Help Request - For Smitha
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Hey guys Smitha's machine is in deep trouble. Windows XP prof (don't remember if it is SP1 or not - now can't verify either). She says it boots and stops at the boot-time logo and does not proceed beyond it. Means it never reaches the login screen. When she boots with her XP CD and tries to install over C once again, it says partition type of C is unknown; so she goes to recovery mode, where she gets a console. From which she gave fixmbr and fixboot - fixboot reported errors and claimed that those errors were fixed. She boots again from C and tries to install on C and again gets an unknown partition type error. She tries to install on D and E (both of which are NTFS) and strangely she says the same error msg pops up saying C is of unknown type. I asked her to try scandisk from the recovery console, but she says it doesn't exist and chkdsk reported errors but chkdsk on xp is not smart enough to do repairs. Can anyone suggest anything that I can tell her through the phone. She has only one machine, so she cant come online. I am really really ill now, so I can't go over there Anyway she is quite depressed about this - she'll lose all her mails, backups, code etc. - she doesn't have a CD writer - bad of her . Please pass on some suggestions that I can pass on to her. Regards Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
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toxcct wrote: try a checkdisk putting the HDD into another PC as a slave... She has only one machine and as of now has no access to anyone else with a PC. :-( Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
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Hey guys Smitha's machine is in deep trouble. Windows XP prof (don't remember if it is SP1 or not - now can't verify either). She says it boots and stops at the boot-time logo and does not proceed beyond it. Means it never reaches the login screen. When she boots with her XP CD and tries to install over C once again, it says partition type of C is unknown; so she goes to recovery mode, where she gets a console. From which she gave fixmbr and fixboot - fixboot reported errors and claimed that those errors were fixed. She boots again from C and tries to install on C and again gets an unknown partition type error. She tries to install on D and E (both of which are NTFS) and strangely she says the same error msg pops up saying C is of unknown type. I asked her to try scandisk from the recovery console, but she says it doesn't exist and chkdsk reported errors but chkdsk on xp is not smart enough to do repairs. Can anyone suggest anything that I can tell her through the phone. She has only one machine, so she cant come online. I am really really ill now, so I can't go over there Anyway she is quite depressed about this - she'll lose all her mails, backups, code etc. - she doesn't have a CD writer - bad of her . Please pass on some suggestions that I can pass on to her. Regards Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
From the sounds of it I would leave it to the experts. There are many companies who can recover data from failing HDDs. It may be better for them to recover the data before you go too far and preventing any sort of data recovery. Good luck Ant.
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From the sounds of it I would leave it to the experts. There are many companies who can recover data from failing HDDs. It may be better for them to recover the data before you go too far and preventing any sort of data recovery. Good luck Ant.
Antony M Kancidrowski wrote: From the sounds of it I would leave it to the experts. There are many companies who can recover data from failing HDDs. It may be better for them to recover the data before you go too far and preventing any sort of data recovery. Hey Antony She says that using a
logoncommand from the recovery console, she logged in as Administrator and can now browse through her entire hard disk. Unfortunatelyxcopywon't work - maybe it's now strictly a win32 executable and there is noxcopy32or anything else like that. She can't access the CD file system, else she might have been able to search and find if the XP CD has an xcopy that will work. She does havecopythough and I asked her to try and copy as many of her major files as she possible can before she gets sick of it. Sadly, unlike me, she is very organized and thus she maintains a complex date-wise, month-wise directory hierarchy for her files/backups - so plain vanillacopyis a real PITA. Had it been me, it'd just have been a matter of copying c:\nish and c:\nish\deletetheselater and c:\nish\temp or some such folders. I am not even sure what mode this recovery console is running in. It can't be 16 bit DOS mode as MS promised that they kicked out all such code by 2K/XP. It doesn't seem like 32 bit windows shell mode. So what the hell is this mode? And why the F doesn't a recovery console have anxcopyoption? Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
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Antony M Kancidrowski wrote: From the sounds of it I would leave it to the experts. There are many companies who can recover data from failing HDDs. It may be better for them to recover the data before you go too far and preventing any sort of data recovery. Hey Antony She says that using a
logoncommand from the recovery console, she logged in as Administrator and can now browse through her entire hard disk. Unfortunatelyxcopywon't work - maybe it's now strictly a win32 executable and there is noxcopy32or anything else like that. She can't access the CD file system, else she might have been able to search and find if the XP CD has an xcopy that will work. She does havecopythough and I asked her to try and copy as many of her major files as she possible can before she gets sick of it. Sadly, unlike me, she is very organized and thus she maintains a complex date-wise, month-wise directory hierarchy for her files/backups - so plain vanillacopyis a real PITA. Had it been me, it'd just have been a matter of copying c:\nish and c:\nish\deletetheselater and c:\nish\temp or some such folders. I am not even sure what mode this recovery console is running in. It can't be 16 bit DOS mode as MS promised that they kicked out all such code by 2K/XP. It doesn't seem like 32 bit windows shell mode. So what the hell is this mode? And why the F doesn't a recovery console have anxcopyoption? Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
Sounds like she could use ERD Commander[^] For those that may not know, Winternals is the commercial side of SysInternals, where we get those wonderful tools that Mark and Bryce provide for free.
