I can't boot... at all

Ok, I turned my old xp partition (which is a whole drive) into a dynamic disc and I can't even boot to vista anymore. I was dual-booting.


please help.

 

Please, please, please tell me you made a backup clone image.

 

Try using your Vista disc to repair your boot record. If you don't have a repair option, you'll have to reinstall.

 

I'm sry I did not shyster....

Is it possible to install again on a seperate disc and get all my media?

Can I also use a third-party boot manager maybe?

 

Ok. what's done is done. However, before you do anything else to the hdds you should pull them out of the system, put them in an external enclosure, and use a recovery utility running on another computer to try and recover as much of your data as possible from the hdds just in case something goes wrong. If need be, you can drop another hdd into the NP9262 - maybe a cheapo 120GB or 160GB, which can be had for around $60 to $80 - do a quickie install of whatever OS you have available, including a linux distribution if need be, and then use that installation to recover your data from the hdd that it's on now.

 

good suggestion Shyster.

I recommend GetDataBack for NTFS.... its extremely easy to use and fast.

 

Ok shyster will this do? here is my setup:

100 gb (came with my laptop, had xp, and the one I dynamic'ed) - XP partition (just formatted)

160 - Vista ultimate installed
160 - seperate xtra disc.

 

Which of those are the drive(s) that just lost stuff, and which one(s) don't have any issues and could be used as a boot drive in order to recover data from off the drive that just got stuffed?

 

Well I formatted my 100 gb, the one that is now dynamic, and I am now installing ultimate onto my empty 160 gb. My other 160 gb (where I had originally installed ultimate), is the one with all my media that I want to recover. I tried installing onto the 100 dynamic disc but I got the same error, Im about to find out if installing onto my empty 160 gb is going to work

 

Ok. Just so long as you don't do anything to the disk(s) that have stuff on them that you'd like to get back.

 

I can't even boot up at all. I installed onto the empty where there was nothing and I get the same error. I think I bricked my laptop...

 

No. Monkeying around with partitions may trash data, but it won't brick a laptop (at least not 99.99999999999999.........% of the time ).

Do you have an XP disk you can use to do an OS installation from? If not, do you have any experience with linux?

EDIT: Another possibility is to download a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD, burn it to a CD, and then use that to boot from.

 

I can't boot at all. I installed ultimate twice, once on the dynamic and once on the empty hdd. I'm screwed.

What it does is boot up to the desktop (the first time only) and then once the desktop is fully loaded it automatically logs me off and shuts down. When I try to boot up again I get that error.

 

No I have no linux experience and I do have an xp install disc

 

What error are you getting? Is there a text description and an error number? Also, since you have an XP install disk (as you said in your next post), I would do a fresh quickie install of XP.

 

I meant bricked my hdd's, not laptop. I'm sorry I wrote that in desperation, I know THAT, lol. Thx for the clarification nonetheless, I thnk I'm going to have to start completely from scratch though.

 

No worries - you're probably feeling just a wee bit stressed right now, although you probably don't even know it.

Anyway, yes, in terms of getting a bootable hdd you can use to make sure you can recover all of your data, you should start off from square one for the installation you're going to use as a temporary install in order to do data-recovery.

 

I'm not sure, there are 2 different ones. When I remove all the other hdd's besides the one with my vista installation (the new one, not old), I get an "operating system not detected" error, then If I do include it I get the optin to run from a command line. when I press escape from there I get a list to choose from-

Windows Vista
Windows 2000/NT/XP
Choose from a command line (or something similar)

 

I just deleted my mistake dynamic with the xp installer. I can't believe the xp installer gives you that option and vista's doesn't. All vista's installer does is let you format the sumamugun.

 

That sounds like the bootloader got messed up. Basically, from what you're saying, it sounds like the only bootloader the system can find is on one of the drives other than the new _Vista drive, so, of course, if you remove the drive with the recognizable bootloader, the BIOS cannot find the bootloader, or any bootable system - it might even be the case that there's still a functional bootloader left on the disk in question, but that it's no longer actually pointing to the installed OSes, so that when the BIOS finds it and triggers it, the system goes looking for an OS where the defunct bootloader says they are, and doesn't find anything.

I think the best thing to do for the nonce is to do a clean install of XP on a hard drive that doesn't contain any data you want to recover - that is, reformat the entire disk and then install XP. Once we've gotten something bootable, we'll use that to read the hard drives that do have stuff you want to recover, we'll make copies of all of that stuff and stow it safely away on an external drive, and then we'll go back to square one and try to reconstruct your file/drive systems in the way you now want them to be, do a proper reinstallation of your OSes onto that new file/drive system, and then, and only then, copy all of your data from the backup external drive onto your new file/drive system.

