Help! My son's work computer failed after XP update.

[Loose rivets]

It's his main occupation, working on't web stuff. He's even midway with his taxes.

He's in Austin, and uses XP on a Gateway PC. It has two physical drives, but sadly, no logical drives apart from restore type space.

He allowed an update to XP, and it never allowed him back into the system.

Even Safe Mode fails to work.

He's reasonably computer savvy, but I wasn't entirely clear what he was seeing in the BIOS re the drive detection. He had to take another call, so trying to help in the mean time.

The bad news is he allowed CheckDisk to run. When I had two drives on XP, doing that was terminal. It - the antiquated utility - didn't seem to know which drive it was addressing.

Any help would be much appreciated.


EDIT: I forgot to mention he has a Gateway recovery drive. Certainly on my HP, using this zapps the data with FDISK or somesuch. Does anyone know if he can safely use the Gateway disc to repair/examine, without it launching into Recovery?

[Booglebox]

This seems to me like a clear case of what I have seen many times before - buggered Windows but everything else fine.

You could a. boot to a Linux CD and transfer everything vital off onto an external HD or USB stick (you should be doing backups anyway....)
or b. Reinstall windows WITHOUT formatting. You will lose some settings and so forth but should end up with running computer, accessible data and functioning programs.

Good luck!

[Loose rivets]

Seems to me that MS did the bu@@ering.


As often happens with this :mad: OEM software, reloading the OS non-destructively is not an option. Some do, some don't.

The issue is Gateway's policy on this. After a call to Gateway India, to a man that may as well have been clockwork, he gave up on finding the answer from the computer maker.

Even had the bod professed to knowing, I wouldn't have trusted him anyway.


It's been mentioned before about using Linux to get a pure boot. Sounds like it might be a plan. He's got two laptops in the place, so can relax when he's got his data. It's just being sure of the next step.

[Saab Dastard]

Recovery steps in the sequence I would attempt:

1) Last Known Good.

2) Repair (i.e. choose install, but then select repair existing) - only do this with actual installation media.

3) Put disk into another PC, or connect it to another PC via USB (caddy or direct IDE/SATA-USB connector) to copy data off.

4) Boot a live Linux as has been mentioned to move data somewhere else.

SD

[Loose rivets]

Quick update for general interest.

Son finally got through to Gateway. Nice girls says, I'm glad you asked me that now, cos so many people start the Recovery, and then phone to ask where all their files are. It launches into FDISK or equivalent instantly then formats.

How considerate of them.


He's just come back from the store with W7 and a new HD. One awaits with baited breath - but this CHKDSK thing worries me. Exactly what happened to me when I had two drives on XP - hope his files are there to copy across.

[Howard Hughes]

3) Put disk into another PC, or connect it to another PC via USB (caddy or direct IDE/SATA-USB connector) to copy data off.
I'd start here, then get a new PC!:ok:

[Mac the Knife]

"I'd start here, then get a new PC!:ok:"

Preferably one running some *NIX variant!

:E

[mike-wsm]

Bit late now, but for the future always back up 'My Documents' onto an external hard drive at frequent intervals. Then it's easy, do a recovery and then copy 'My Documents' back in. I keep copies of downloaded software in 'My Documents' to make it easier to get the machine (or a replacement) back to normal.

[Booglebox]

Exactly. Backup! Backup! Backup!! :rolleyes:

In my experience CHKDSK is invariably bollocks and there is actually no problem with the disk most of the time.

[Saab Dastard]

Chkdsk, used correctly and intelligently, is an excellent diagnostic and recovery tool.

It needs to be be given time, however - something that most people today are unwilling to allow.

SD

[green granite]

Indeed Saab. There used to be a pub quiz m/c called 'who wants to be a millionaire' going back 10 years or so that ran on NT4 that would quite often fail to start and go into the Chkdsk routine, unfortunately there was a watch dog system that would reset the PC if the rest of the m/c saw no output for a while.
Pub L/L's would see the message after they switched on in the morning and leave it restarting Chkdsk every 2 or 3 mins until the engineer arrived and rescued the poor thing by using an unraveled paper clip to short the watch dog signal down to 0v at the appropriate plug. The m/c would then complete Chkdsk, repair it's self and fire up in about 99 cases out of a 100. (usually the paperclip got left in place)

[Loose rivets]

Things have gone chaotic. Sad thing about one-man-bands, they can be very lucrative, but input from others, especially old dads, is something that has to be handled with kid gloves. Stressed Eric told me just now that he was up till o'gor blimy, and still hadn't mastered the divers for graphics and sound.

Acer and Gateway combo board. I know that feeling, but only with sound. Put in driver, and W7 wipes it next boot and goes back to pnp.

Anyway, that's secondary. W7 could see the second physical drive, allotted D and E, but not read any files on D. The old Restore files in their partition however, could be seen. Sounds bad.

So, looking at utilities for getting files off - or, going back to putting a new copy of XP over the old one in the hope it will repair the FATs. Does that have any merit at all? I guess if CHKDSK has done a nasty, a new OS won't structure a new set of FATs for old files, right?

Worse, his 1TB backup drive is showing folders, but there's nowt in them.

[green granite]

LR, it really is time to stop poking around trying this and that, if the data is important then take the m/c to someone who knows how to recover FATS and is an expert in recovering file systems. If you carry on as you are it'll probably end in tears. :)

[Loose rivets]

What, and change the habits of a lifetime?;)


This son is some 6 hours away, so can't just pop around to help. I did download Ubutu on my machine to see if it would work from the CD. It did, and have advised said son.

A pal suggested his going to another OS, and 64bit at that, may have muddied the waters. There is just the smallest chance Ubuntu may be able to see the files, but it is a small chance.

When this exact thing happened to me, I downloaded a trial version of some rescue software and it worked where there was nothing whatsoever showing under the OS. The trial version only did one file at a time, but tested the principal.
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EDIT. Changed on principle. Sooooooo dyslexic today. :rolleyes:
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[M.Mouse]

I have no connection with this company but the recovery software is the best I have ever used if you have a corrupted hard disk.

Spinrite. (http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm)

[Loose rivets]

That sounds worth a try, thanks. Give it a go when son back in the loop.

Spinrite is the name of a piece of software from the DOS days. Low-level format I seem to remember.


Really will have to get into Linux etc. W7 has been downloading stuff from 2AM to 8am All things I elected not to have on first install. :ugh:

[Loose rivets]

By the time I spoke to my son, he'd already got his hands on Spinrite, however, he was four hours into it writing to the disk when I phoned. Something was wrong - it seemed to be trying to save the disc rather than the data. Not sure, trying to get the gist is sometimes hard at a distance.

He stopped the process. There had to be a point he went off at a tangent, but a rerun didn't reveal it.

He then found

Data Recovery Software Products - Runtime Software Products (http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm)

and could see the files in a few moments. Last news was making a $79 purchase.

We'll see.

[Loose rivets]

Despite severe interference on my DSL line, I'm just about able to report the latest from son.


GetDataBack for NTFS was definitely the tool for the job
it downloaded/installed and indexed 66GB of files in under 12 minutes.

I would be more cautious until I'd actually run the files, but much of the data was viewable without running the associated application - so a major step in the right direction whatever happens.


I'm not at all sure what Spinrite was doing, but four hours into running, it seemed to be swapping every 0 for a 1, and then putting it back.


It does sound as though CHKDSK started without any real input from user. An update invited itself to load - think from MS - and that's when the proverbial hit the fan. Is there a case for hiding CHKDSK from the system?

It's still there in W7. 16kb in system32. Such a tiny file.