killdisk KILLED hard drive

[cmt9000]

I downloaded and burned the free version of KillDisk to a CD this weekend. I have a hard drive that I wanted to totally clean and re-install Windows XP Home on due to a virus.

Well, KillDisk worked, but for some reason now, Windows XP will NOT assign the letter C: to the drive. The BIOS also does not see the drive as primary during device detection while booting, yet strangely, when I enter the BIOS setup screen, it DOES see it. However it always prompts me with:

Cannot find primary drive. Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup. When I hit F1, it continues loading XP normally.

Windows XP installs fine, my BIOS sees the hard drive on the primary controller(master) according to the setup screen. However it is never assigned the drive letter C in Windows.

I have checked and double-checked the connection. I tried a new EIDE cable as well.

I even tried some registry hacks I found on the web all to no avail.

I tried a spare drive, and that DID worked. The BIOS did see it, and XP did assign drive letter C: to it.

But as a test, I ran KillDisk on the spare drive and it was also affected in the same way! It no longer was detected by the BIOS on boot-up, and Windows XP no longer assigned the letter C: to the drive!

I've tried running the Recovery Conole and using fixmbr and fixboot, but that does not fix anything.

I've tried installing XP from scratch numerous times and it always has the same problem.

My question is, are my 2 drives now ruined because of this? Is there another utility that will restore whatever was ruined by KillDisk?

Thanks!

 

[sinucus]

Can you boot into Windows on the good disk and see the "killed" drive in Disk Manager? If so, just format it in windows and then you should be able to install XP on it.

 

[cmt9000]

So get another spare drive(that I didn't run KillDisk), connect it as the master drive on the primary IDE controller.
Install XP on it, then format the "killed" drive in Windows?

 

[Mutilator]

Originally posted by: cmt9000
So get another spare drive(that I didn't run KillDisk), connect it as the master drive on the primary IDE controller.
Install XP on it, then format the "killed" drive in Windows?

Or use a WinPE CD like BartPE.
Or get the manufacturers low level format program and use that.

 

[jadinolf]

You've got me scared. I used Killdisk on two drives but I never checked them afterwards.

 

[cmt9000]

Well I tried another spare drive that I didn't run KillDisk on and it worked fine. So now I am just using these two "KillDisked" drives as secondary drives.

I am still not sure why or how KillDisk did this.