9.0.538 Broke my computer and no way to recover.

Ok, I had an external 200gb usb drive that suddenly decided that it was "unallocated" in XP's disk management snapin. I installed Disk Director based on good reviews of recovery from such a situation. The install went fine, I told it not to install the OS boot manager. I rebooted as instructed, and can no longer get into windows. Safe mode hangs on agp440.sys, the command console gives a BSOD Stop 0x0000007b.

I used Winternals ERD commander and can get into the disk, all files are still there, and the disk passed chkdsk /r with no errors. But still can't boot it. I have to use something like ERD as its an NTFS partition, on a Promise Raid5 array controller. The array diagnostics also checked out fine. When I was using the ERD commander, the event viewer had multiple warnings about "driver detected a problem with drive controller blah blah" and they started at the same time I installed Disk Director.

Is there some way to get rid of this thing so I can get the machine booted back up, at least into safe mode? I REALLY don't want to reinstall everything again.

 

During I/O system initialization, the controller or driver for the startup device (typically the hard disk) might have failed to initialize the necessary hardware. File system initialization might have failed because of disk or controller failure, or because the file system did not recognize the data on the boot device.

Repartitioning disks, adding new disks, or upgrading to a new disk controller might cause the information in the Boot.ini file, or Boot Manager, to become outdated. If this Stop message occurs after installing new disks to your system, edit the Boot.ini file or adjust the Boot Manager parameters to allow the system to start. If the error occurs after upgrading the disk controller, verify that the new hardware is functioning and correctly configured.

Verify that the system firmware and disk controller BIOS settings are correct and that the storage device was properly installed. If you are unsure, consult your computer's documentation about restoring default firmware settings or configuring your system to auto-detect settings. If the error occurs during Windows XP Professional setup, the problem might be due to unsupported disk controller hardware. In some cases, drivers for new hardware are not in the Windows XP Professional Driver.cab library, and you need to provide additional drivers to complete the Windows XP setup successfully. If this is the case, follow the hardware manufacturer's instructions when installing drivers. Periodically check for driver and firmware updates.


Hard disk corruption can also cause this Stop message.

Fixes to the disk mite cause error 0xed so use these directions to resolve any problem you may have.

If using higher throughput ATA disks and controllers, those capable of data transfer rates above 33.3 megabytes per second, replace the standard 40-pin cable with an 80-pin cable. Using an 80-pin cable is optional for transfer rates up to and including 33.3 megabytes per second, but is mandatory for higher transfer rates. The additional grounded pins are required to avoid data loss.

Some firmware enables you to force higher transfer rates even when you are using the incorrect cable type. Your firmware might issue a warning but allow the startup process to proceed. Restore the default firmware setting for ATA cable detection.

 

After re-reading my original post, I wasn't completely clear. The disk that originally had problems was an external usb drive that was full of data, but now reports it's all "unallocated" in the windows xp disk management snapin. That is the reason I installed Disk Director.

The trouble now is that after installing Disk Director, the very minute I finished installing it, I rebooted the computer as instructed. It's now the raid array that won't boot windows. I installed windows onto another internal drive and restored the system state of the raid array, but it still does the same thing - after the gray and then the blue windows xp progress bars finish, right when it's about to change to the fast-user login window, it hangs on that black screen. I have not repartitioned, recently ugraded, or resized any of the array disks that have been working perfectly for about 2 years now. I guess it COULD be just a coincidence that the very next time I reboot after installing DD that the array controller dies, but I don't think that's it, as the array is still good, and when run as a slave with another master drive with windows on it, everything on the array is readable. It just won't boot the array. I can get in using the recovery console, and ran fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg to rebuild the boot.ini file but none of those helped.

Oh, and also, the 0x7b error was a duh! on my part. I was using ERD commander, but hadn't hit F6 while it was loading so I could load the fastsx.sys array driver, so that is not an issue.

 

Also, I've now reinstalled windows (had to do an overlay, the repair option could not be made available) and it's all working again, with the exception of the original usb drive that is "unallocated" and the fact that I now have to reinstall everything. Oh, except for the Disk Director. I don't think I'll ever install that again.