Accessing recovery partition after crash

[seanos]

Sorry I'm having a brain fart here.

Have gone to do a total system restore using the recovery partition on a mates laptop as he has some massive problems.

Half way through the recovery (while the system was auto formatting C drive), stonking great big blue screen of death has occured.

Because the primary partition was being wiped I now no longer have the option of booting from the recovery partition, so i now have a very expensive paperweight.

How can I get to the recovery partition to start it again. Is it worth me just writing a windows 98 boot disc to cd, booting it that way, and trying to access it from DOS?

Cheers.

 

[kjv1611]

You can use a bootable disk for repairing the boot partition - multiple options on the web - and have it set the partition with the restore partition to "active", and you may then be able to boot straight into the recovery partition.

Look for apps that say stuff like "boot fix" and such. There are several open source options there, last I checked. I cannot think of a commercial tool for that offhand, but the options I'm thinking of are free, best I recall. I'm sure there are paid tools as well.

Or if you feel more comfortable with the Win98 boot disk to DOS, then go that route - whatever floats your boat, I imagine. I know I've done the boot fixer type tools - used a few different ones - in a few cases similar to this one, and they worked every time... some times I had to try a couple, as one or two may not work very well on diff hardware setups.

If you want to look for an all inclusive disk for this and other issues, you might want to look at

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com

- I don't remember at the moment whether or not they include any boot fixers.

post back with questions/progress... and someone else may come along with a better suggestion.

 

[flyboytim]

Most recovery partitions can be accessed by a key combination during the manufacturer's splash screen at boot time, and do not rely on a functioning primary partition, just the hidden recovery partition images and restore programs.

However the method of access does depend on the manufacturer, model and age of the laptop - Different manufacturers have used different programs to set up recovery partitions over the past few years.

For instance, Dell changed their systems in April and May 2009 for different models:

http://support.dell.com/support/top...=19&l=en&s=dhs&docid=DSN_181316&isLegacy=true

It would therefore be helpful to fill in a few details about the machine, and its operating system, how the recovery process was accessed, and what information the "blue screen" may have displayed, if possible.

 

[rclarke250]

Tim is correct, as well as getting to the root cause of a bsd before you try to do the restore again. I would start with testing memory,and the hdd. UBCD above will do this for you.

 

[seanos]

The machine in question is a Toshiba Equium laptop.

Have tried getting to the recovery partition but to no avail so far.

 

[flyboytim]

Since you don't say how you tried, this may be redundant advice:

1) Assuming that the power button has not been set to send the machine to standby, hold down the power button to switch off your machine until fans and lights go off.

2) Press and hold the 0 (zero) key and at the same time, tap the power button once to switch on your notebook.

3) When the machine Starts beeping; release the 0 key.

4) When prompted by the warning screen; select Yes to continue with the system recovery.

5) Select Recovery of Factory Default Software; click Next.

6) Select Recover to out-of-box state. Click Next again.

7) Click Next to Start recovery.

 

[seanos]

Just running a copy of extended Fdisk on this thing and appears to be 4 parts to the disk

Status Type Size System
===========================================
FREE - PRIMARY - 1MB - N/A(
INACTIVE - PRIMARY - 1500MB - N/A(Type 27)
ACTIVE - PRIMARY - 95000MB - HPFS/NTFS
HIDDEN - PRIMARY - 95000MB - HPFS/NTFS

As i want to try and boot the partition with the recovery stuff on, is it the inactive or the hidden partition i need to make active?

Cheers

 

[flyboytim]

If you start to mess with the partitions, you probably will not be able to access the built-in recovery facility.

 

[tlcscousin]

http://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/HTD9102IR0000R01.htm

Toshiba suggests hitting F8 on bootup and you should have a repair the computer option which should start the recovery process.