Terminator Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 One of our systems has just crashed. the System file in Win32 config is either missing or corrupt. For my limited knowledge this sounds bad. I need data off the machine urgently. Can anyone help PLEASE:thanku: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DamanC Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Any more info terminator? iF you know what file it is it maybe worth trying to replace it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregsupra4 Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Hi Ya, OK restart the PC before the windows splash screen comes up hit the F8 button on the keyboard. You will then get a number of choices on how you would like windows to start. Choose the "USE LAST KNOWN GOOD CONFIGURATION" This should restore the WIN32 system file. If this still does not work and you have the XP HOME CD then reboot the PC with the XP cd in and hit any key to boot from CD when promted, it will start to load temp files and you will the be presented with a few choices pick the "REPAIR " option and follow the insturctions. If all else fails then just re-install windows using the same partition, whilst you will lose all your settings all program data should be still there when you fire up again. Whilst this has worked many times before I have only once out of about 6 times lost all the data from the MY DOCUMENTS folder but everything else has always been there. You will of course have to re-install all your programs to readdress the DLLs but all saved data in those programs should still be there. Good Luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Branners Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 if you need the data then you can move the drive to another machine and it just becomes a normal data drive. Not sure if you have done that before but if you havent then you may need to know how to do master and slave settings on a drive (or if you are lucky you could unplug the cdrom drive on the other machine and just plug that hard drive in and it might work...) hope that helps. JB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toyotasuprauk Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 I've had a very similar problem myself! I'm hoping to do what branners said get all my photos transfered to another harddrive and do a fresh install with a legal version of windows I just wasted £50 on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AntD Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Had similar problem here.PC would not restart.Bought new harddrive and took it with Master cds to PC world .They put all the data [tattoo the drive] on the new hard drive so I had my PC with its original factory settings and programs,except they updated windows to SP2...only cos £29.99.I paid only £15 as they turned me back just before Christmas after someone told me the day before to bring my PC in.I then just bought a £14 IDE cable with 2 connectors to connect the old drive.the old harddrive will automaticaly be set to slave if you put your jumper settings on cable and connect it to the grey connector.I now have to get a program called WinHex to get XP to recognise the drive and retrieve my data,but I havent got that far yet.Good luck anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 7, 2006 Author Share Posted January 7, 2006 Thanks for the advice guys. It a dell so the drive has stupid del plugs not compatable with any other machine in the house. Last know etc give same error message. I really need to get at some 20GB of data or it will cost me £1000's. I know I should have had a back up , so dont tell me. It is not my computer. Will drive just about anywhere and throw in a bottle of good scotch for a fix. PM if you can help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffvalenti Posted January 7, 2006 Share Posted January 7, 2006 Phil, The drive is probably SATA I'm pretty sure Dell don't use proprietory drives Does it have a 7 pin connection instead of the 40/80 one? If so, you just need to find someone with a modern computer with SATA on the motherboard. Sorry I don't have one myself or you'd be more than welcome to come here and sort it out. If the data is really important, I wouldn't try to reinstall Windows until I'd backed up the data to another drive, or copied an image of the whole drive and then I'd work on the copy. Hope you get it sorted. If its really going to cost £1000s it's probably going to be cheaper to buy another hard drive, install Windows on that, and then access the data on the original drive set up as a slave or on another channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 One of our systems has just crashed. the System file in Win32 config is either missing or corrupt. For my limited knowledge this sounds bad. I need data off the machine urgently. Can anyone help PLEASE:thanku: When do you need to get the data back? If you have time to send me the drive, even if the data has been formatted I can recover it. At the very least I can get your data off and back it up. If the drive is still sound I can re-install windows ready to slot the drive back in if you wish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toyotasuprauk Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 Now thats a good offer if your stuck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 Stealthhoasts you have PM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stav Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 i had something similar last night with my pc, was missing over 230 registry files, i had to re-install windows! bugger! runs fine tho now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imi Posted January 8, 2006 Share Posted January 8, 2006 i had something similar last night with my pc, was missing over 230 registry files, i had to re-install windows! bugger! runs fine tho now! what on earth are you guys doing with your PCs???? not sure if this has been mentioned before.. you could re-install winXP over the existing HDD and recover all the data that you need. OR, install this HDD into another machine and copy the data across... Atleast this way youll be sure that your DATA is secure before you start messing around with WinXP... