to swear by this as a cure but surely if memory was damaged I would not have been able to run the Acer recovery at all?

 

Seems like HDD problem........

Otherwise windows installation CD works fine

What's your HDD brand? If it's HITACHI! try following link

Downloads and Utilities For HITACHI HDD

You can restore(Actually full reset) your MBR using HITACHI Drive Fitness Test Tool + It can scan your HDD for bad sectors

 

Thanks. I do not know the brand of the hard disk. I need to get the data off the disk so do not want to do something which effectively reformats it (sounds like the test tool you mentioned would not keep existing data). How can I find out if a hardware issue or just a data corruption?

 

Test tool can find out HDD problems...Run It

Just Run Quick Test or Advanced Test .It will never delete your data

 

Sounds good but disk is Seagate Momentus 5400.2. And to run such tools I need a 'Dos' boot CD, if it is possible to boot from CD. But I agree it seems a good idea to run some tests.

 

And the answer is .. (part 1)

The good news is the disk is not corrupted. Put in a caddy and copied data off to another machine. Now the question is .. why does it not boot in the Acer?

 

corrupted MBR.
Reset your MBR & reinstall everything

 

Hey

I had the same problem on my brand new travelamte 8215, twice within 2 months of purchase. Had the hard drive replaced twice. Currently waiting on a new machine following persistant failure.

You in the UK or the US?

peace

 

If the master boot record is corrupt would that not affect the drive when it is accessed via usb in a disk caddy? Does not the windows software on the other machine need to read the MBR to get the partition table to find out how the disk is partitioned? It can read each partition ok. I am just wondering.

Tried swapping the two memory modules around after putting the disk back in to the Acer and now I just get a black screen and does not boot at all.

By the way I am in the UK.