Ultimate Boot CD

Long story short I am helping a friend whos HDD crashed and he runs his business out of his computer and NO he didnt back anything up. I have used Knoppix to try and see if it could solve my debacle. Unfortunetly, Knoppix was unable to see my faulty drive. There is important data on that drive that I really need to transfer to a new drive that is running XP. The new drive is going to be used only for a backup for the faulty drive if I can get in there and back the files up.

I was getting a stop error: 0x0000000A. Now it is in a boot loop. So I put in the new HDD XP Upgrade (FAT32) as slave and the faulty as Master. So far so good. Then I boot up knoppix and only the Slave drive shows up. The faulty drive is not displayed and when I try to access through a partition prog it gives me an error. So I then put in XP boot cd and it cant even tell what file system it has??! So, Im now using UBCD and none of the progs will boot.
The CPU for this comp is AMD. Do I need to run UBCD off an Intel, I can do that if need be. I just wanna get this guys HDD bootable. Help please.

> I was getting a stop error: 0x0000000A. Now it is in a boot

This would seem to indicate the drive isn't completely dead
since it can read the boot sector and attempts to load windows.

> loop. So I put in the new HDD XP Upgrade (FAT32) as slave
> and the faulty as Master. So far so good. Then I boot up
> knoppix and only the Slave drive shows up. The faulty drive

This supprises me since the system is able to boot up to the
point of the stop message. Knoppix's ability to boot and
access IDE drives is excellent. Make SURE you are booting
Knoppix with the following bootcodes (cheatcodes):
nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab

the last two are very important since otherwise, Knoppix may try
to mount and write to the drive; potentially catistrophic when
trying to recover data.

> is not displayed and when I try to access through a partition
> prog it gives me an error. So I then put in XP boot cd and
> it cant even tell what file system it has??! So, Im now

But it does detect the drive?

> using UBCD and none of the progs will boot.
> The CPU for this comp is AMD. Do I need to run UBCD off an
> Intel, I can do that if need be. I just wanna get this guys
> HDD bootable. Help please.

I wouldn't count on making the drive bootable; I'd just focus on
getting his data off to your new drive.

I seems many have had trouble booting to the latested UBCD (3.3).
You can look for UBCD 3.2 (if you can find one), which seems to
have had better luck in booting on systems. However, given what
you describe, I would not expect better results with utilities
on UBCD.

If it were me, I'd perform the following in order:

- Make sure you're not using his system. Use a different one to
eliminate any chance it's hardware (pwr supply, memory, mboard, etc).

- Connect failed as master, new as slave. Double check jumpers and
connections.

- Boot to Knoppix with the parms I listed.
- If Knoppix fails, try XP boot CD, but don't repair.

- If you can see the drive but are unable to access the partition then
the partition is corrupt. If that's the case then you'll need a until
to repair it. Before doing so I'd "dd" or "partimage" the drive.
I don't know of any free utils to repair a bad partition; I have used
Acronis Disk Director to repair corrupt or deleted partitions with
great success.

- If you can't see the drive through XP Boot or Knoppix or it's
intermittent then I'd:

- Spinrite the disk $

and as a last resort I'd see how much OnTrack wanted to recover
(they take the drive apart). If that was too much and I was looking
at complete loss; I'd do the freezer trick. It's worked for me 1 out
of 4 times.

It's important to perform recovery in a particular order since you
don't know what the exact failure is. Any operation that writes
to the disk could make a bad situation worse (like Knoppix without
those parms). Try all read only recover options first; if those
fail, image the drive, then start your repair/recovery operations.
Note that Acronis Trueimage and Ghost images may not work since
they want to read the partition; "dd" is best since it doesn't care.

Hey bldrdash, Ive been to 6 repair sites with 20,000+ members and all of the advice isnt 2% of what you just gave me so I have to give credit where credit is do. You do this for a living?


>This would seem to indicate the drive isn't completely dead
>since it can read the boot sector and attempts to load windows.

Right, but it doesnt hang on the blue stop sccreen, it just flashes it for a second then reboots. If that means anything.


