"MBM: 1" on boot

[Dodgex1]

Hi, A colleague installed a cannon scanner onto a computer and as he did the computer crashed. Now I was sat next to him at the time and didn't see him do anything out of the ordinary and he's not a fool but I wasn't paying much attention so I don't honestly know exactly what he did. Anyway he restarted and the pc boots with a black screen and justs states "MBM: 1" exactly and does nothing further. Thing is I could really do with the data off the harddrive and I haven't got a clue what the problem is, google tells me it's mother board monitor but I can't find any fixes or such. I can boot the computer with a a bart live cd but it wont let me boot with an XP disc or knoppix live strangely. Any Ideas? Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks.

[Geoff]

Sounds like a hardware problem to me. Check the usual suspects.

[enjay]

the pc boots with a black screen and justs states "MBM: 1" exactly and does nothing further.

 

This has just happened to one of the PCs here - did you ever get to the bottom of it? Anyone else suggest what is causing it? Nothing has changed or been installed on this since it last booted fine.

 

Google is completely silent on the subject, other than a link to this post.

[Dodgex1]

Well it was more than 2 years ago, I also seem to remember the colleague being a teacher and I was being diplomatic by the looks of it. . IIRC it was something to do with CMOS and the scanner was just coincidence.

[enjay]

I've swapped the hard disk, and it seems fine now.

[Slewis]

I've swapped the hard disk, and it seems fine now.

 

Yup. Swapping the HDD has always worked for me.

 

MBM purportedly = Motherboard Monitor... hence where you guys guessed at CMOS etc.

 

However, this seems to be an application that runs on windows -I don't think it's the same thing.

 

I think MBM is more likely "Microsoft Boot Manager" or similar, anyway, it definitely resides on the Harddisk, as swapping the HDD fixes the issue in the cases I've seen.

 

For accessing the data on these disks, I would recommend a SATA/IDE to USB device(Sharkoon for example), allowing you to plug the harddrive into any computer, as a Mass Storage Drive.

 

Failing that, booting from a Windows Pre-Installation Environment, or UltimateBootCD/BartPE CDROM/USB, or a Live Linux Disc(Knoppix etc) should let you read the drive.

 

I've not had cause to attempt data recovery from any of these disks yet, so let us know if which of these procedures work/don't work for you.

 

can boot the computer with a a bart live cd but it wont let me boot with an XP disc or knoppix live strangely. Any Ideas? Am I missing something obvious?

 

Huh, usually Linux is more versatile, not less... no obvious reason for it to fail to my knowledge.

 

Did Bart not allow you to recover the data from the HDD?

[enjay]

There's nothing critical on this particular disk - just the OS and standard applications - so I have just set the replacement disk re-imaging.

 

I can vouch for the USB converter things though, as I have used them on other disks, and strongly recommend people get one now, so you have it ready for when you need it.