Hard-drives gone missing overnight!

[Rizla.iQ]

Hi,

I came to my PC this morning and was faced with this error message on boot "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM". So i went down the NTDLR fix route, with no joy, I've tried a lot of other things to try and get up-and-running again, all with no joy. In my BIOS, however, my secondary IDE Slave/Master shows as NONE where is would normally list my 2 hard-drives. Both drives are less than 6 months old so i think it shouldn't be them.

My Specs are as follows:

Hard-drives:           2 x 250 Seagate SATA
Motherboard:         ASUS P5NE SLi
Processor:              Intel Core Duo 6400
Memory:                 2 x 1 Gig
GFX Card:               NVIDIA Ge-Force 8800 GTX
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2

Another thing to note is my monitor won't come on, for the first few hours i was at a loss till i realised i could try the HDMI cable plugged into the back of my TV from my gfx card and it worked. I hope this sheds some light. Does anybody have any ideas?

Regards

Rizla

[lsutiger]

The message you are getting is telling you that the registry has become corrupted. There are ways to fix it.
Go here for instructions : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

As far as your Monitor and hard drive issue....did you have a power outage or surge? If you did, that could explain all of the problems. Not saying that is the problem, but I have had that happen to me.

And what is connected to your primary IDE connection?

[midsail]

good reply by previous post. U could also try to fix the problem using your XP Win install CD. Simply insert the XP CD like if u were going to reinstall, but do not reformat. Follow the steps u will come to  a step that will state fix install XP partition. Follow the instructions and it will fix the reg. Good luck. 

[Rizla.iQ]

The message you are getting is telling you that the registry has become corrupted. There are ways to fix it.
Go here for instructions : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I can't do this as when i run through the recovery console it tells me that a hard-disk is not detected, or words to that effect.

And what is connected to your primary IDE connection?

My DVD and cd-rom drives

Follow the steps u will come to  a step that will state fix install XP partition. Follow the instructions and it will fix the reg. Good luck. 

Again this fails as it's not picking up my hard-drives

Another thing I've noticed is that on my POST screen, it's got a message about my hard-drives being 'SATA' & 'Healthy'. I'm at a loss, all help/advice is welcomed.

Regards

Rizla

[Rizla.iQ]

So nobody can help any further on this?

Rizla

[patio]

Unplug the secind SATA drive and re-boot a few times...does this produce any good results ? ?
Also did you attempt to install another OS on the 2nd SATA drive ? ?

If not insert your XP CD and boot to the  Recovery Console with the 2nd SATA still dis-connected and at the prompt type in fixboot and hit Enter.
Re-boot and see if this fixes it...
If not repeat  the above process except this time at the prompt type fixmbr and hit Enter and re-boot.

If neither of these work you're looking at a Repair install of XP .....post back for details.....

[Rizla.iQ]

Unplug the secind SATA drive and re-boot a few times...does this produce any good results ? ?
Also did you attempt to install another OS on the 2nd SATA drive ? ?

If not insert your XP CD and boot to the  Recovery Console with the 2nd SATA still dis-connected and at the prompt type in fixboot and hit Enter.
Re-boot and see if this fixes it...
If not repeat  the above process except this time at the prompt type fixmbr and hit Enter and re-boot.

If neither of these work you're looking at a Repair install of XP .....post back for details.....

OK sorry it's took so long to reply

It seems all my PC problems all come at once. If i unplug one/either of the drives i get a POST error message stating "Selecting array. Faulty Nvidia stripe 465.76. Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter to reboot."

If i try doing a repair install i get this message "Setup did not find any hard disks installed in your computer make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected and any disk-related hardware config is correct. This may involve running a manufacturers supplied diagnostic or setup program. Setup can't continue. Press F3 to quit.

It's like the drives are fine and are showing as such in the raid setup utility, but just not showing in a similar fashion in my BIOS.

I can't do a repair/reinstall until my BIOS can 'see' my drives.

As always any help/advice is welcomed.

Regards

Rizla

[patio]

Who setup this machine originally and was a RAID array installed ? ?
Sounds like it.

[Rizla.iQ]

Me & yes.

Where do i go next?

[Rizla.iQ]

So nobody can help me any further?

Regards

Rizla