Thanks! I have gmail, but the thunderbird is the family mail account at out verizon address, used mostly by my wife.

Yeh - I have gmail too, so I'm fine there - its all the images that are really irreplaceable that concern me. Well that and NOT wanting vista :p

I know less than nothing about computers. I think my technical rating is at -22 below nothing.

I've got two external HD's that I backup every photo, song, file to once each month. the first one is here in a safe, the second I keep at my dad's in his safe. In theory it should be fairly hard to lose all my music and pictures... but Murphy's Law is ready to strike me down at any moment.

is it still too soon to make a joke about pics of Labrat's 'puss' being on that drive?

LOL. not for me. and for those wondering - NO I do not possess any such pics.

So. Is it fixed?

I'm still at work.....

jinx went to her sister's today....if she hasn't done, I'll do it when I get home and report back.

ok.... booted.....


the first attempt hung after the microsoft corporation progress bar, so i rebooted (holding down the power button) and it came up to the vaio recovery center

choices are restore drive C or restore complete system

will this lose my data?


edit: one step further tells me that both choices will delete all files on drive c.

any suggestions?

closed that window, and after a pause, this came up:

http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

Wait for mb to chime in, but I think you're close enough that you might be able to get windows to repair the os - if you've got a Windows XP install CD. If you don't, I'd borrow one, to give this a shot.

If you do get it working, do you have a thumb drive large enough to back up what you need off of there? I wouldn't count on being able to burn a cd.

In order to boot Windows, it must first load some critical drivers unique to HAL. HAL is a software layer that interfaces standard Windows to unique hardware. The error message says your system is Intel based; not AMD based. Correct?

IASTOR.sys is software written by Intel to setup and then talk to their disk drive hardware interface (transistors inside the south bridge). If that driver does not load or execute properly, then the error (...00221) is an undefined hardware error.

Not understood is whether this is a southbridge problem or a problem in the disk drive's computer. But this much you do know. Windows did not boot. Windows failed apparently when configuring for your hardware.

Execute the disk drive diagnostic unique for your disk drive manufacturer (as probably found in Ultimate Boot CD web page). A worst case alternative is continued destruction of data on the disk. Diagnostics do not and will not destroy data - only test, collect fact, and report hardware status.

That error message might be from defective hardware - or many other problems. Best is always to determine if hardware is good before trying to fix anything. Nothing done previously ever said or even implied hardware is good. This error message implies what was suspected; an intermittent hardware problem exists.

Lumberjim,

Run the boot CD again and run chkdsk <drive letter>: /f on all drives.

That should repair any drive issues.

Thanks,

Mitch

You might be able to install Windows on a new hard drive, and mount the old one to get data off of it.

http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

i tried to reboot at this point, but got the same error as post 234

so i ran it again:
http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

then i ran easeus again to see what the partition looked like...

you said Run the boot CD again and run chkdsk <drive letter>: /f on all drives.

I think I only have a C drive....the recovery partition is just a piece of that? or should I give it a drive letter? ( looks like the Label button is live in this: )
http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/..._568x426r0.jpg

damn it.. i should have gotten naked for those pics!