Uh oh...
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Good Advice there. Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice. BTW doesn't say much for NTFS security when anybody can access all of NTFS files with out regard to security or user permissions. I wonder if longhorn will or could fix this? Actually I hope that it can't. I kind of like know a simple little secret about recovering my files with a bootable CD Jeff Patterson Programmers speak in Code. http://www.anti-dmca.org[^]
Right-click the file(s) you want to protect, choose Properties, Advanced, then check Encrypt contents to secure data. Click OK to apply the change. Then make damn sure you back up your System State, because if the encryption key and the administrator's recovery key are lost, you'll never get access to those files again. Works on Windows 2000 and later on NTFS drives.
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First, calm down, your machine is ok, you just lost your HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive. Since it stores important information about your system configuration, your machine cannot boot anymore. You just need your Windows XP installation CD, some patience AND CAREFUL READING: Q307545 How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from Starting Really - it works. I've used it several times. I don't know why, but it happens a lot on Windows XP. It has nothing to do with your upgrade patch, just write a lot to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then reboot, bang! [edit]BTW, if you are careful, you can do all the steps right on the recovery console, without ever booting into Windows. And you don't need to recover all registry files, only SYSTEM. Don't forget to reapply the IE patch after you recover your machine.[/edit] Perl combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript. -- Jamie Zawinski
On the contrary, I have never ever had a corrupted registry on an NT-based operating system. If it happens, it's likely to be that what got written to disk isn't what got written to memory. This can be caused by a variety of things, such as corruption of the memory itself, a disk controller fault, or a disk fault. The first can happen if your system is run out of spec (or simply has dodgy RAM) or if the connection is poor. The others are fairly obvious. I'll have to admit, my experience is that Windows (NT) is very reliable. For me, even Windows 9x was quite reliable. I've had very solid hardware, and when things have started to go wrong, I've looked for a hardware or driver fault before blaming the software.
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So, my little automatic update icon says there's a new update. I install it. Upon the required reboot I get an error message saying that ...\system32\config\system is corrupted. I try the recovery console, but the drive is unreadable. No big deal, I've got a backup. I swap 'em around and I'm off and running. The drive utilities even manage to fix the drive, except for the areas the contain my project backups. My software guy asks if he should install the update. I, not thinking that the update had anything to do with it, say "sure." Now his main drive is dead (and I mean really dead). The utilities can't fix this one. His drive had all of our projects on it. The first drive to die had all of the current backups. :~ Has anyone else run into this problem with the windows updates (Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1) ? Any suggestions as to data recovery companies in Canada? This is worth about $15000 to me in terms of the wages I'm going to have to pay to get back to where we are now from the most recent useable backup. I think I'm about to have a heart attack. The sad thing is I just received some new serial ATA drives and a RAID controller yesterday. Just haven't installed them yet. :(( Drew.
Coincidentally a colleague's hard drive failed last night/this morning. What's a bit worrying is that this system is the one used to take backups of the network drives (written to DVD+RW in the morning). It appears that the backup succeeded, but that's no use considering that the disk's dead. The obvious signs were that the PC wouldn't wake up, then when rebooted it displayed the detected drive string, but then said 'Primary hard drive failure'. After checking the connections, and restarting, the BIOS wouldn't even detect it any more. Mind you, the drive is a Maxtor, what do you expect? :-D
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On the contrary, I have never ever had a corrupted registry on an NT-based operating system. If it happens, it's likely to be that what got written to disk isn't what got written to memory. This can be caused by a variety of things, such as corruption of the memory itself, a disk controller fault, or a disk fault. The first can happen if your system is run out of spec (or simply has dodgy RAM) or if the connection is poor. The others are fairly obvious. I'll have to admit, my experience is that Windows (NT) is very reliable. For me, even Windows 9x was quite reliable. I've had very solid hardware, and when things have started to go wrong, I've looked for a hardware or driver fault before blaming the software.
My experience with the Windows NT line is exactly like yours. But create a simple proggie that quickly writes to the registry on random points (maybe 20, 30 writes at once). More simple than this, create only a .REG file, so you cannot blame the code (actually, you can never blame user code for a corrupt registry). Now, reboot. Do this 2 or 3 times and you'll have a corrput registry. I know that because I once made an installer that did exactly this and it corrupted half of my customer's machines. It occurs only on Win2k and WinXP. The solution? First, logoff, wait a bit, then shutdown. Or wait something like 10 minutes and shutdown. But never shutdown right after writing to the registry. Perl combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript. -- Jamie Zawinski
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Good Advice there. Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice. BTW doesn't say much for NTFS security when anybody can access all of NTFS files with out regard to security or user permissions. I wonder if longhorn will or could fix this? Actually I hope that it can't. I kind of like know a simple little secret about recovering my files with a bootable CD Jeff Patterson Programmers speak in Code. http://www.anti-dmca.org[^]
Jeff Patterson wrote: Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice. mmmmm.... I wouldn't say that I screwed up a kernel compile, no devfs support needed bawhahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahhahahaahhaahhahahahahahahahahhahaahaahahahah -Steven Hicks
CPA
CodeProjectAddict
Actual Linux Penguins were harmed in the creation of this message.
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Funny, I've done every single update since they started that thing and this is the first time I've had a problem. In fact, I don't believe I've ever had to reinstall XP Pro. Until now, that is. Drew.
