[Sussex] HDDs

[John Crowhurst]

> Gentlemen,
>
> Is there anyone on list with a good knowledge of HDDs and boot processes?
>
> Only my daughter managed to get a boot sector virus on her Me machine
> and when I restored it using NAV it disappeared completely from the boot
> sequence. Rescue disks cant find it either though the BIOS can so no hw
> fault. Have tried fdisk /mbr without success and Knoppix but that won't
> boot either for some reason. I suspect the partition table has gone awol

Ok, from DOS try fdisk /status and you will be able to see what the fdisk
program can see. If the partition table is corrupt, then you will be able
to see that.

Perhaps try booting from Tom's rootboot disk, from:
http://www.tux.org/pub/distributions/tinylinux/tomsrtbt/

You'd then be able to see if you can mount the partition even though the
table is corrupted, or dd the disk to another drive.

If the partition table has gone, or is corrupted then you should be able
to build a new one with fdisk, especially if the whole drive was one
partition, you may then be able to boot it. The DOS partition type is
probably going to be 'c' - W95 FAT32 (LBA).

> Yes I know she should use Lx but she's only 15 and knows more than all
> of us put together (apart from HDDs!) and besides she has all her photo
> collection on the drive.

Perhaps its time you introduced her to Lx :)

-- 
John