Drive going bad, trying to save OS and installed programs. 2

[specter333]

I’m trying to save my hard drive “as is” or “as was” I should say. My “XP home” computer would almost boot up then get the B.O.D. I forget at this point what the error message was. I can put my drive into an external case and access it fully with no problems although it looks like there is one of my data files that is bad, no big deal, it won’t boot but I still have my data.

What I would like to do at this point is try to save the programs. I have a lot of software loaded on this machine and although I saved the original install files of the purchased stuff I would still like to try to save what I have instead of reloading everything. This 80gd drive is almost all programs, about 45gb the rest is empty, very little actual data, I store all my data on external drives.

I’ve tried many things that have changed the original circumstances, I’ll try to list them all quickly and to the point.

Ran recovery console and used CHKDSK /R, it found and repaired some errors. Still didn’t boot.

Ran the Dell help utility and the read test found this error about 90 times before I stopped the scan.
“Error Code 0F00:0244,
Msg: Block 576095: Unrecoverable data error or media is write protected.”
Of course each message listed a different block.

Tried to reinstall windows, installer didn’t recognize it as being the same version and wouldn’t give the option to fix it, only over write it. Didn’t do that.

Ran a free MBR recovery program that says it fixed the MBR. Still didn’t boot.

Ran installer, this time recognized and tried to repair current operating system. Installer locked up in the middle of “registering components” with only a few minutes left in the install. Ran this several times and even let it run a full 24 hours but always locks up.

Tried to use “Copy/Wipe” free software to copy to a completely new drive in hopes I could then repair the OS. After running 8 hours it didn’t get past the first file “MBR”. I am considering just letting this run all week to see if it finishes.

Used “Restorer Pro 2000" which I had purchased for another problem a few months back. I made an image of the disk and then copied it to another drive. The copy however was all put in a folder named “Root”, I couldn’t find an option to copy directly to the drive.

Copied and pasted the files out of the folder then ran Windows installer. It recognized the windows installation and tried to repair it. After copying the needed files it would reboot the computer only to boot from the cd again and start at the beginning in an endless loop. If I removed the CD it would not boot at all.

I choose the option to overwrite the existing OS and it worked fine but obviously most of my programs won’t function. This is the copy of the original drive so I haven’t lost anything yet.

So the short version is will I be able to copy to another drive and repair the OS? Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[G0AOZ]

From your description it sounds like the disk has one or more bad blocks on it. This could well be the reason it won't boot, can't be repaired etc.

I have had similar scenarios to this, and ended up attaching the bad disk to a working XP machine along with a brand new disk of a suitable size. The new disk was quick formatted in Windows Disk Management and given a volume label to clearly identify it.

It was then just a question of copying over everything from the bad disk to the new one. However, it's not quite as simple as that, as Windows Explorer throws up its hands and immediately gives up when it hits a corrupted file or bad block, and won't proceed any further. This is where good ol' Windows File Manager comes to the rescue! It is not part of XP, but came with NT4 and W2K, and works a treat. Directories or blocks of directories can be dragged across from the bad disk to the good one, and when it hits a problem you get the option to retry or ignore that particular file. Having made a note of the corrupted file, you can then carry on with the copying. This at least will give you the opportunity to find a fresh copy of the damaged file which can hopefully be copied onto the disk later.

It's possible the "copied over" disk may run successfully first time, but chances are you might have to run a repair on it. At least you're now starting up on a "good" disk that has no bad blocks on it...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[specter333]

Just copy and paste eh? It's too simple, I would have never thought of it. A quick google search showed a few places I could download File manager so I'll give it a try tomorrow. I think that if I could get the data to copy over ignoring the bad blocks then I could repair the installation, I hope.

Thanks for your help.

 

[G0AOZ]

No, not copy and paste...

The way I do it is to open File Manager, click on View, then click All File Details. Now go click on View again, and then click on By File Type, and tick Show Hidden/System Files. You're now displaying all files and folders.

Next, click once on say the new drive, which will show as empty. Then double-click (quickly!) on the old non-booting drive. Now click on Window on File Manager's menu bar and select Tile Horizontally. The good and bad drives are now shown in two (double) panes, one above the other.

It is now a simple matter to highlight the sub-directories in the righthand pane of the bad drive and drag them across to the lefthand pane of the good drive. Don't forget the root files, but you can ignore the pagefile and hibernate files.

Good luck.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[wahnula]

Roger...never heard of that one, sounds like a great tip. Another option would be to clone the drive with Acronis, Ghost etc. Hopefully it will ignore the bad sectors.

Tony

 

[G0AOZ]

Tony, on the occasions I've tried this with Ghost and Acronis, it's unfortunately failed. Must admit the version of Acronis I had was not the latest. Hence this workaround with File Manager...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[specter333]

I was up very late last night trying this only I didn't have a copy of file manager, I used xplorer2 because of the reviews it had and I could get it from download.com. It failed miserably. I would drag groups of folders from one pane to the other and every time it hit a snag it stopped. I spent hours just going through files one by one and copying everything that was good and making notes of what was bad. When I was done nothing would recognize a copy of windows was on the drive.

