Member Avatar for Han

I am using Dell laptop running Windows XP home edition. It worked okay until one day it stopped functioning. After doing some checking, I found out that the partition was changed(corrupted?).It was set to 'unknown' instead of NTFS. I tried to use the 'convert' command, to no avail. Later on I decided to format the whole hard drive and it stopped halfway giving an error message saying 'DRIVER_UNLOADED_WITHOUT_CANCELLING_PENDING_OPERATIONS '. Since then, my laptop could not detect the hard drive anymore. It even gives a cracking sound for quite some time after it is turned on. I tried running Dell diagnostic CD and it did not detect any problem, I could however go to command prompt and drive c only contains files like , scandisk.ini, and so on. It says 'Volume in drive c is MS-RAMDRIVE'. I suppose it is reading the RAM as the main drive or isn't is? How can I solve this problem and get my Windows running again? Thank you so much...:cheesy:

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— The symptoms described (the OS seeing only a tiny RAM-backed volume and the drive making a persistent clicking/cracking noise) point away from a simple file-system problem and toward a hardware fault. The diagnostics CD runs in RAM and exposes a small RAM disk while it runs, which explains the MS‑RAMDRIVE entry; that does not mean the physical drive is healthy.

Practical next steps (do them in order, stop as soon as the drive behaves unusually):

  • Check the BIOS/boot settings to see whether the HDD is detected at all. If it is not listed, power off, remove the drive from its bay and reseat it (laptop connectors can work loose).
  • If the BIOS sees the drive, run a non-destructive SMART/diagnostic check from bootable media (vendor tools or a Linux-live USB with smartmontools/GSmartControl). A failing SMART report or lots of reallocated/pending sectors is a strong sign the drive is dying.
  • If the drive is detected but partitions are gone, use a read-only partition/repair tool from boot media (TestDisk or similar) to attempt partition-table recovery — only after verifying the drive is spinning and SMART is OK.
  • If the drive clicks, fails to spin reliably, or disappears from BIOS: stop trying repairs. Clicking usually indicates mechanical failure; continuing to power it risks further damage.

Data-recovery note: If the data is important, minimize power cycles and avoid DIY tricks like freezing or disassembly. Attempt only read-only cloning (ddrescue) if comfortable with Linux and the drive is intermittently readable. Otherwise contact a professional data-recovery service.

Tying in prior replies: was correct to suggest checking BIOS and using recovery utilities when the drive is healthy; ’s observation about click/noise being a bad sign is also likely accurate. If the drive is confirmed dead, replacing the HDD and reinstalling the OS is the fastest reliable fix.

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Member Avatar for cozofdeath

What driver is it talking about, it should tell you. Once you get the name of it try to rename it throught the command prompt to filename.sys.old, where filename is the name of the driver. If that doesn't work I would run every diagnostic tool I could think of like, sfc, chkdsk, diskpart, or recovery tools like fixboot, fixmbr or restore. Also make sure BIOS settings are correct, hard drive should be on auto detect,LBA not normal or large. These are just ideas with out really knowing more its going to be hard to figure out.

Member Avatar for Han

Thanks for the reply.

I mean the harddisk drive(c:). FYI, I use one harddisk only. I think the c: is already set to RAMDRIVE because it cannot detect that there is indeed a harddisk. Well, I'm not good at hardwares and this kind of technical stuff so I just know what is talked about roughly. :lol:Anyway, I am at office right now, will try the solutions once I get back from work. Hopefully it will work. Thank you so much..

Member Avatar for caperjack

when you die c:\ try going up one letter to D:\ or even e:\
ramdrive means the dell diagonists is running from your ram ,also if the drive was clicking and noisy it might well be dead .

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