>This supprises me since the system is able to boot up to the
>point of the stop message. Knoppix's ability to boot and
>access IDE drives is excellent. Make SURE you are booting
>Knoppix with the following bootcodes (cheatcodes):
>nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab

Im using the new version of Knoppix with GUI. Ive taken it out of its host computer like you said and put it in another. It still does not show up on the KDE (desktop)

>But it does detect the drive?

Yes, XP boot CD does detect the drive, but it says to the right in brackets [Unkown]
The slave drive is detected to and it says: [FAT32]


>I wouldn't count on making the drive bootable; I'd just focus on
>getting his data off to your new drive.

I agree 100% Ive been working on this for a week.

>It seems many have had trouble booting to the latested UBCD (3.3).
>You can look for UBCD 3.2 (if you can find one), which seems to
>have had better luck in booting on systems. However, given what
>you describe, I would not expect better results with utilities
>on UBCD.

I just ran UBCD on my comp and it runs smooth and fine.


>If it were me, I'd perform the following in order:

> Make sure you're not using his system. Use a different one to
>eliminate any chance it's hardware (pwr supply, memory, mboard, etc).

Check

> Connect failed as master, new as slave. Double check jumpers and
>connections.

Check

> Boot to Knoppix with the parms I listed.
> If Knoppix fails, try XP boot CD, but don't repair.

Check

>If you can see the drive but are unable to access the partition then
>the partition is corrupt.

>If that's the case then you'll need a until to repair it.

What do you mean?

>Before doing so I'd "dd" or "partimage" the drive.
>I don't know of any free utils to repair a bad partition; I have used
>Acronis Disk Director to repair corrupt or deleted partitions with
>great success.

OK, I guess if we make it this far we are getting somewhere. Disk Director, sounds like a worthy investment. Think it will work in my situation. After I repair the partition, which I have a feeling that it is damaged, then I will be able to see it knoppix. Should this remedy my problem?




> If you can't see the drive through XP Boot or Knoppix or it's
intermittent then I'd:

> Spinrite the disk $

Well I can see it in XP boot, but not Knoppix. So what do you think about that?



>and as a last resort I'd see how much OnTrack wanted to recover
>(they take the drive apart). If that was too much and I was looking
>at complete loss; I'd do the freezer trick. It's worked for me 1 out
>of 4 times.

OnTrack a team? they got a web site? Is this like last last resort.
Whats a freezer trick?

Thanks

> have to give credit where credit is do. You do this for a living?

Not specifically, but have been called in on data recovery jobs
many times.

>
> Right, but it doesnt hang on the blue stop sccreen, it just
> flashes it for a second then reboots. If that means anything.

In my experience, I've seen this when the system RAM was defective,
bad video or disk driver. Since you've swapped systems, the first
one isn't it. I imagine that you tried booting into Safe mode to
eliminate the last two. Then again, if the XP boot CD can't determine
the partition type, it's not even getting to the stage of loading
drivers.

>
>
> >This supprises me since the system is able to boot up to the
> >point of the stop message. Knoppix's ability to boot and
> >access IDE drives is excellent. Make SURE you are booting
> >Knoppix with the following bootcodes (cheatcodes):
> >nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab
>
> Im using the new version of Knoppix with GUI. Ive taken it
> out of its host computer like you said and put it in another.
> It still does not show up on the KDE (desktop)

Try the following with both Knoppix and Insert (assuming you have
UBCD Full): At the bootprompt (cheatcode prompt)

boot: knoppix 2 nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab
(For Insert in UBCD, hit F7, then F1, then..)
boot: insert 2 nosound noapic noscsi nodma noswap nofstab

At this point you should be at a command prompt. Type the
following:
fdisk -l
(That's l as in Larry)

This should be quite telling. You should see /dev/had
and /dev/hdb with both drives attached. Post the results.
The reason I'm suggesting both Knoppix and Insert is that
Knoppix is running a 2.6 Kernel and Insert is running 2.4.
When it comes to plain old IDE, both should detect drives
reliably but just to be sure...

> Yes, XP boot CD does detect the drive, but it says to the
> right in brackets [Unkown]
> The slave drive is detected to and it says: [FAT32]

OK, sounds like a corrupt partition.

