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Windows 2000 Server won't boot

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by s.feola

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I have a computer with Windows 2000 Server. The hard drive started making noise (a series of 5 intermittent scrath-type noises). After rebooting, it was unable to boot into Windows, and would hang at the "Windows is starting up" screen just as thehard drive started to make the scratching noises. It is NTFS. Anyway to get it to boot or be able to recover the files on it?

7 replies

by angsax

Clearly a hard drive physical problem and you have to replace it. To get your files off it I would install another hard drive with 2000 and use the original as a slave, until you can (hopefully) move your files.

by s.feola

The drive can recognize that Windows 2000 Server is installed, but it hangs (scrathes) just before the monitor switches over to the logon screen. I installed another drive with Win2K Server as Master and it works fine until I hook up the Bad drive as the slave, then it hangs and scrathes at the same spot.
I am thinking that if I can disable the Master Boot Record of the bad drive, I can get it to boot as a slave. Is ther anyway to disable the Master Boot Record and still acces the files asa Slave drive?

by alpha-male

You should take a look at the "200 Ways to revive a dead hard drive" article from Tech Republic:

https://www.techrepublic.com/download_item.jhtml?id=dr00320000510jed01.htm&src=search

(delete any spaces in the URL)

This will offer a few "desperation" techniques you can try to get that drive to spin up one more time. If these don't work and you have critical data that is not backed up, you can pursue a drive recovery service, but these are expensive to be sure.

Good luck....hope this helps.

by djent

it sounds like a bad spindle bearing. Removing the MBR will only agrivate your problem. Try freezing the drive, plugin and copy files immediatly before drive warms up. If that does not work you will need to send the drive to Ontrack or someone like it for recovery, the last one cost $700 but the customer was resigned to it and joined the church of Backup.

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