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Do I Need Data Recovery?

AE&E Corporation knows data recovery is not always necessary. We uphold honesty and customer service by educating customers about when data recovery is absolutely necessary.  This page will help you understand if you need data recovery or not. AE&E is one of the only data recovery companies in Michigan that will look at your drive for free and if it does not need data recovery, we will fix the problem without performing data recovery. This will save you hundreds of dollars if you really do not need data recovery.

My Windows PC will not boot?

There are three key components to successfully boot into an operating system.  First, the Master Boot Record (MBR) must exist and be free from corruption.  Second, the partition table must exist and at least one partition must be marked as active.  Third, the necessary programs must be installed to load and initialize the operating system on the active partition.  Each of these steps relies on the previous step being error-free to continue the operating system loading process.

The Maser Boot Record (MBR) is a 512-byte sector that exists at the very first sector (sector 0) of a hard disk drive.  In a typical desktop PC configuration, the Primary Partition Table will be stored in the MBR.

The Partition Table defines logical divisions on the physical hard disk.  Different partitions may be used to store data for different operating systems and file systems.  At least one partition must be marked as active for the MBR to continue the operating system loading process.

Common error messages when booting (instances of logical problems)

Error: Operating System not found

This error occurs when the MBR searches for an active partition in the partition table.  If there is no active partition or the MBR cannot find the boot sector on the active partition, then the MBR has nowhere to pass control and the boot process will be halted.

Error: Non-System Disk or Disk Error / Missing Operating System

Usually, this problem shows up when a partition is marked as active, but none of the system files needed to load the operating system are found.  This can happen when FDISK marks a non-system partition as active, or when the entry for the system partition in the partition table has been removed.

Error: NTLDR is missing / Disk Read Error

The MBR has successfully found an active partition in the partition table, as well as the boot sector, but the system files needed to continue loading the operating system are missing or damaged.