I was going to try another highly rated program called "Clone Max" (I think) but it would only run from a floppy, the PC I'm working on does not have a floppy drive. I tried to make an ISO image of the floppy but I don't have any burning software on this machine. I downloaded "CD burner XP Pro 3" because it's free and it had good reviews but it won't install on my machine. It gets an error message "M: invalid drive". I haven't had a M: drive on this computer in a couple of years.

Tonight I'll find File Manager and try again. Strange thing now is I've decided I would be better off with a fresh install since that PC wasn't running very well anyway but It's become a mission just to see if I can do it.

Again thanks for your comments, I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Rich

 

[G0AOZ]

Sorry to hear of your late night session getting nowhere fast. Just this afternoon I had one on the bench which wouldn't run, wouldn't image, couldn't do a thing with it. Attached it to XP for a surface scan, which revealed nearly a hundred bad blocks! Preformatted a new drive, dragged the files across using File Manager, and HEY PRESTO! a running system when it was put back in the original machine. Sure, there were some files which wouldn't copy, but most of them were non-important...

Good luck Rich.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[wahnula]

Roger,

So, you get a Win2K machine, connect the two drives (corrupt source drive and brand-new destination drive) to it and then simply use Windows File Manager to drag and drop??? File Manager as an OS/Program Files recovery app? Brilliant!

This File Manager feature is one reason to keep a Win2K machine around forever, in hardware or virtual version. Can't wait to try this trick myself.

Tony

 

[specter333]

Oops. It appears I was wrong in my earlier post. The search for "Windows File Manager" only showed me replacements, not where to get it. So I guess the first question would be... will it run on XP and the second is, If so where can I get it?

A sorta off the subject question here. I'm about to the point of just starting over again but I don't have another ide drive handy that I want to use for the OS. I do have a 120gb SATA drive that I don't have another use for but the mother board does not have SATA connections (I don't think). As fate would have it the day that the computer crashed the PCI card with internal SATA connectors arrived that I was planning on using on that machine.

The question is can I boot from the SATA drive connected to the PCI card? I have my doubts that this is possible since the drivers for the PCI card would have to load before booting. But I can barely grasp the meaning of about half of the stuff I've written in this post and the rest is just stuff I think goes along with it, so... I don't really know. Maybe I'll just give it a try. Rich

 

[specter333]

Well, I guess I'm not going to give it a try. If your going to load third party drivers for Windows Setup you are going to load them from a floppy drive, no ifs ands or buts, Microsoft says "YOU ARE GOING TO LOAD THEM FROM DRIVE A". Since that machine doesn't have a floppy drive I'm kinda screwed.

I do have a usb floppy drive on it that it does not recognize. It recognizes my usb wirelsss keyboad and mouse but not the drive???

Anyway, I'm just going to partition 80gb of space on this 250gb drive I've been using for this experiment, get my computer back up for now, get another 80gb drive off Ebay and try to copy to it later.

I'm still keeping my original drive just to see if I can save it. Let me know if you have any more suggestions.

Thanks
Rich

 

[G0AOZ]

Apologies guys, got the source wrong...!

Went and looked on my W2K CD and couldn't find it - obviously suffering from brain fade in my old age. The WINFILE.EXE application that's required is on the Windows NT4 CD in the i386 sub-dir - just needs expanding. Or, download it from here:-

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

and go to Line 71, and double-click in righthand pane to start the download.

Once expanded from the CD this one file can be copied to the approriate installation - does not require to be installed. File Manager works fine in W2k and XP, but won't run in Vista.

Remember that when you attach a damaged disk to a working W2K or XP system, the running O/S will often attempt to start CHKDSK on it before boot up completes, unless you intervene. I suggest you disallow this process...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[specter333]

Did the copy with file manager last night and it went pretty well. But I copied to the SATA drive that I already figured out I can't boot from. I'm copying to another partition on the 250gb drive now,the one I just loaded a new OS onto, and am going to try to repair it from their.

I've never tried doing a dual boot machine before. I hope it's not as complicated as it sounds.

Rich

 

[specter333]

Well I'm close. After running a repair on the copy of the drive it will almost boot up. It shows the Windows loading screen and then does it's flickering like it's about to start but it stops short of the welcome screen. Only a black screen and the cursor. If I boot into safe mode I get the same thing only with the Safe Mode text around the edges.

I watched what files didn't get copied from the windows folder and nothing looked like it was important, obviously I was wrong. I bet if I could find the one file it's missing it would start.

Before I go through the procedure of going through the windows folder on the original disk and taking notes of what's corrupted and trying to replace all of them one by one... does anyone have a guess on what I should try first?

The sad part is I've spent so much time just to see if I could save a copy of this drive I could have reloaded all the programs on to a new drive by now.

 

[G0AOZ]

You said, "I'm copying to another partition on the 250gb drive now...". If it's anything other than the same partition number that the original installation would have been using, then you'll need to edit BOOT.INI to reflect this. That could be the cause of your non-boot now...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[specter333]

Thanks Roger but I figured that part out already. I can change the boot file between the one that works and the one that doesn't boot all the way. Booth installs are XP home on the same drive but in different partitions. Is there a potential problem doing that?

My gut feeling is that it stops because it's looking for a file that's not there but like I said earlier, I don't know much about what I'm doing here. I'm just fumbling through.

Thanks
Rich