First, specs:
Windows Vista 64-bit
4GB RAM
4 HDs: 200GB, 3 x 1TB
Dual-SLR nvidia 280
Intel 3.7 GHz
For TL;DR crowd: Computer will boot unless one of my 1TB HDs is plugged in. This HD is mostly backed up, so how can I a) salvage it if possible or b) plug it in, but boot so I can format it?
So a couple of months ago my computer stopped booting. I would get to the little bar that has the loading pattern run through it (the green bars that slide across? not sure what this is called.) but it wouldn't animate, it would just hang. Booting into safe mode also froze but WOULD eventually unfreeze, only to hang again at "crcdisk.dll". I googled this, tried several fixes, nothing worked.
I have basically ignored it because I have my netbook, and all I really do is web/school stuff and I don't need anything much more advanced, buuuuut it would be nice to have my PC back, and I do have need of some of what's on it. So today i was messing with it and I discovered... It only won't boot if one of the 1TB drives is plugged in. MOST of my data on this drive is backed up, as it is my Most Important Hard Drive, so that's lucky in a way, but still, I am losing some things which is frustrating.
My question then is: are there any steps I can take to still salvage the data/boot with the drive in? And if not, how I can boot my computer with the problem drive plugged in so that I can format it?
