windows NTDETECT error

[zxcvbob]

My 6+ year old laptop (win XP with 3GB of RAM) that I recently replace the battery in failed to boot tonight.  Gave me an NTDETECT error.  Powered it down and tried again, but no joy.  I put the recovery disk in and ran chkdsk /r from the recovery console and it found/repaired errors.  Now I can at least DIR without getting an error.  But I still get the NTDETECT error when I try to boot.  There is no ntdetect file in the root directory, so I tried copying it from c:\I386 and got "Access denied".

Do I just need to pull the HDD and use a USB adapter to access it from another XP machine and write a new copy of NTDETECT.COM to the root directory?

It's all these recent "What would you get to replace your PC?" threads that did it    Either that, or the Samsung hdd I put in 2 years ago...

I can get a refurbished i5 Thinkpad T410 with Win 7 Pro for less than $400, maybe I ought to pounce on one of those before they are all gone

[TechMan]

IIRC the ntdetect error usually means that there is HDD issues.

[lee n. field]

My 6+ year old laptop (win XP with 3GB of RAM) that I recently replace the battery in failed to boot tonight.  Gave me an NTDETECT error.  Powered it down and tried again, but no joy.  I put the recovery disk in and ran chkdsk /r from the recovery console and it found/repaired errors.  Now I can at least DIR without getting an error.  But I still get the NTDETECT error when I try to boot.  There is no ntdetect file in the root directory, so I tried copying it from c:\I386 and got "Access denied".

Do I just need to pull the HDD and use a USB adapter to access it from another XP machine and write a new copy of NTDETECT.COM to the root directory?

It's all these recent "What would you get to replace your PC?" threads that did it    Either that, or the Samsung hdd I put in 2 years ago...

Overall, over time, I does not surprise me when a Samsung hard disk fails.

You;re into recovery mode now.  Need to save stuff off?

[Ben]

My advice would be to first, if you don't have a current backup, try and get all your data off there with either a Linux boot disk or putting the drive in an external and accessing from another machine (if either of those will work), then jumping on that $400 deal. :)

[zxcvbob]

Overall, over time, I does not surprise me when a Samsung hard disk fails.

You;re into recovery mode now.  Need to save stuff off?

I can't copy anything from recovery mode because I get "access denied" errors.  But I can at least see the stuff out there.  I'm going to pull the drive out and access it on another system using a USB cable -- Copy all the stuff off, then try to fix the error.  But I can't mess with it until tonight, gotta go work for The Man today.

[Ben]

If you have critical data you need to recover and nothing else works, I once had good luck using a program called Stellar Phoenix to recover files from a coworker's  damaged HD at work. It took hours to run, but it got most of what he needed.

[zxcvbob]

If you have critical data you need to recover and nothing else works, I once had good luck using a program called Stellar Phoenix to recover files from a coworker's  damaged HD at work. It took hours to run, but it got most of what he needed.

There are important file on there but nothing critical.  If I lose it all, it will make me sad but that's it.  Also, all the data is in a separate partition so if I have to reinstall the OS the data files will still be there.  Unless of course the HDD fails completely.

[lee n. field]

I can't copy anything from recovery mode because I get "access denied" errors.  But I can at least see the stuff out there.  I'm going to pull the drive out and access it on another system using a USB cable -- Copy all the stuff off, then try to fix the error.  But I can't mess with it until tonight, gotta go work for The Man today.

I used "recovery mode" loosely.  Nothing you'll be able to do in Windows now will help.

What I would do is pull the drive, connect it and a replacement to another computer and run a cloning program that will go sector by sector and handles bad sectors gracefully.  I do this in linux with rdd.  Gddrescue will also work.

[lee n. field]

There are important file on there but nothing critical.  If I lose it all, it will make me sad but that's it.  Also, all the data is in a separate partition so if I have to reinstall the OS the data files will still be there.  Unless of course the HDD fails completely.

The whole drive is failing.  Being on a separate partition won't help.

[zxcvbob]

If I clone the drive, especially using Linux*, do the source and target drives have to match in size?  Or does the target just have to be larger?  Or maybe the target just has to be large enough to hold all the files and the file system...

I don't remember if the failing drive is 160GB or 320GB, (I think it's 160) divided into two partitions.  The replacement I'm looking at is a Toshiba 250GB.

*I have a Linux box that I don't use much that has lots of unused of SATA ports and cables hanging off the motherboard.

[lee n. field]

The way I do it (rdd, sector by sector copy), target has to be the same size or larger than source.  usually not a problem.  When I needed to replace a laptop HD not long ago, a 500GB disk was, I think, $5 more than the 350.

The process will get the whole partition structure, inc. hidden and special partitions. Assuming it's recoverable at all, and it sounds like it is.

rdd forensic copy program

This project was registered on SourceForge.net on Apr 26, 2006, and is described by the project team as follows:

Rdd is a forensic copy program developed at and used by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI). Unlike most copy programs, rdd is robust with respect to read errors, which is an important property in a forensic operating environment.

[zxcvbob]

Well, I thought it was the Samsung drive, but it's a Seagate (not that it really matters.)  I copied NTDETECT.COM to the root directory, and now it fails with some missing DLL.  My data files seem to be okay.  I'm going to leave it alone and powered-off and wait until my new laptop gets here, then copy the data files to it from the old HDD. 

Did I mention the "new" (recertified) laptop?   Thinkpad T410 with a 320GB hdd, DVD-RW optical drive, 4GB of ram, and Win7 Pro (I think that's all the major specs) for $325. Free shipping, and a free 1 year extended warranty.  I did have to pay sales tax.

I don't know if there's an empty RAM slot, HDMI port, Firewire, etc.  The spec sheets for used machines are a bit lacking in details.

I may put Linux on the old laptop using that spare Samsung drive, just for S&G's.

[Ben]

I don't know if there's an empty RAM slot, HDMI port, Firewire, etc.  The spec sheets for used machines are a bit lacking in details.

If you go to crucial.com and look up your laptop, they'll tell you how many slots you have and how much ram you can take.

[zxcvbob]

If you go to crucial.com and look up your laptop, they'll tell you how many slots you have and how much ram you can take.

It's not here yet :D  (it'll have 2 slots, but I don't know if they are both occupied or not; Lenovo configures them both ways)

[Ben]

It's not here yet :D  (it'll have 2 slots, but I don't know if they are both occupied or not; Lenovo configures them both ways)

Oh, misread. I thought you meant you didn't know how many slots it actually had / memory capacity.