Crash during SP4 application

[OurIT]

Situation :
During application of SP4 on a Win2000 Pro workstation I noted the PC had booted (without user intervention), the PCI Devices listing was up (as you’d see during boot up) the last 2 lines read: A disk read error occurred, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

Why:
I had run IE6 SP1 just prior, booted, was loading SP4. All this to finally windows update.

Why it booted, I don’t know (do this all the time, 1st I’ve seen this)

Done so far:
I booted off the 2000 CD with Repair option – Could not run a repair (no ERD available) no recovery information on the disk to complete.
Went to Console mode – dir on C: has a funny directory labelled with hexidecimal characters about 40-50 characters long.
Also listed were “Documents and Settings” (looked ok) a few other files BUT no C:\Windows or C:\Share where all the other users were storing their files

I transferred the disk to another W2k Pro (stoped it from correcting problems on the drive)
It came up as D:. The listing contained only the funny directory labelled with hexidecimal characters nothing else. (Repair console listed the other dirs with SH attribs)
The hexi directory contained what looked like install files – I guess from the SP4 process.

It gets worse:
There is no back up of the files.

I have not written to the drive since the crash as I realllllyy neeed those files back.

What to do next:
I guess all that is left is to pick the 1’s and 0’s off the disk and rebuild them to files on another disk/PC . . .
Is there a utility you have used that you could recommend . . . .

Thanx in advance for your advice

 

[jdeane]

when booting from the W2k cd skip the first mention of the repair function and carry on with a normal install, the setup program will go an examine the hard drive to see if there are any previous installations.

At this point it will find your existing install and offer the repair function again, select it now.

it will put windows back to the level of the install cd but merge your existing reg files so everything will still work, you just need to install the updates again.

I would install sp4 first before upgrading to IE6.1

This is how I have had to fix the same problem when users get impatient during the SP install and decide to reboot, they then come running crying 'I didn't do anything'

Jon

 

[OurIT]

Thanx jdeane

I didn’t want to overwrite anything on the disk – That installation would not have found a previous installation as the FAT was shot. A reload would have overwritten the 1’s & 0’s

I did find a really cool utility though.
GetDataBack for NTFS

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Reviews/r544.html

Had to pay US$79 for it – but worth it.

I have now got all the data and profiles back – Now to rebuild.

How I did it:
* Transferred the corrupt disk to a good PC (WinXP) Don’t let it attempt to recover corruptions when it boots.
* Downloaded GetDataBack – Ran the recovery (easy)
* It gave me the original directory structure of the disk as it was (wow)
* BUT wouldn’t let me copy the files off in the eval version
Quick online registration . . . pluged in the registration key
Started copying data off to the good disk

Now to format the corrupted disk (in its hardware), patch the bejesarse out of it, transfer the original disk to the recovery PC then copy the recovered files to the original disk.

Thank *&^% for that