[edit] Doubled up backslashes to make them visible. [/edit]

Last week I needed to install a 2001-ish vintage ancient Flash memory driver for a camera that uses "SSFDC" memory on a Win2k-SP4 PC (ASUS A8V motherboard). The driver would appear to install Ok, but then the PC would crash to a black screen (with register information) when the installation completed. This happened 3 times. Since I was in a hurry to gain access to the photos on that memory card, I tried one more tack – I told Windows to look for a compatible driver. It listed something, but said something like, “we really don't recommend that you use this driver”. But I was in a hurry, so I did anyway.

A couple of reboots later, the PC crashed on startup saying, roughly, “Windows cannot find c:\winnt\system32\config\software”. After searching around a while on another PC, I discovered that this is one of the important software “hives” that is used to construct the Registry. F8 to try to get into SafeMode did nothing different - it crashed in the same place.

Naturally, I didn't have any backups of the Registry that Windows was looking for, nor an Emergency Rescue disk.

:-(

The boot drive is a RAID mirror consisting of two 160 GB drives. It has 2 partitions – a 30 GB boot partition, and a 130-ish GB data partition. Win2k-SP4 has the necessary 48-bit LBA driver to allow Windows to see the whole disk – without it, it only sees ~ 128 GB. I knew that the Win2k-SP2 disk didn't have that driver, so I knew going in that I could be in for a world of pain if I had to reinstall because the install disk wouldn't see the whole disk and would probably trash the data partition. There's another 300 GB SATA data disk that is not mirrored.

So, I did my best to avoid reinstalling.

I thought I'd try booting the Win2k-SP2 CD to see if I could do a Recovery. Ack! It didn't see the drive at all! It took me too long to remember that it was a Promise 378 RAID array and I needed to install the driver (at the F6 prompt). But there was that problem about the 48-bit LBA. Hmmm.

I eventually found Bart's web page and his instructions on how to slipstream service packs into a bootable CD - http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#w2k . I booted it, saw both partitions correctly when I chose the “Repair” option, but was unable to do much of anything useful.

I had made a backup of the registry with Spybot Search and Destroy a few months earlier, but had not been able to figure out how to “run” the created files to do a restore. One needed to boot that particular Win2k installation to activate the registry, but it was too corrupted to do so. I still couldn't gain access to the Safe Mode menu by hitting F8 either - it always crashed before bringing up the alternate boot menu. I eventually found that if I replaced the clicky IBM AT keyboard that used an AT to PS/2 adapter with a Dell PS/2 keyboard, then F8 worked. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or the result of other changes (below).

I figured the disks, especially the RAID disks, were fine – just that Windows was mangled. BootIt Next Generation showed all the partitions and didn't seem to think anything was amiss.

By this point, I had created the slipstreamed Win2k-SP4 CD and figured, well, I better try a Recovery again. Naturally, it failed because I didn't have the necessary floppy with the data that it was looking for. The Recovery Console wouldn't let me execute the SBS&D .REG files either because it is so severely limited.

I thought I'd better check the disks to be sure everything was Ok before hand, and I decided to break the RAID array and keep the 2nd disk in the mirror as a virgin backup. So I removed the drive cage that held the 3 hard drives and routed the cables so the cage would fit flat. I had to disconnect the front fan's Molex connector to make some slack. I took one of the mirror drives and used a multi-way hard drive to USB adapter to look at the disk. It was fine. Yay!

After changing some things in the RAID BIOS so it quit complaining that the mirror was dying, I figured I'd tried everything, so I'd have to do a reinstall of some sort. But I wanted to preserve as many options as possible. I used the Win2k-SP4 disk and installed a new copy of the OS in c:\WinNTNew. It seemed to go fine (but at one point did ask for the original Win2k-PS2 disk, so Bart's instructions aren't complete - at least for SP4) and I was able to get a “working” VGA installation after an hour or so. I was even able to execute the SBS&D registry backup, but it applied to the new installation. It restored a bunch of stuff, but of course the Path was wrong and a lot of the DLLs for various things were never found. Some manual hacking could fix that, but I assumed that would be more painful than continuing to try to fix the original installation. But the *Windows Installer* wouldn't run, so I couldn't install drivers to get the new installation functional. :-(

I eventually found “backups” of the hives in “c:\WinNT\repair”. While booted into the new installation, I copied these into the c:\winnt\system32\config directory (saving the old ones as backups). I crossed my fingers and booted into the old installation. And it came up!

But, of course, all of my settings were gone, as well as all of the drivers. So a lot of work was still required. Running the SBS&D registry backups worked (er, the RegLocal.reg runs, but the RegUsers.reg always gives me an error that it can't access the registry. Perhaps it has to be run from Safe Mode or something.), but it still wasn't a complete restoration.

While various things were happening, I noticed that there was enough slack to get the hard drive fan working again, and I didn't want anything to over-heat, so I decided to plug a Molex connector in to get the fan going. Ack! What was that spark! Why did it shut off?!?! Crap. I touched the connectors together with the voltages reversed: +12 V <-> +5 V. :-( Oh well, maybe it shut off quickly enough not to do any damage....

Bootup again with the fan disconnected. Ack! Why is there light coming from under the 300 GB SATA drive?!?! Ack! It's on FIRE! Power off. A square chip was smoking. Bye bye data. :-(

Boot again. Ack! Why is it hanging in the BIOS screens? Try various things, disconnect all the internal hardware that uses the 12 V rail, remove and reinstall the video card, etc., etc. Check the power supply. Voltages seem Ok, but some of the electrolytics in the PS are swollen and seem to be oozing brown stuff at the top. Remember to replace it in the not too distant future....

