Chris L

A friend has managed to crash her PC running Win ME. I haven't got all the details, but as far as I know, the PC froze up while running Nero CD burner software. Now the PC cannot reboot from the hard drive.

I was on the phone to her tonight, talking her through using the Tiny recovery diskette and CD - without success. She has tried recovering the drive to a known point, but there isn't one! She doesn't want to reinstall as she is afraid that she will lose all her files - including lots of photos etc. She hasn't created her own rescue disk or boot disk either (few people do..)

I'm assuming that the crash has corrupted a segment on the hard drive, which is why it isn't booting from the hard drive. Is it worth trying to get into DOS and run Scandisk?

Any recommendations for recovery programs or advice on what to do next? I can see myself going over tomorrow night to try and recover this (I'll be taking my laptop to download stuff if necessary).

Help!

Thanks
Chris

ChrisB

Try an F8 and boot into "Command prompt only" to hit it with a Scandisk?

Where does it hang on boot mate?

Chris L

Chris - thanks - I'll update this tonight. I've managed to get hold of an ME boot disk, so if all else fails, I will try this.

Cheers
Chris

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Sounds like a HDD failure to me.

Chris L

That's what I'm fearing I hope not though.

Chris

Chris L

A few more details. I managed to boot the system using a Win ME boot disk. During the boot up, I get a message saying that Win ME has detected that drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition I've tried running scandisk, but it runs very quickly - too quickly and reports no problems.

Not looking good. I was going to suggest trying to recover the data via a specialist firm, although this is not cheap. Any other thoughts?

Chris

Chris L

Any thoughts fellow IT techy people? I could do with a bit of help.

Thanks
Chris

Mick

iTrader: (1)

I had a problem on my machine when I 'upgraded' from Nero 5.0 to 5.5 off the web. Darn thing completely froze.

I also had a similar problem recently with the file structure disappearing. When scan disk did it's thing all the new salvage diretories contained pretty much all the data still so I was able to retrieve everything to another drive using dosshell and a mouse driver before re-installing windows - pretty handy - both fit on a floppy and can get you out of a sticky situation sometimes - can e-mail if you want!

Another way might be to reinstall windows into another directory...

Good Luck

Mick

Patriot

If you can boot into DOS you may be able to restore it to it's last known good registry point by typing 'scanreg/ restore'
this should bring a few good registry points up and you can carry on booting from there....might work ok.

Martin

Chris L

Thanks guys. Martin I tried the scanreg trick without any luck. I like the idea of reinstalling Windows in a different directory - that may work. As far as I can tell, the hard drive is working, so I think it is worth a try.

Cheers
Chris

GC8

Chris; have to tried the command: fdisk /mbr repeat three times. Run from the command prompt, you will need a Windows 98 startup diskette to do this. It looks as though the partition has been damaged though and there isnt really a way to fix this that I can recall. I used to do this for 8 hours a day but Im surprised how quickly you lose it when you stop.

Simon

Chris L

Thanks Simon - this is Win ME - does that make a difference? What are your thoughts on reinstalling windows?

Chris

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

The partition table is corrupt, u WILL lose all the data unless as u said, use a specialist service to recover the data

However as said try using fdisk /mbr in DOS to fix the master boot record, as this might be the only thing that is corrupt. If that works then you will be able to recover the data. I'm not sure about ME but I think u can do this booting from the ME floppy disc. If not then get hold of a win98 bootdisc from www.bootdisk.com

If all else fails then u need to then fdisk it again properly to set the partition(s) u want to use, and then format it and reinstall from scratch. Obviously all data will be lost, but at least u will have windows up and running again. That is if the HDD is indeed working properly :/

Mick

iTrader: (1)

I have an 80 Gig HD and split it just incase of this sort of problem.

20 Gig for OS and stuff that needs to be on C:

Everything else, other SW, documents, photos music etc can go on D:

Then if format of C: is required the other data is still available after reinstalling OS...

Not much help now, but maybe when rebuilding HD?

Mick

Chris L

Thanks Mick - not a bad idea. This is not my PC, but I'll try and set it up properly this time

Thanks to everyone else for your help too - it is very much appreciated. I'll let you know how I get on

Chris

GC8

Sorry this is so late; the reason that you need a Windows 98 boot diskette is because '98 was the last version which included DOS, so its needed for a WinME or a WinXP system too. With the boot diskette; (which anyone with a Win98 system can provide from: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add & Remove Programs 'Startup Disk' tab) check the boot sequence, it needs to be either A; C: or C: A: and boot with the diskette inserted. Leave it to do its thing then, from the command prompt type: fdisk /mbr and press return. Repeat this by press ing the F3 key followed by the return key, then repeat once more. Remove the diskette and attempt to boot from the fixed disk. In my experience this might be sucessfull in 25% of cases. if it isnt your only choice is to boot from the diskette again, FDisk and re-set the partition. In this circumstance the data on the fixed disk will be lost. The /mbr switch re-writes the master boot record btw; when this becomes corrupted the system wont see the fixed disk even though the BIOS detects it.

Simon

Mick

iTrader: (1)

For alternative boot disk files (or lost ones ) You can down load from here...

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

cheers

Mick