I haven't seen any update problems in XP yet - I think there's been a lot of improvement there. On Win2K Pro and Server, along with earlier versions, an update was as likely to destroy the machine as to fix it. I suspect that a lot of it is in the order of application - there may have been inconsistencies that cause damage if the fixes are applied willy-nilly, which Update appears to do. As a side note, last night I talked with a guy who has had to reinstall XP 4 times, twice after an update. I don't put a whole lot of faith in that, though, as he is also a tinkerer and not a very knowledgable one. The XP systems I've set up have not had a problem with the Update service to date. Heard in Bullhead City - "You haven't lost your girl -
you've just lost your turn..." [sigh] So true... -
Good Advice there. Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice. BTW doesn't say much for NTFS security when anybody can access all of NTFS files with out regard to security or user permissions. I wonder if longhorn will or could fix this? Actually I hope that it can't. I kind of like know a simple little secret about recovering my files with a bootable CD Jeff Patterson Programmers speak in Code. http://www.anti-dmca.org[^]
Jeff Patterson wrote: BTW doesn't say much for NTFS security when anybody can access all of NTFS files with out regard to security or user permissions. Well, even if it encrypted the files, giving someone you don't trust physical access to the machine is just asking for trouble.
But in the end, it's all just database access right? And that stuff is just plain boring.
- David Stone, not a programming question but...
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Good Advice there. Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice. BTW doesn't say much for NTFS security when anybody can access all of NTFS files with out regard to security or user permissions. I wonder if longhorn will or could fix this? Actually I hope that it can't. I kind of like know a simple little secret about recovering my files with a bootable CD Jeff Patterson Programmers speak in Code. http://www.anti-dmca.org[^]
Jeff Patterson wrote: Doesn't sound like you harmed any linux penquins with that sage advice Hmm... penguin with sage and onion stuffing :drool: The tigress is here :-D
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First, calm down, your machine is ok, you just lost your HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive. Since it stores important information about your system configuration, your machine cannot boot anymore. You just need your Windows XP installation CD, some patience AND CAREFUL READING: Q307545 How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry That Prevents Windows XP from Starting Really - it works. I've used it several times. I don't know why, but it happens a lot on Windows XP. It has nothing to do with your upgrade patch, just write a lot to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then reboot, bang! [edit]BTW, if you are careful, you can do all the steps right on the recovery console, without ever booting into Windows. And you don't need to recover all registry files, only SYSTEM. Don't forget to reapply the IE patch after you recover your machine.[/edit] Perl combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript. -- Jamie Zawinski
Thanks Daniel. Unfortunately this didn't work. I've used recovery console to get back from this type of thing a few times before. It has always worked in the past. This time, however, I can't even access the directory structure using recovery console. It's as thought the drive is completely corrupted. I ran the Maxtor utilities on the drive, which promptly gave me an error and a code to use to return the drive to the manufacturer for a replacement - that's when I started to panic. The first drive will at least allow me to view and copy any of the uncorrupted files (but, of course, my drive2 backup files are corrupted!). This isn't just a registry thing - a bunch of the files are actually corrupted. Anyway, Knoppix is working - so far only 6 files were unreadable out of arount 30000. I'm copying over my network to a different drive which is working great so far (although slow). :) Drew.
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Coincidentally a colleague's hard drive failed last night/this morning. What's a bit worrying is that this system is the one used to take backups of the network drives (written to DVD+RW in the morning). It appears that the backup succeeded, but that's no use considering that the disk's dead. The obvious signs were that the PC wouldn't wake up, then when rebooted it displayed the detected drive string, but then said 'Primary hard drive failure'. After checking the connections, and restarting, the BIOS wouldn't even detect it any more. Mind you, the drive is a Maxtor, what do you expect? :-D
Mike Dimmick wrote: Mind you, the drive is a Maxtor, what do you expect? Mine were a Western Digital and a Maxtor. I find it really interesting that both of my drive failures happened exactly the same way. Install the update, do the reboot as requested. Really bad things happen. And now both drives not only have corrupted registries, but they seem to be physically damaged. The Western Digital utilites had to lock out some bad sectors. The Maxtor utilities said the drive had to be returned for possible replacement. Anyway, over the years I've had just about every make and model of drive fail at some point. I think the MTBF ratings they give these things are way off. Drew.
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Ok ...the best thing right now is calm down... Leave the computer OFF! Go to another computer (preferibly another XP machine with a CDRW drive) get http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm[^]. After you download and install this grab a Knoppix ISO (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html[^]), once its download burn it to the cd by right clicking on the iso and click on "Burn ISO to CD" .. then go to your messed up machine with the Knoppix disk, turn on the machine and put the disk in as fast as you can and make the computer boot from the CD, now you have access to all your files, which It will not write any thing to the hard drive but you can recover the files. This is espically helpful when you accidently delete a file with NTFS and can't afford NTFS recover tools (knoppix has ntfs support built in) This is your safest solution. -Steven Hicks
CPA
CodeProjectAddict
Actual Linux Penguins were harmed in the creation of this message.
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Steven, Oh man do I owe you big-time. It took awhile to get a network connection going in Knoppix, but it's busy copying files now. A few have been corrupted, but virtually all of them are coming back OK. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Drew.
There is that way and another way. The other way was if you had a Linux computer you used (i.e. root access) you could remove the hard drive and let Linux read it... there was a kid in my Linux class that screwed up his WinXP computer really badly.. to the point where ERD commander didn't even see the drive. We recovered almost all of his data. -Steven Hicks
CPA
CodeProjectAddict
Actual Linux Penguins were harmed in the creation of this message.
More tutorials: Ltpb.8m.com: Tutorials |404Browser.com (Download Link)