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Invalid Data

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by ceastwoods

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An attorney reports that when she boots up her laptop (Dell Latitude D600) it only shows Invalid DATA in the upper left corner of the screen.

I have tried reseating the hard drive. I go into BIOS, it sees that she has a 40 Gig hard drive, so the Invalid DATA almost seems like it's referring to the Boot Sector as it doesn't even get to the Windows Startup screen where you can press F8 to select which boot option you would like to choose. Has anyone seen this before and if so, what was your solution? I'm betting corrupt data, but before I replace the hard drive, I thought I would see if there is a way for me to retrieve the data by booting up somehow. Thanks in advance for your response.

Craig

7 replies

by mr.wiz

This would be better asked in the question forum instead of discussions. Please click the "Ask a Question" link and repost there.

by deepsand

Try the "Questions" forum; the "Discussion" forum is for matters of general discussion, not specific problems in search of a solution.

Post problems such as this to the "Question" forum, rather than the "Discussion" forum. There are those who specifically seek out problems in need of a solution, and that's where they go to look for such.

Additionally there are the benefits that:

1) The "Questions" forum provides for your feedback, by way of your being able to mark "helpful" responses as such. This does not necessarily mean that a given response contained the complete solution to your problem, but only that it served to guide you toward it. This is intended to serve as an aid to those who may in the future have a problem similar to yours, so that they might have a ready source of reference available, thereby perhaps obviating the need for them to repeat questions previously asked and answered.

2) The revised TR makes it quite difficult to find both "Discussions" and "Questions" that have not had a fairly recent post, owing to some functions comingling them in the listings. By keeping each type in their respective forums, it is easier for all to find what they are looking for.

by ceastwoods

Run Recovery Console from the Windows XP CD-ROM, select C:\Windows as the folder for your operating system. Type "FixMBR". Press Enter. Press Y for Yes. Restart the computer.

by deepsand

Recovery Console is [u]not[/u] available on all XP machines; many OEMs neither include it in the pre-install, nor make it available as a user option.

And, a corrupted MBR is not the only possible cause of problems with the observed syptom.

by ceastwoods

But after seeing that there was 25 more people that have the error and it worked consistently in our network environment, I am going to trust that the fix is a permanent solution. We still have no idea why it happened, specifically over Memorial Day weekend. Another option if the Recovery Console is not installed...A person can use a Windows boot disk with FDISK on it and type FDISK.EXE /MBR as well. That was actually more original solution which is much quicker than booting up from a Windows XP CD-ROM.

Of course, this may not always be the solution, but Invalid Data appears to be referencing corrupting or an error within the Master Boot Record. Dell has no knowledge of this error and Microsoft didn't have anything on their website either.

by deepsand

I just love linking from an Event Log record back to MS, only to get a generic description to the effect that "someone or something tried to do such," followed by "no more information is available," or wording to that effect.

Whatever happened to [b]real[/b] documentation?

by ali40961

http://www.pcinspector.de

FREE utility I am currently using on a failed hard drive. WORKS GREAT if windoze can see the drive, but can't access. BEST OF ALL it is FREE and WORKS GREAT! Recovers DELETED data also!

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