> >If you can see the drive but are unable to access the partition then
> >the partition is corrupt.
>
> >If that's the case then you'll need a until to repair it.
>
> What do you mean?

I think I meant util; meaning a program designed to repair
corrupt partitions. I don't know of any open source or
free programs that do this; for $50 Disk Director has been
a good investment for me. Note that it uses Linux. If
Knoppix or Insert can't see the drive Disk Director may
not be able to either; but I've found it's device support
better than both Knoppix and Insert.

> OK, I guess if we make it this far we are getting somewhere.
> Disk Director, sounds like a worthy investment. Think it
> will work in my situation. After I repair the partition,
> which I have a feeling that it is damaged, then I will be
> able to see it knoppix. Should this remedy my problem?
> Well I can see it in XP boot, but not Knoppix. So what do
> you think about that?

Knoppix's inability to see the drive and XP's ability to see
it but not determine the partition type are two different issues.
But, I'm not 100% sure Knoppix can't see the drive. I'm not too
familiar with the GUI (KDE) tools in Knoppix so I stick to the
command line. The fdisk -l should tell us if it can see the
drive, and even if it can determine the partition type.
If the partition recovery works, then you should be able to
access it through all your utilities.

>
> OnTrack a team? they got a web site? Is this like last last resort.
> Whats a freezer trick?

OnTrack is a company that's been around for awhile. I used them
10+ years ago; it cost more than 10K. That's really only an option
when the cost of recovery is insignificant in comparison to data lost.
http://www.ontrack.com/ They also sell recovery software, which I
have not used. It appears only to recover files, not repair the
entire partition. Looks like they have a free trial that would identify
the files it could recover. Note there is a difference between a
failed drive and a corrupt partition. Only solution to a failed
drive is sending it in or freezing it.

The freezer trick is a last resort when the system can't even recognize
the drive. Search "HDD Freezer" on google. But, since that does not
seem to be your problem (XP can see it), I wouldn't try.

So, given your current status, I'd do the following:

- Test Knoppix and Insert at command line.
- If you can see the drive, report back cause then I'd
"dd" it before performing a partition recovery. Note
when I say "dd", I mean the unix utility dd, and not
Disk Director.
- If you made a backup with dd or, if you simply couldn't
see the drive through Knoppix or Insert, then I'd go
ahead with Disk Director. Download and install on a
working machine, create a boot disk, then insert in the
system with the failed drive. The recovery could take
4-8hrs. depending upon how big the partition is.
- If recovery works, copy files from it immediately.

Update: I have found out alot in the last 3 days. Well I realized that there was a bad partition. So I used this prog called Hard Drive Mechanic($70). Worked like a charm. So I dl it and ran it form floppy. It fixed a damaged boot sector and now I can repair missing or damaged files. My error screen has changed completely, easier to troubleshoot. Maybe you can help me with this, it says im missing the following from my faulty drive:


1. Normal
2. Logged (\BOOTLOG.TXT)
3. Safe mode
4. Step-by-step confirmation
5. Command prompt only
6. Safe mode command prompt only

Enter a choice: (Any choice prompts the following below)

Warning: Windows has detected a registry/configuration error.
Choose command prompt only and run SCANREG.

(SCANREG prompts error too)

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS

The following is missing or corrupted: COMMAND.COM

Type the name of the COMMAND INTERPRETER (e.g., C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)

C>_


Im guessing if I had a Windows 98 boot CD maybe I could fix this? XP boot CD will not give me an option to repair and the partition is still [Unkown]. So the question is how can I get these missing files back in memory drive. Whats the going rate for Win 98 boot CD, been awhile.

The hard disk is failing (most likely), I'd recommend getting "Get Data Back for FAT" from Runtime.org and installing that on another system, then installing the failing drive so the program can recover the data.

They also have a trial version that allows you to see individual files but not recover the entire drive.

This is not usefull for the poster of the message, but maybe for other users.
To repair corrupt partion tables, use testdisk (included in UBCD).
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

See also: viewtopic.php?p=4112#4112