Das noob- my cry for help

i think my comp is a "unique" case but the admins can merge this thread if something similar has been posted...

so here goes:

my comp: a abit -bh6 motherboard with a pentium 3(SEC-Cartridge type) cpu at 300Mhz and it has about 512 sdram but bios picks up 345mb.

Nvidia geforce2 64MB in 2xAGP slot.. and realtek network card in pci slot 3
adaptec ultra-wide scsi controllor with 1G drive attached and ESS audiodrive soundcard in pci slots 5 and 6 respectivly.

had seagate ST3400??? 20G HD on ide0 and BENQ CDburner on ide1

was slow and so i flashed the bios and then attached fans to most heatsinks (north-bridge chip,graphics card,and memory) and then ran the comp..worked..and then i overclocked the cpu to 450MHZ..worked..and then installed winXP pro and tweaked/removed unecessary crap to make install to around 1G-ish...worked fine for about a year or so...and then the power supply stuffed up and i replaced it , also took out some fans incase load was too much....some reason i had to repair winXP every two months from now on..but i was okay with it.... also i established that the ide0 controller was dead so i had to move all devices to ide1 worked for a while and then the 20G kinda died...it was stopping my comp after it was detected in bios...so i tried limiting the drive size..didnt work...flashed bios..didnt work....i realised it could be becuase i used burnt copy of winXP..so i tried other burnt copy and it worked..then my parents put redhat 9 on it to run perl...it worked for a month or so and then when parents didnt need linux anymore i uninstalled and then the HD got shot to pieces...it wouldnt boot and bios lockup problem was back...so i f-disked and formatted it and tried to install any OS onto it...but nothing happened..even updated bios again...comp worked but didnt boot..i lost a good deal of software,games,mp3's and the only surviving copies of things of websites (pirated software,games,anime,utils)...cant get them anymore..anywhere..

i got a 40G HD (seagate st340014a) and put a good copy of winXP pro onit and got some of my stuff back..and then some more new stuff...i was happy..it worked....

and then becuase i realised that i should back up stuff when it's working..i decided to back up to a seperate HD instead of multiple CD-R's...so i stuck in a western-digital caviar 2G drive...it was one of 16 salvaged from old college comps when i did A+ there...(so i'm a cheap and scabby bugger..deal with it)...anyway..i stuck it in and went to xp's diskmanagement snap-in...2G came up as disk1 (i had to disconnect burner to use the 2G for reasons above) and asked if i want to format clicked yes and it asked "want to convert from basic to dynamic disk?" clicked okay...and then i formatted disk and it siad i had to restart comp...so i did..and POW! my comp would get all the way past the XP splash screen and then before loading the login screen it would quickly flash the blue screen of death and reset...this looped...i tried safe mode , last known good config, and bootlog modes...same thing ...loop...stuck in XP cd and booted off there....setup came up with unpartitioned space on 40G...even tho WDcaviar was out of the system ages ago...tried other HD and booted 98..tried to access 40G thru there..but it said would you like to format?....it cant be becuase of NTFS as all partitions i used were fat 32....so it's been sitting there for about 2 years now....havent found a way to fix....
i know there is data in the HD...becuase windows makes it upto the splash screen...so i cant have lost all my data?

friend told me about knoppix so i got 3.6 EN version and burnt onto cd-rw...currently i booted it(chose normal boot option..knoppix) and it's stuck on this:

i'll provide all the code on screen in- case it might help:

found scsi device(s) handled by aic7xxx.0.
scanning for usb / firewire devices...done .
enableing dma accelaration for : HDA [24x10]
enableing DMA accelaration for : HDB [ST340014A]
accessing knoppix cd rom at /dev/scd0...
total memory found : 515076kb
creating / ramdisk[dynamic size=404980k] on shared memory...done.
creating directories and simlinks on ramdisk...done.
starting init process
INIT : version2.78-knoppix booting
running linux kernel 2.4.27
processor 0 is pentium III (katmai) 451 MHZ ,512kb cache
starting advanced power management deamon : apmd
APM bios found, power management functions enabled
apmd [ 81] : apmd 3.2.1 interfacing with apm driver 1.16 and apm bios 1.2
usb found , managed by hotplug:(re-) scanning usb devices...sync:[001] done.
auto configuring devices... done.
mouase is generic ps/2wheelmouse at /dev/psaux
sound card : ess es1869 plug and play audiodrive : unknown driver = sb
agp bridge detected
video is Nv11 DDR(GeForce) , using xfree86(vesa) server
monitor is hwp0b0b, H:31-54khz , V:50-120hz
using modes 1024x768 800x600 640x480
scanning for harddisk partitions and creating / etc / fstab...


that's the last line ..it's been like that for a while now...what should i do??

i'm not sure if posting my comp's entire history would help but maybe???

i really dont want to lose all my data...can anyone help /suggest what i do??