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 8, 2006 Author Share Posted January 8, 2006 If it needs spanners or a large hammer I can fix it, but as far as 0101010 etc is concerned I am in the dark ages, still banging rocks together, and sending smoke signals. This data is very important, not going public with how important, but potentially more than the cost of a couple of MKIV's, and in human terms cant put a value. Any excuse for a nice drive on a Sunday, so a little trip to stealth hosts is in order. Cant thank you enough.:thanku: Fingers crossed Opps looks like I just screwed up the notworthy gif, wheres that hammer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 In the past we have always recovered from crashes, so have not taken back ups as seriously and as frequently as we might. But having had such a catastrophic loss data that could have led to a huge financial loss and considerable distress and hardship for some considerable time, back up now becomes a major priority. In the morning I am investing in some additional usb hard drives and looking into some automated incremental back up system using another media. We don’t ever want to be put in this situation again. Just a few unfortunate coincidences caused a devastating problem. Lesson learned the hard way. Be warned it could happen to you. I’ll let Stethhosts give the technical details but the hard disc had suffered some form of catastrophic failure. The problem was such that he had twenty five seconds from each start up to name and copy a file in dos and ten seconds in windows before the disc denied access and locked up. There was no way we would have been able to get any of the data off with out access to some very sophisticated software and skill. He saved 70% of the most important data to another drive. The rest can be regained from what we have plus 20 or so additional hours of work. We both say a huge thank you to you both for the great hospitality and giving up most of your Sunday. I think you both know how much this meant to Tom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Do regular backups/archive to DVD or CDROM very cheap and reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 I know, back ups exits of all of toms stuff, but the DVD RW drive was not wrting any more since November. Tom thought he could survive until he got home from uni. We fitted a new DVD drive tried to back up to dvd and bang system failure. Like I said unfortunate coincidences, I would have thought we would have more chances of winning the lottery than this happening, so dont bother with Euro millions , its mine this week. I want something automated as well, like Veritas. Some one once told me data does not exist unless it is is in at least three places. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 The method of backup would depends on the amount of data to be backed up. I think WinXP includes a schedule based backup program which you could prob use with an external drive or something alike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shovels Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I would definately recommend starting the system with the XP Home CD in the drive, boot from the CD and when it finally finishes loading press R to repair in DOS mode. You'll have a few options to go through, but when you finally get to a DOS prompt: Type: chkdsk /r that will perform a repair on damged or corrupted files - this is often a cause of windows not starting up. It takes probably 10/15 mins to run, but well worth it. It's worked for me dozens of times - PM me if you need further instructions and I'll give you a call back. Neal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 In short, after being a on a test bed for 6 hours, it was obvious that the drive was overheating very quickly, from power to fail was approx 45secs. The test machine boots up in approx 15secs which gave me around 30secs to copy data off. There were a number of large files involved which made it all the more difficult. However, after just over 6hours of manual file removal, all the files which were of most importance were recovered. It was a PITA but the customer left happy which is always good. I still have the drive and will probably return to manufacturer to prevent Terminator having to. There ya go, something to do on a sunday afternoon/night EDIT - for reference: chkdisk - ran for 400sectors then failed for 20,000 NTFSreader - failed at point 1 on analysing Stellar - read all files, failed on verification SiSoft - read 1400 files and failed NDD - viewed 2 files and crashed WinExplorer - opened folder and died I tried some in house tools as well, no amount of software will make any difference if the drive I/O errors after 30secs, nothing can then read/write/modify the drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I would definately recommend starting the system with the XP Home CD in the drive, boot from the CD and when it finally finishes loading press R to repair in DOS mode. You'll have a few options to go through, but when you finally get to a DOS prompt: Type: chkdsk /r that will perform a repair on damged or corrupted files - this is often a cause of windows not starting up. It takes probably 10/15 mins to run, but well worth it. It's worked for me dozens of times - PM me if you need further instructions and I'll give you a call back. Neal. It won't repair damaged files, it will read every sector on the disk, assign them to $BADCLUSTR and then attempt to repair the sector on the drive. IIRC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shovels Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 It won't repair damaged files, it will read every sector on the disk, assign them to $BADCLUSTR and then attempt to repair the sector on the drive. IIRC Yep - Sorry - wasn't very clear with that post - I was basically trying to say that it fixes quite a few faults. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terminator Posted January 9, 2006 Author Share Posted January 9, 2006 Thanks to Stealthhost, Tom has enough data to continue with the projects he was working on. We oth really appreciate the hard work Stealthhost put into the recover of a small but important section of the data. As I under stand it each file had to be taken off one at a time and a system reboot carried out for each file. Quite a task, nothing automatic would do this. Fortunately the files that were really important were not very large, there were just lots of them. The software packages that were used to create the packages can not be taken off the drive. Most we have. But a few we cant get. Please see my post in the members area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucifer Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 I can also recover ANY data from ANY format even Formatted data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imi Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 Top Job Stealth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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