Eventually, it booted up again.

Boot up again with the smoking drive disconnected. Yay, it's coming up. Why is my monitor flashing off and on every 3 seconds now? Crap. Is it the monitor or the video card? Try another monitor – same thing. Crap – it's the video card. Maybe I can tweak the settings. Hmm. The AGP acceleration is set at 0 rather than 8x and can't be changed. Let's hope that it's just the card... Let's try turning off the various hardware acceleration settings. With everything off, it doesn't flash! Yay! But why is it taking over a minute for a pop-up menu to appear? And so forth.

To end this long and painful story, the PC is running the original Win2k-SP4 installation again, but I still have a lot of work to do to restore backups and fix things. I replaced the ATI video card with a $50 PNY GeForce 6200 and it's running fine. I got “Registry Mechanic” to go through the Registry and clean out the cruft – at the moment I can't uninstall an old antivirus program to install a newer one, etc.

I haven't gone through such pain with Windows in a long time. It's not fun. :-(

Lesson's Learned:

1) Have working boot disks for your installation. Don't assume that the installation disks are sufficient if you've made lots of updates – especially if running Win2k or earlier. Make sure you know how your machine boots and know if it needs extra driver disks. Ideally have boot/install disks with all the necessary drivers (disk, video, Ethernet, etc.) already in place.

2) In Windows, run whatever you need to do to make Emergency Repair disks and make sure they work. (In the course of this, I discovered another of my PCs at work has a dead floppy.)

3) Don't depend on the connectors to prevent even instantaneous misconnection. Even an instantaneous short can cause Big Damage. If you have to make changes with the power on, watch what you're doing and be careful.

4) Have a backup system in place, for data and the OS. Especially if it's Windows.

5) Consider modifying c:\boot.ini to create a boot menu for a different installation and for booting in Safe Mode. Sometimes F8 is temperamental. Consider creating an additional Windows installation for maintenance tasks, or have a copy of something like Bart's PE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ (which I haven't used) - for maintenance tasks. It really shouldn't be necessary to do a full reinstall when the registry gets mangled...

It's taken a good part of 3 days to get this far... :-(

Cheers,
Scott.
("Have you ever considered that your purpose in life is to be a counter-example to others?" :-)

Thanks for the sympathy. I was over-due, I guess. :-/

A free CD burning package I've used, BurnCDCC from Terabyte Unlimited, is a great tool, but doesn't specifically say that it will run on Win98. It does say in the .exe that Win32s is not supported (but that's used by Win 3.1x).

http://www.terabyteu...oads/burncdcc.zip - it's a 70 kB download.

Note that it's specifically designed to burn ISOs to CDs, so you'll need to create ISO files of the data you want to backup if you want to use it.

To create ISO files, you should be able to use the "mkisofs" program that's part of the "cdrtools-latest.zip" package here: http://smithii.com/cdrtools Note that I haven't tried them myself. (The zip file is 1.65 MB)

The CDRTools package is a Win32 compilation of some Linux tools. It probably has everything you need.

Condolences on the CD burner issues. I hope it's just a Roxio issue.

If you're thinking about a cheap Mac, keep MacofAllTrades in mind. They often have decent machines there for very low prices (but Intel machines are still not cheap): http://www.macofallt...lder_Macs_s/3.htm

Best of luck! I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Scott.

I found a site on the Internet that has circuit boards for hard drives and saw that he even had my exact Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300 GB SATA model. $50 was a little steep, but hey, it might actually work...

http://hdd-parts.com...-7200-8-sata.html

Installation was trivial. 6 each T8 Torx screws and lift off the board. Contact is made through 2 arrays of spring-loaded contacts underneath. Install the new board. Hook up an external SATA to USB adapter and fire it up. No smoke or fire this time. :-)

The drive spins, and there's some servo noise, but there was never unambiguous indication of the head moving. Winders doesn't see it and there's no indication that the USB controller sees anything either. :-(

I'll mess around with it some more, but it looks like a real possibility that the data's really gone.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who wonders if this technique would be a solution for the bricked 1.5 TB Seagate drives.)

Thanks for your thoughts on diagnosing it. I was almost certain that the remaining problem had to do with the board, not the motors, etc. I remember taking apart a 10 MB HD to see the damage inside, and figured if it came to that with this box then I'd have no hope.

I did some more searching using "Seagate 7200.8" and found forum.hddguru.com . It has lots of good information about fixing drives.

The contraption that got roasted on the original circuit board of drive is a "TVS" - Trans Voltage Suppressor. It's a diode that's designed to protect the rest of the electronics if bad things happen to the input voltage. It's apparently quite common for them to fail via a dead short (as seemed to happen in my case based on the PS issues I was having).

http://forum.hddguru...t9998.html#p70888

So I had an excuse to drag out my soldering iron. And guess what? Removing the roasted TVS fixes the drive! Woot! :-D

So, I'm out $50 for that replacement circuit board (which I'm under the impression should have worked), but I've apparently got all my old data back. But, while replacement TVS parts apparently are available, I think I'll play it safe and relegate this drive to the parts bin after I get all the data off it.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who has turned it off until he can get another drive ready to back it up. And who is much more careful about hooking up power connectors on open PCs now...)