*is willing to trade left kidney for fix*

should i try knoppix noscsi ??

Most detailed post i've ever seen, Bravo. :wink:

As for the problem, yes, thats worth a shot. Also the 2.6 kernel might help.
knoppix26 that will show any kernel errors that may appear.

I've heard of this error before but forgot the fix.

XD and i thought it would get del* becuase it looked like spam....

well anyway..i'll try that..

i just remembered..last night ppl came over and so i stuck a working HD with 98 in my dead comp just to use the geForce as the other comp doesnt have agp slot...and so 98 booted and i still couldnt run redfaction so no lan gaming for me...i took out the HD with 98 and put it back in the other computer.... put when i was taking it out....my ide cable ripped...dunno how..cant pull very hard as i am weak as all hell....

i need to find ide cable!!!!

~EDIT~ YAY knoppix worked!! it booted to konqeror desktop! maybe becuase the bios didnt pick up the defective 40G HD???...dunno will try with spare ide cable and re-connect 40G...

thanks firebyrd 10 i owe you my left kidney ^_^

kay..i connected the 40G with a spare ide cable...it booted to the knoppix penguin and then got stuck at /etc/fstab <see last line of my 1st post

so then i reset and tried knoppix26 same thing...

reset again and now my bios didnt pick up scsi HD so all this grey writing came up before it wrote knoppix live linux-on-CD!

here's the grey code line by line it never came up before..so here:

~edit~ gave up on trying to get grey writing as screen changed too fast...will try later....tried knoppix nodma has booted to desktop...

at desktop...trash,cdrom,floppy and knoppix desktop config file showing...
right clicked and create new>device>harddisk device> and clicked device tab..clicked /dev/hdb (mnt/hdb) becuase i assumed that this must be the 40G...came up on desktop...but when i click on it...it says could not mount device

error:

mount:i could not determine the filesystem type and none was specified

wtf?? help!! better still Hilfe!! Hilfe!! AIEEEEE!!!!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by cannonfodder

at desktop...trash,cdrom,floppy and knoppix desktop config file showing...
right clicked and create new>device>harddisk device> and clicked device tab..clicked /dev/hdb (mnt/hdb) becuase i assumed that this must be the 40G...came up on desktop...but when i click on it...it says could not mount device

error:

mount:i could not determine the filesystem type and none was specified

wtf?? help!! better still Hilfe!! Hilfe!! AIEEEEE!!!!!!

---

Try running cfdisk or Qtparted & see if they give any read on the 40G.

is that after booting into knoppix26 nodma??? or should i try something else?

booted knoppix26 nodma..and clicked qtparted from system menu inthe big yellow circle with silver K on it...qtparted came up on bar with hourglass icon..then cursor had grey box attached to it and was jumping...then nothing happened..

tried knoppix nodma and qtparted works fine...shows 40G hd..but no way to access or mount....i'll put up a screenshot..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../snapshot1.png[/img]

okay soz for the long absense but i had some online courses to do.....


anyway..i tried booting up with knoppix and i cant remember if i used knoppix nodma or no pnp switch..but i started getting all this grey writing as it booted up..i managed to read out that some ldb or ldm database is corrupt..and knoppix cant find priv heads(0)...so what do i do?

According to your previous post knoppix nodma worked but knoppix26 nodma did not...so stick with the old kernel.
Qtparted is saying there is a recognisable vfat partition on the HD & some free space but fstab cannot make out a detectable file system so you you may have to reformat. But first, try with qtparted to create a partition in the free space. Linux has several partitoning tools...fdisk (which will work almost always but is destructive to existing data), cfdisk (also reliable but destructive to existing data), parted (more reliable than qt parted & attempts to be non-destructive) & qtparted (gui frontend to parted but more limited capabilities & attempts to be non-destructive). All but qtparted are command line tools, you have to be root & the partition being worked on can not be in use or even mounted at the time.
I have also found that the command line is more reliable than the desktop icons for mounting & changing to read/write mode. Again you must be root, 'sudo mount -rw /dev/hdaX' will mount hdaX in accordance with fstab listing for hdaX. If fstab has not got a proper listing for it, 'sudo mount -t vfat /dev/hdaX /mnt/hdaX' will attempt to mount as specified. I suspect none of these will work though, the 'filesystem type' error you are getting indicated that the file system on the HD is probably defective & a reformat will be needed.
See also 'man mount' for info on mount command.

so there's no way i can access the HD without wiping out all the data???

Can't say that for sure but try to mount it as above, see what happens.