boot disk failure, how to proceed?

[necronite]

my boot disk/system disk hangs after boot. There is obviously some malware service that starts up and sucks all the resources. There is nothing I can do. However, I do boot into win, so the drive is salvageable. This system has 3 other drives designated for storage.

So to proceed with repair, I have bought another disk to be my system & boot disk. Should I disconnect all other drives, install windows, and then reconnect the drives, or install windows on the new disk with all other drives installed (detectable by BIOS)? I am thinking the latter so I don't mess up the boot.ini.

Do you agree?

Thanks!

[AMDIT]

Assuming you can get access online, then download the drive manufacturers' disk diagnostic program. Copy to floppy and let it boot from there. Best to check the drive condition. You can install the new drive and use it for a new boot disk but if you suspect viruses then better to isolate that drive in another system.
Two popular manufacturers diagnostic links:

MAXTOR:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=22

SEAGATE:
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

[AMDIT]

Do you boot to Win after a boot freeze or just boot to safe mode. Have you tried editing the config file for boot items under startup (type "msconfig" in RUN command).

[Senor Panadero]

...
So to proceed with repair, I have bought another disk to be my system & boot disk. Should I disconnect all other drives, install windows, and then reconnect the drives, or install windows on the new disk with all other drives installed (detectable by BIOS)? I am thinking the latter so I don't mess up the boot.ini.

Do you agree?

Thanks!

You should not have any drives connected during the install other than the new OS drive, and the CDROM, not even flash drives. Anything else can be added later. The Windows installer has a nasty way of sometimes putting boot files or writing a boot sector on different drives than the one the OS is on. So later, when you move or replace a data drive, oops, boot disk error.

edit:
It is possible to remove any malware hanging your system, especially if you have another computer that you can mount that old OS drive on temporarily. So if you want to start a thread for that...

[necronite]

You should not have any drives connected during the install other than the new OS drive, and the CDROM, not even flash drives. Anything else can be added later. The Windows installer has a nasty way of sometimes putting boot files or writing a boot sector on different drives than the one the OS is on. So later, when you move or replace a data drive, oops, boot disk error.

edit:
It is possible to remove any malware hanging your system, especially if you have another computer that you can mount that old OS drive on temporarily. So if you want to start a thread for that...

Ok that it was I did last night, and after windows installed off the CD it would not start. So today I have removed the other disk and am trying to install again on a new HDD. I do have internet access off my work laptop, but I don't have a floppy drive, nor admin access to do anything else. Should I worry about getting a boot disk error in the future when I reconnect the other disk?

[Senor Panadero]

Ok that it was I did last night, and after windows installed off the CD it would not start.

Come again? The computer would not start? Why not? Was there an error? What exactly did it say?

...So today I have removed the other disk and am trying to install again on a new HDD. I do have internet access off my work laptop, but I don't have a floppy drive, nor admin access to do anything else. Should I worry about getting a boot disk error in the future when I reconnect the other disk?

Well, you have already formatted the drive that you suspected had malware, right? So no need to follow up on that. Not unless you tried a repair install. A repair install leaves malware intact and running, a "fresh install" does not.

You should not worry about getting a boot error if the boot order is set correctly in your bios setup. If your OS drive is set to boot first, no problem. If your OS drive is, for example, HDD-1, and the other drive is HDD-0, and the other drive has a boot sector written on it from before, then yes, you will definitely get a boot error as the system tries to boot from it, but finds no OS on that drive. So be sure your boot order is set up properly in bios setup. Disable anything but the drive you want to boot if you can.

[necronite]

@ Panadero

Umm to clear things up, my old disk (that would hang indefinitely) was set up with Windows Nemesis 4.0 which is a slipstreamed image. When I replaced the boot/system disk I used the same image which I have used several times before and had no luck. it would set up and then post and the fail booting (no error, no bsod), it would just cycle like that (last night's activities).

Today I installed win xp corporate, which was successful. I sucked off some contents from the old drive (nothing new that would have caused previous problems). Then I shut down and restarted with one of the 250g + storage drives. Upon boot, winxp ran chkdsk on my 300g drive.

Switching the conversation, I have never had a good outcome when winxp wants to run chkdsk on a drive. it is like a bad omen for me. Should I just try to suck off the data from an external source, in anticipation of a disk failure?

[Senor Panadero]

...

Switching the conversation, I have never had a good outcome when winxp wants to run chkdsk on a drive. it is like a bad omen for me. Should I just try to suck off the data from an external source, in anticipation of a disk failure?

Chkdsk can be caused to run for many reasons. I think that in most cases, it is best to let it run. It is quite effective at what it does. It isn't going to affect what is booting and what is not, all it does is repair the file structures, nothing to do with booting.

[necronite]

Well it seems I have acted prematurely in all of this. My boot disk was not the reason for PC failure, but rather a 300g storage drive. This one drive seemed to lock up the whole system! Now it is clicking (the same one that CHKDSK was checking) and will not allow the system to boot up at all. I can only surmise that its downfall was due to poor cooling because it was 50% empty and fully defragmented. If I detach this storage drive from the system, the boot/system disk has no problems loading windows.

Thanks for all your help!!!

Anybody have an ecnomic/DIY solution to recovering data from a corrupt disk?