 

Can I get an answer on something else? I don't think I'll be able to recover anything from my documents folder. When I installed vista initially I wasn't able to access the "my documents" folder in my xp hdd from vista. Gave me a permissions error. I'M THE DAMN ADMINISTRATOR! I'm the only one who uses it. Anyway I managed to get the files by booting into xp and moving all of them into the root directory, then I booted into vista and I was able to get them from there.

I'd do the same thing here BUT, I can't boot into my old vista partition to move them out of "my documents" now, and ALL of my media is in there, and I'm talking 54 gb of media here...

So how do I get them onto my new hdd if I'm not able to access that folder?

Thx

 

That ultimate boot cd program, I may try that. Does that mean I can't only boot from that disc from now on though?

 

I hate to jump back a couple pages but if I understand you correctly, you can't get Vista to install, and that is likely due to bootloader problems which are usually caused by filesystem errors.

I had this problem not long ago after installing XP and then attempting to install Vista as dual boot, by formatting the Vista partition with Acronis.

For some reason Vista bootloader does not work well with a disc that has been formatted by anything other than the Vista disc.

Your best bet, would be to take whatever free disc you have and format via the Vista disc.

Also make sure that you disable the other hard drives as boot devices in your bios.

Then install Vista and go from there.

 

Basically, what we're going to do is set up a hard drive with a functioning OS so that we can use the computer at all.

Next, we're going to use a data-recovery application to go in and take a look around on the stuffed hard drives to see what we can find. Basically, think of it like doing an autopsy on the stuffed drive(s) - we're not going to be doing anything other than going into them, following the old NTFS file structure, but ignoring it and going bush when we have to in order to recover the data files themselves.

Once the data-recovery app finds a salvageable file, it will just copy it off the stuffed drive onto a functioning drive (in this case, the one that we're going to do the fresh install on) as an entirely separate little file all on its own.

This part of the operation should not be too difficult since you haven't actually done anything with the underlying data saved into each file, all you've done is muffed up the file system structure. In other words, all of your data is still safe and sound on the physical disk itself, and each little data file fragment will still have all of the pointers necessary to find all of the other fragments (most data files aren't written to one single, contiguous section of the physical disk, but are broken up into fragments - sort of like internet packets - and saved in separate parts of the physical disk, with logical pointers for each packet that allow you to start with any one fragment and work your way backwards and forwards to recover all of the separate fragments.

Think of it this way, the partition structure is basically like a bunch of empty bookshelves that you use to store your individual files - i.e., the books. Along with those bookshelves comes an old library indexcard file system that's sorted in some algorithm and contains an index card for each file/book that stored on the bookshelves. Normally, the disk reading logic will go to the partition (set of bookshelves) referred to by the drive letter, then go through the index card filing system to find the pointer to the case and shelf where the file/book it's looking for is located. Using that info, it will go and retrieve the header of the file (i.e., the front cover/first page of the book). Then, if need be, it will follow the pointers from fragment to fragment (i.e., page to page) to get all of the fragments that comprise the data file. In my analogy, think of the binding of a book as the set of pointers that connect all of the fragments for one file together.

In your case, you've apparently knocked all of the bookcases over, scattering all of the books, and rendering the index card file useless - because it references bookcases and shelves on bookcases, not locations on the floor where the scattered books now lie. However, all of the files/books that used to be on the bookshelves are all intact and in perfectly good shape, we just need some way to find them without the cases and the index cards.

That's where a data recovery application comes in. The application does not depend on the partition structure or file system structure (aka index card file) to be able to read the disk. Instead, it goes in there, assesses what's left of the partition/file system structure, and uses those clues to start finding individual files. In many cases, these utilities don't need any of the partition/file structure information at all, and can directly scan the physical drive to look for the data that indicates the start of a discrete file fragment. Once that's done, it will locate the fragment pointers and work along them until it's found a complete file. It will then notify you of the file(s) it's found, and copy them over to another drive that does have a working partition/file system, so that you can then use those copies just like regular files.

 

Wow, thank you shyster. That's a lot to take in. I think I may get what your saying, though. In laymens, My file structure is all bucked up, but the files are still there? And the indexin file is what organizes it, correct? And no I haven't even considered doing ANYTHING to my media hdd. I smack myself for even thinking about it.

