Windows 2000 workstation SP4 desktop compter
Drive 0 = 80Gb WD800JB drive
Partitioned as C: = NTFS 40Gb, D: = NTFS 40Gb
Shut the machine down normally at night. Started the next morning and got 0x0000007B blue screen INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error. Used laptop to research.
Booted from W2K install CD in safe mdoe, command propmt only. Ran CHKDSK C: but the version on the CD did not have the /f option.
CHKDSK did not report any errors and shows the volume label as W2KWks which is correct.
Switch to C: prompt succeeded. DIR command yields “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” error message.
Switch to D: prompt succeeded. DIR command yields correct directory listing.
Shut down and removed hard drive. Installed another hard drive and installed W2K, formatting the new hard drive. Had startup problems.
Replaced motherboard, re-installed W2K on new hard drive,formatting again. Installed SP4. No problems in start up.
Shut down normally and installed old hard drive as slave (drive 1) with new hard as master (drive 0).
Startup normal. Restart in Safe Mode with command prompt. Drive 0 is now C: and drive 1 is now D: and E:.
CHKDSK D: /f reports correct information including volume label (W2KWks), good numbers, and no errors. CHKDSK E: /f reports the same with volume label of W2KData which is correct.
Trying to switch to D:\ prompt yields “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.”
Switching to E:\ prompt succeeds and DIR listing is correct.
Reboot to normal W2K – not safe mode. My Computer shows C:, D:, E:, and F:(CD). Everything except D: is OK. D: does not show the volume label or any numbers. The number columns are blank, not zero. Double clicking yields “D:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect.” error message.
I live just north of Houston and about this time hurricane Ike hammered us so I’m just now getting back to this. Got power back yesterday. Power outage did not cause this problem. It happened a couple of days before the storm.
I need to get some data from what is now the D: partition – drive 1, partition 1.
What I have concluded so far is:
1) It is not a hardware or driver problem because the same driver handles D: and E: and E: appears to be OK.
2) I can’t use FDISK /mbr because I will most likely lose my E: partition.
3) The directory structure of the D: partition is corrupted.
I have been researching manually manipulating the Master Boot Record (MBR) but, on second thought, I’m thinking the partition table is OK because CHKDSK returns correct numbers and no errors.
I’m thinking the drive 1 MBR is still set such that the D: partition is marked as bootable. If I get the directory structure corrected is that going to cause a boot problem? Seems that it would be OK since the first bootable partition is on drive 0.
I haven’t yet seen anything on how the system makes the transition from using CHS disk access in the boot process to the NTFS drive:\directory disk access to load and run the OS.
Any reccomendations on where I go from here? Any clarifications about what the problem is would be greatly appreciated.
