HP Problems  

I have a win 7-64bit maching that was but is not now booting. I can pull the hard drive and read it with an external USB adapter on another PC. Have run the Malwarebytes and Superantispyware against it as an external drive.

To get to what I believe to be the crux of the problem which is drivers. I boot to the win7 DVD and no operating system is found when I go to the repair option...no C drive when I go to command prompt, and no DVD (D) drive! Hell I just got done booting from the D drive but now I only have a RAM (X) drive, I went to HP to download drivers and the SATA driver thay have is a EXE file meant to install on a up and running windows. Where do I head from here to get the C drive recognized after booting from the Win7 DVD. Then I can use tools like BootSect to try and fix things but right now I'm stumped.

If you can read the drive then back up all your data, once you have that done try to repair the MBR, if that does not work you may have to do a fresh Windows install.

since bootsect is not copied to the RAM disk (X) and the CD drive or the hard drive is not accessible after booting from the system DVD I might not have any options here. It seems that one could use the "load Drivers" option to gain access to the CD drive and the Hard Drive as well since they are both SATA.

I have already backed up the drive but, as you know, there is a lot of time reloading all programs and copying the data back. I really want to get my arms around the core problem here.

Is this a laptop or desktop machine?
Did the machine have Norton AV on it?

Golden said:

Hi Joe,

Can you see the volume in DISKPART? Try this:

1. Boot from the Windows installation disk as if you were going to do a fresh install.
2. At the Language and Keyboard layout screen, hold SHIFT and press F10
3. A CMD window will open with the prompt X:\Sources
4. Type diskpart and hit enter
5. Type list volume and hit enter

What is shown? can you post a screen capture of what is shown? To exit DISKPART, type exit and hit enter.

Regards,
Golden

Hmmm...didn't know that one. I still don't think diskpart is copied to (X) but I will check in the AM. The unit is a desktop don't know if Norton's was installed. Will hook it up to my secure computer and check the desktop folder out tomorrow.

Thanks

You missed it on my OP. When done booting from my widows installation disk, at the X command prompt, I only have access to the (X) drove. The DVD (D), and hard drive (C) are not available! Even though I boot from the DVD drive, after getting to the X prompt there is no D.

I hope I made it clear.