Urgent help please "Trying to boot from Sata Drive"!

E

Entropy109

Bit poster
I have been using this Mac and Parallel Desktop for over 3 years but a year ago i moved the actual Parallel Desktop and everything onto a separate
500 GB external Hard Drive to save up some space for my mac! and the Mac would crash and always be able to restart Windows fine until a week ago when i got another "Kernel Panic" on my mac and was forced to shut down while Windows was connected and now everytime i restart is i get error saying "Trying to boot from Sata Drive" i have tried every possible action i can think of but no Luck! this has been well over a week and what's worst is that i am a final Engineering Student i am having my "Final Year Project Presentation" in 2 days as i write this.
i am supposed to show a working Prototype of my project but unfortunately All my data including 3D CAD Designs, Programming, all my university researches, are right onto the Windows OS. i understand i have been Silly for not having a back up but has recently been so busy to even think about it!
I honestly can't take this! without having every little data back again i would give up on life let alone university!
the information on the windows means the world to me. hundreds of university researches including some of my project proposals etc...

If there was any means of help please do share it means the world to me now.
I already told my university Mentor about the problem and will not be able to show a working prototype in 2 days time as result but obviously the
sooner i get the system running again, the sooner i will be able to carry on the work.

FYI: i have no windows iso file or anything

Many Thanks all
 
Hey man, no need to panic.

http://kb.parallels.com/en/113342

It does requires you to have a CD/DVD/Image of the Windows version you have installed, and boot the VM from it (change boot order), but that shouldn't be a problem, I'm sure some friend can lend you one, or go to a PC repair shop/PC technician and show them the KB.
 
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Thank you for your quick reply sir,
another unfortunate situation is that my CD is broken i think i can put it on the external HDD then right?
so after changing the boot order from CD/ROM Or image (which you explained is the actual copy of the same Windows type)
and link it to there what else required?

Many Thanks again
 
Then you boot the VM and follow the instructions in the article (the article has two links at the bottom to MS articles, follow the link that applies to your Windows version).

If someone has a DVD of Windows (same version) and a DVD reader in their computer you can convert the DVD into an .ISO or .DMG there are a lot of programs out there that do this for Windows or Mac (macs can do this via the disk utility app) and save it in an external drive.

There are generally three ways to create a disk image on an OS X box:
  1. Disk Utility - The on-screen prompts will guide you, but it will by default create a .dmg, which is an OS X-specific file format. Disk Utility will also create an ISO (.cdr extension) if you select the "CD/DVD Master" option before creation the image. Rename the extension (to .iso) after creation if needed.
  2. Roxio Toast - The de facto third-party standard in creating optical media on Mac OS for over a decade, it will create almost any CD or DVD format you want.
  3. The hdutil command-line utility, which will, in fact, create every format that Toast supports, for free, though it is far less pretty. If you want to create an ISO with this tool, use hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o Image.iso /input_path
There is a fourth, extremely direct command-line way using dd that sysadmins might know: dd if=/dev/disk1 of=Image.iso
Click to expand...
http://superuser.com/questions/85987/mac-os-x-best-way-to-make-an-iso-from-a-cd-or-dvd
 
Hi sir, i have followed the instruction as necessary as possible and got to the command window and typed
bootrec /fixmbr
and it showed the successful completion but when i restarted the it still took me back o the same procedure.
Am i missing something here? please sir help me however you can i really need to retrieve my data as soon as possible!
i am running out of time.

Many Thanks
Regards
 
i also tried to do a complete Rebuilt using this method here on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMwfWP2ahyw
but when i ran bcdedit it says "Boot configuration data could not be found"
alternatively running
bootrec.exe /fixmbr works well while
bootrec.exe /fixboot complains that Element not found
Sir can you help me anyway you can please? i am finding it hard to sleep
knowing that there are my university data on this HDD and given that the time is running out!
 
Entropy109 said:
Hi sir, i have followed the instruction as necessary as possible and got to the command window and typed
bootrec /fixmbr
and it showed the successful completion but when i restarted the it still took me back o the same procedure.
Am i missing something here? please sir help me however you can i really need to retrieve my data as soon as possible!
i am running out of time.

Many Thanks
Regards
Click to expand...

Erm, no need to call me Sir all the time.

