d3v Posted September 26, 2009 Share Posted September 26, 2009 This is quite urgunt as it is not my laptop!The story is as follows.Customer had a bad virus that would not go away so I used ActiveKill Disk in DOS mode to wipe the drive 2 time.after 5 minutes the process froze and after an hour of waiting for the progress percentage to move, I foolishly powered the PC down from the mains.Now windows will not boot and when I try to reformat with XP I get a messege saying "no hard disks found". Thing is though, I can install Windows7 just fine, but I need XP as there are no drivers that are compatible with Win7 because the laptop is so old!So guys, what's the trick to fixing this "security freeze lock" ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted September 26, 2009 Share Posted September 26, 2009 Have you asked the customer if they have Drive Lock Protection Enabled and if so .. for the password?Did you or were you able to boot windows beforehand?Have you tried to boot with BartPE to see if the drive is there.. or used any reformatting products on the drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3v Posted September 26, 2009 Author Share Posted September 26, 2009 Have you asked the customer if they have Drive Lock Protection Enabled and if so .. for the password?Did you or were you able to boot windows beforehand?Have you tried to boot with BartPE to see if the drive is there.. or used any reformatting products on the drive?hi.it is not password-protected.I have ran many diagnostic tools included it's manufactuer seagate "seatools" which found and corrected 9 errors.I also ran Spinrite 6.0 at it's most thorough which took 18 hours tio complete!Neither helped.I also tried partitioning the disk as Active/Primary, ect but nothing works - i still cannot reformat with windows xp.edit: yes the hard disk is full visable and accessible via a DOS boot disk, and BIOS recognizes it just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizarre™ Posted September 26, 2009 Share Posted September 26, 2009 Have you tried FDISK in DOS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted September 26, 2009 Share Posted September 26, 2009 I would bet you had a couple of bad sectors.. Did you discuss with your customer about what the computer was doing when they brought it in? Did simply describe that the machine was really slow.. and they had experienced odd errors? What type of work is done on the PC? Intensive of read/write cycles? How old?Drives can become corrupt and damaged through various means.. It is very rare that a trojan or malware destroys hardware, but some side effects can .. through long term..can cause some serious problems. I would definitely check the drive health again.. If you had Vista I am willing to be you would be getting drive failure errors as we speak right and left...In fact I had a drive that had 2 bad sectors, that reported they would repair.. certain things would take forever, and it was because of this problem....another check with a diagnostic disc would state the sectors were still there.. I could basically install an OS.. and about three boots later it would crash..Then it would hold Vista .. and report errors and be really slow..Anyway.. I don't believe you had anything to do with the problem.. I think this was a result of a lot of use.. I am betting on Hard Drive Failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3v Posted September 26, 2009 Author Share Posted September 26, 2009 OMG that did it! YES YES YES!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU "BIZZARE"! brb installing XP :dance2: :dance2: :dance2: :dance2: :dance2: :dance2: :dance2: :dance2:edit: yes heath28m while trying to remove the virus in windows mode, i would achieve good stability for an hour then suddenly explorer.exe would crash and eventually completely lock up.I will tell her to buy a new harddrive for the laptop and I'll retain her data until then.thanks again guys especially BIZZARE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizarre™ Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 I'm glad I was able to help :)I had this problem before, and the only utility that saved my @ss was FDISK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted September 27, 2009 Administrator Share Posted September 27, 2009 Well I came to know about FDISK, by wikipedia. But still cannot understand how did it helped. I mean makin a new partition worked? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizarre™ Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 When you run the fdisk and format commands, the Master Boot Record (MBR) and file allocation tables are created. The MBR and file allocation tables store the necessary disk geometry that allows hard disk to accept, store, and retrieve data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted September 27, 2009 Administrator Share Posted September 27, 2009 OK I see. So did it format or delete everythin on the partition or similar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3v Posted September 27, 2009 Author Share Posted September 27, 2009 OK I see. So did it format or delete everythin on the partition or similar?as i said previously i tried creating partitions of various configurating using acronis and other parition DOS softwares but none of them worked but FDISK did!I wouldn't mind knowing what FDISK does differently for educational purposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator DKT27 Posted September 27, 2009 Administrator Share Posted September 27, 2009 Oh! I see, sorry for not readin some text properly. I'm a bit tired. ANW glad you got it right. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 You may want to run a disk diagnostic again after you get done installing it.. Sometimes because of the way some malware acts and reacts.. It may have been causing the issue.. so before advising to buy a new hard drive, you may want to double check beforehand.. just to make sure..Glad it worked out for you.. Now I have to make sure I have FDISK somewhere.. LOL..You would thing out of all the stuff I have I would have it in something..I probably do just don't know where right now.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3v Posted September 27, 2009 Author Share Posted September 27, 2009 You may want to run a disk diagnostic again after you get done installing it.. Sometimes because of the way some malware acts and reacts.. It may have been causing the issue.. so before advising to buy a new hard drive, you may want to double check beforehand.. just to make sure..Glad it worked out for you.. Now I have to make sure I have FDISK somewhere.. LOL..You would thing out of all the stuff I have I would have it in something..I probably do just don't know where right now..Yeah I was just over-exited when I said I'll tell her to buy a new hard drive! The laptop is running very sweet on XP Pro SP3 "Black Edition 2009" not a single hitch!what a relief - thanks again :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HX1 Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 You may also want to check ad/or update your version of Wipe software...I have seen this before...I actually use a DBAN Nuke Boot Disc.. never had a problem but have had issues out of a CD that was dated in 2007..( PC Beginner 2007 ) ..for some reason it would cause a similar issue.. Maybe a bug which caused an error when overwriting/wiping the drive.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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