Error when loading windows

howardlaurie on Jan 07, 2009

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The hard drive has been cleaned with a shredder program and in the process of reloading windows from the Sony recovery CD I get the error "cannot normally execute the initial setting of partition information, this utility exits and your computer is rebooted"
I thought maybe a virus had partitioned my hard drive so I also tried a new hard drive and when loading the Hard Drive software that came with it I got the error "int 13 level communications: attempting int IO to drive 80 no response" then "ata level communications attempting pm ata identify" the system freezes from there. I initally thought i had a drive issue but with both drives showing errors I am wondering about a motherboard issue.
Thanks in advance for any input
Howard

Comments:

Jan 26, 2009

- problem solved
Thank you for your help

Best Solution

posted on Jan 07, 2009

hi99ins

Rank: Wiz
Rating: 85%, 61 votes

Your shredder may have deleted the MBR (see http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/BootToolsRefs.htm for repair tools)
Also the disk partitions may not be recovered by your cd so they will have to be reinstated using PartitionMagic or, if you know how to use it, fdisk in c:\windows\command
Check your disk controller settings and drive types in the setup screen available before booting.
The software is unable to read/write to the drives possibly because of a drive type error or the type of interface selected for the controller in setup.
ATA33 drives have problems on ATA66 settings etc....
If your motherboard was failing it would not correctly select the drive types at boot. It would report

DRIVE C: <none>
and u would get a boot failure.
If you got as far as the setup for your recovery CD I would be surprised if the motherboard was failing.
Swap your DVD to the old Drive cable and try to boot from it. If the controller on the motherboard is bad it wont boot.
Check your cables for damage too..
Hope this helps

Comments:

Jan 07, 2009

- Your shredder may have deleted the MBR (see http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/BootToolsRefs.htm for repair tools)
Also the disk partitions may not be recovered by your cd so they will have to be reinstated using PartitionMagic or, if you know how to use it, fdisk in c:\windows\command
Check your disk controller settings and drive types in the setup screen available before booting.
The software is unable to read/write to the drives possibly because of a drive type error or the type of interface selected for the controller in setup.
ATA33 drives have problems on ATA66 settings etc....
If your motherboard was failing it would not correctly select the drive types at boot. It would report

DRIVE C: <none>
and u would get a boot failure.
If you got as far as the setup for your recovery CD I would be surprised if the motherboard was failing.
Swap your DVD to the old Drive cable and try to boot from it. If the controller on the motherboard is bad it wont boot.
Check your cables for damage too..
Hope this helps

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