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Sounds like she could use ERD Commander[^] For those that may not know, Winternals is the commercial side of SysInternals, where we get those wonderful tools that Mark and Bryce provide for free.
Cliff Dabrowski wrote: where we get those wonderful tools that Mark and Bryce provide for free. Yeah, these guys rock. Use some of the free programs from Winternals, also spent some money with SysInternals. Great stuff, highly recommended. Christopher Duncan Today's Corporate Battle Tactic Unite the Tribes: Ending Turf Wars for Career and Business Success The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World
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Sounds like she could use ERD Commander[^] For those that may not know, Winternals is the commercial side of SysInternals, where we get those wonderful tools that Mark and Bryce provide for free.
ERD Commander rocks, Regardz Colin J Davies
*** WARNING *
This could be addictive
**The minion's version of "Catch :bob: "It's a real shame that people as stupid as you can work out how to use a computer. said by Christian Graus in the Soapbox
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Hey guys Smitha's machine is in deep trouble. Windows XP prof (don't remember if it is SP1 or not - now can't verify either). She says it boots and stops at the boot-time logo and does not proceed beyond it. Means it never reaches the login screen. When she boots with her XP CD and tries to install over C once again, it says partition type of C is unknown; so she goes to recovery mode, where she gets a console. From which she gave fixmbr and fixboot - fixboot reported errors and claimed that those errors were fixed. She boots again from C and tries to install on C and again gets an unknown partition type error. She tries to install on D and E (both of which are NTFS) and strangely she says the same error msg pops up saying C is of unknown type. I asked her to try scandisk from the recovery console, but she says it doesn't exist and chkdsk reported errors but chkdsk on xp is not smart enough to do repairs. Can anyone suggest anything that I can tell her through the phone. She has only one machine, so she cant come online. I am really really ill now, so I can't go over there Anyway she is quite depressed about this - she'll lose all her mails, backups, code etc. - she doesn't have a CD writer - bad of her . Please pass on some suggestions that I can pass on to her. Regards Nish
Now with my own blog - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
Request - Could everyone who have in the past, posted on my personal forum on CP, be kind enough to delete all your posts please? I intend to start a personal non-technical blog there, now that it is RSSd and would very much like to empty the forum before I do so - because the posts that are there as of now are mostly test posts and posts that were made before we all knew it was a blog :-)
Thanks Nish for posting for help. I got through luckily. I used the XP boot CD. Tried the fixboot and fixmbr through the recovery console. It did not help. Could not even get in through safe mode. I used 'logon' from the console, tried to acees the files. But I could only access the system dir. I thought, I lost all my files. Thought of trying one last chance and rebooted the system. Tried safe mode again, and it worked this time. I backed up files and then rebooted and this time, I got through normally :D Thanks guys, for helping :) Smitha Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. -- Richard Bach
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Thanks Nish for posting for help. I got through luckily. I used the XP boot CD. Tried the fixboot and fixmbr through the recovery console. It did not help. Could not even get in through safe mode. I used 'logon' from the console, tried to acees the files. But I could only access the system dir. I thought, I lost all my files. Thought of trying one last chance and rebooted the system. Tried safe mode again, and it worked this time. I backed up files and then rebooted and this time, I got through normally :D Thanks guys, for helping :) Smitha Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. -- Richard Bach
I'm glad you found a solution - that one had me stumped. Now that you have everything backed up, if it happens again I'd run fdisk on the C: partition and reinstall XP from the CD. Since you've solved this one, though, perhaps you might take a shot at solving one I haven't figured out yet. I ran across two machines (Win98) in one week that are both running in MS-DOS compatibility mode, and their drives are horribly slow to respond. I've tried everything MS has in the Knowledge Base, and nothing has worked. Creepy... like there's some kind of virus going around that no one knows about yet.:sigh: Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
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I'm glad you found a solution - that one had me stumped. Now that you have everything backed up, if it happens again I'd run fdisk on the C: partition and reinstall XP from the CD. Since you've solved this one, though, perhaps you might take a shot at solving one I haven't figured out yet. I ran across two machines (Win98) in one week that are both running in MS-DOS compatibility mode, and their drives are horribly slow to respond. I've tried everything MS has in the Knowledge Base, and nothing has worked. Creepy... like there's some kind of virus going around that no one knows about yet.:sigh: Some people think of it as a six-pack; I consider it more of a support group.
Roger Wright wrote: if it happens again I'd run fdisk on the C: partition and reinstall XP from the CD. Thanks. I'll do that too :) Roger Wright wrote: Since you've solved this one, though, Wish I could help. Absolutely no idea why it happens so :( Smitha Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. -- Richard Bach
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Thanks Nish for posting for help. I got through luckily. I used the XP boot CD. Tried the fixboot and fixmbr through the recovery console. It did not help. Could not even get in through safe mode. I used 'logon' from the console, tried to acees the files. But I could only access the system dir. I thought, I lost all my files. Thought of trying one last chance and rebooted the system. Tried safe mode again, and it worked this time. I backed up files and then rebooted and this time, I got through normally :D Thanks guys, for helping :) Smitha Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. -- Richard Bach
Nice to hear that. ;) Ant.