BTW grayreap I didn't even thnk of removing them from the boot order BEFORE I installed. I will definitely try that if I can't get my primary objective to work. Many thx.

 

Ok XP is installed and seems to be working. What do I do now? What data recovery app do I use? Getdataback for NTFS?

 

That's the gist of what's happened. Everything's still safe and sound on the physical hard drive, it's just that _Windows (which is remarkably myopic when it comes to file systems) can't "see" anything because it relies almost wholly on the logical structure of the partition and the file index structure.

Ok. Now, I prefer to use an external hard drive enclosure to do the recovery operations (which I've only ever done on a computer that holds just one hard drive), so if you have one of those, I'd be inclined to put the stuffed hard drive into the external enclosure. It may be alright to keep the stuffed drives in the 9262, but I would prefer not to just in case, when you boot up, the system tries to monkey with them - like, e.g., running the indexing utility on them or the chkdsk utility.

Also, you're going to want to get a data recovery utility ready and installed on the same drive that you just installed XP onto. If you have Acronis True Image Home, install that on the drive you just put XP onto; otherwise, if you don't have any sort of recovery applications, let me know and I'll point you to some free or low-cost apps you can download and install.

EDIT: If you have Getdataback for NTFS, go ahead and get that installed and ready to use. Keep in mind, though, that I have never worked with that particular app, so I don't know my way around it.

I have to finish up something at work, and then I'm going to be heading home, so I won't be posting for the next two or three hours.

 

Alright thank you much.

 

Keep in mind, too, that if you are logged into XP PROFESSIONAL with the admin account, you can change permissions on your documents folder, and possibly even on your Vista documents folder (in XP Home, you need to boot into safe mode to access the administrator account):

My Computer
Locate the file or folder in question
Right Click -> Properties
Click on the Security tab
Click Advanced
Click on the Owner Tab.
In the change owner box, click the new owner.

To Display the Security Tab:
Tools Menu -> Folder Options
Select the View tab
Uncheck "Use Simple File Sharing" (most likely near the bottom of the list)


Again, I'm not sure if you can actually change the permissions on Vista's folders from XP, or vice-versa, but it's worth a shot, because you can use a new XP installation to get at locked files this way.

 

hey if you find at sometime you cant boot to vista its pretty easy to repair the boot record..

place the vista disk in the drive and reboot again. when given the options click start with command prompt option.

now at the c: prompt type:

bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
bootrec /RebuildBcd

in that order and hit enter in between each command.

this removes any old on if there is one and creates a new one or repaires the one that is bad..

i do not believe this works for xp but at least it would have allowed you to boot to vista and then try to fix the issue with the first drive

 

Thanks! I managed to install xp and access myn documents folders through xp and got all the media I needed. I am now formatting the drive the media was on and when its done i'm going to try and reinstall ultimate. If it does what it did before (in which I'm sure it will), I will mosdef try that. Thx

And Eleison, I only have XP Home with SP 2, sry. But I guess it didn't matter. I managed to back my stuff up, so all i have to do is reinstall ALL MY SOFTWARE!!!!! .........

BUT It's all good in the hood I guess....

 

Did you manage to get all of your treasures back? If so, that's fantastic!

Reinstalling everything is a grandious pain in the tuckus - I know because, until I got smart and made a full cloned backup image, I had the ... pleasure ... of doing two complete reinstallations on this stinky little vaio from the factory reinstall CDs from _Sony, which only have XP SP1a, meaning that after doing the restore from the CDs, I got to spend the next three nights updating everything and then reinstalling all of my various apps.

So, once you get your system set to where you want it, take an evening to go through the tedious process of cloning a backup image. Also, keep an archived backup copy of every installation package you download - makes it a lot easier than trying to find everything again on the web, or trying to convince the company that originally took your money that you really did lose your installation and that you need a second copy of the installation package.

At any rate, I'm glad you got your data files back - that's the truly irreplaceable stuff.

 

Yes I have gotten my treasures back. All I gotta do is reinstall everything. The 3 biggest that'll take a bit are GoW and Assassin's Creed and download 150 mb of windows updates. I'm just grateful my media is intact and ok. Thx a lot guys you really helped me through that crisis. I really appreciate it, especially shyster.

Thx

Pimpaholic

 

Aww, shux! Still, you did the hard work, so you deserve just as much credit; we're just the armchair quarterbacks - you're the one with skin in the game.