Did you change back the Boot Order to the virtual HD?
 
Entropy109 said:
The boot order was changed earlier on and the CD/DVD is on top then HD and on.. did you mean I change them back to HD on top as was default ?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hi there,

Please change HDD as default boot device on Virtual Machine configuration and check how it works!
 
Entropy109 said:
The boot order was changed earlier on and the CD/DVD is on top then HD and on.. did you mean I change them back to HD on top as was default ?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Of course.

You have repaired the partition with Windows DVD, if all went well then it's repaired and you can now boot it up again, seems logical, don't you think? Why would you want to continue booting from the DVD?

I think you aren't doing yourself much of a favour in terms of time you lose with all the confirmation you require.
 
Entropy109 said:
i also tried to do a complete Rebuilt using this method here on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMwfWP2ahyw
but when i ran bcdedit it says "Boot configuration data could not be found"
alternatively running
bootrec.exe /fixmbr works well while
bootrec.exe /fixboot complains that Element not found
Sir can you help me anyway you can please? i am finding it hard to sleep
knowing that there are my university data on this HDD and given that the time is running out!
Click to expand...

I hadn't seen this message earlier, but here's a warning:

I haven't seen the video, nor I'm going to watch it, I don't have time for that.
But, I did not tell you to do this, if you lost any data or permanently lost access to your data because of the said video I'm afraid I can't help you any further. You should contact a qualified technician in your area.

Like I said on the previous post, the only way to know if it has been repaired or not is to change the boot order and boot it.
 
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Specimen said:
I hadn't seen this message earlier, but here's a warning:

I haven't seen the video, nor I'm going to watch it, I don't have time for that.
But, I did not tell you to do this, if you lost any data or permanently lost access to your data because of the said video I'm afraid I can't help you any further. You should contact a qualified technician in your area.

Like I said on the previous post, the only way to know if it has been repaired or not is to change the boot order and boot it.
Click to expand...


Well..actually it didn't quite work well so i ididn't get a chance to get to that stage
so these are the things i did so far:

1. Run the computer first prior to starting this thread and notice it doesn't boot from HD
2. Then downloaded a windows 7_ 64 bit.iso Ultimate Edition which is the same as the one i had on it
3. Changed the boot order to CD-DVD/HDD/FloppyDisk/Network
4. Followed the steps you suggested and was able to run bootrec /fixmbr fine but bootrec /fixboot gave error
that "Element not found"
5. that's when you mentioned that since master boot Reset files were successfully repaired i can then switch the order from
CD-DVD/HDD/FloppyDisk/Network to the default HDD/CD-DVD/FloppyDisk/Network. I did it but it takes me back to hanging up with the black screen on start up. is this the result of not being able to run "bootrec /fixboot" Command as well? why wasn't fixboot present within the windows_7.iso image? could this be the corrupted image or is missing some files?
Sorry to ask so many questions but i am getting idea of how this should be working but if someone can share any hint where i am making
error or missing something thayt would be very helpful.
FYI i am a student and do not have enough money for sending this HDD for data recovery :( i don't even know how much it cost
Though i know some members faced this problems before and when they run those 2 commands they were able to restart their computers fine
but in my case the 2nd one doesn't run which probably also can be the actual cause maybe
Any Hints?

Many Thanks again
Regards
 
Another question!
The .pwm that was 128GB before this problem occur is now just 3.69GB :((

Though the same 500GB external HDD memory remains the same. to me this implies somehow that when the problem occurred some space
of which the virtual machine allocated was freed somehow? thought how can this be possible arent those programs on OS a ROM based? thus even in the worst crash possible shouldn't they remains on the HDD along with OS as they are on a non volatile memory? it doesn't sound logical at all someone clarify this please?

By the way i tried another different official windows7 iso image and the boot order was from CD/DVD was able to use command line
fixmbr works fine but fixboot results into "Element not found" what does this means ?
restarting the machine with the default boot order of HDD on top results into the same old black screen!

Anything else i can try?
Many Thanks
 
Could "No boot device available" implies that my external HDD doesn't boot anymore so i can change the virtual machine to another HDD?
 
Seems to be related to snapshots or the .hds file that has the +120 GB of data not being recognized. Hopefully the Support Team will help you with this.
 
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