Help and advice please

[chudley]

I have not done nothing yet, but will try and get on to it when I get the time , just wanted a few possible thoughts from you guys before i start, in case you have encountered a similar problem.

I am looking at a mates PC for him as it has a problem and not just cos its a compaq It only gets as far as the windows splash screen before rebooting.

In safe mode it will not load either, I have reset the default settings in the bios and also reset the CMOS, no change. Everything is seated fine and no warning beeps on initial startup.

I have removed the sata drive ready to test on my machine to see if it boots fully.

I think it could be a virus but do not want to restore the system until I have tried to rescue the family photos for him (he has not backed up for a while)

Any comments or a solution more than welcome. Thanks in advance

 

[!TIMMY!]

Try taking out all ram stick, and putting in just one at a time. When I oc my ram 2 much my pc will reboot at the windows logo screen. Just a thought.

 

[deathwish]

also use the windows disk to do a check disk and a boot fix

 

[chudley]

It only has 1stick of 512MB in it

My windows disk is at my other place of residence so i may need to borrow one from next door. KNow what you are saying though.

I feel it might end up being a full restore to default and then try and use undelete@active to recover the photos.

 

[Ham]

Got another machine there?

Plug in the drive too that, take pics, wipe old drive.

Either that or burn a live CD and see if it boots off that. Generally a good indication of hardware/software.

 

[Allsorts]

Definately backup everything first. You won't be too popular if you accidentally wipe everything.

Apart from what's said above, maybe boot from windows CD and try a repair installation?

 

[chudley]

Got another machine there?

Plug in the drive too that, take pics, wipe old drive.

Either that or burn a live CD and see if it boots off that. Generally a good indication of hardware/software.

Only got 2 sata ports available on current board, which means I will have to reset the sata drivers if I plug it in - not too much hassle but should be building my new pc soon and it has 6 ports, hopefully it will help. really need to buy one of these though link

Definately backup everything first. You won't be too popular if you accidentally wipe everything.

Apart from what's said above, maybe boot from windows CD and try a repair installation?

The drama is I cant access the drive to back the stuff up just yet. I wont accidentally wipe it it will be intentional, I am just trying to rescue his pics first.

Anyone know of a virus checker that runs from cd at boot up?

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Anyone know of a virus checker that runs from cd at boot up?

Google "UBCD"

Assuming your hard disk can be accessed, as has already been said, you need to get a boot CD with built-in SATA support. If you use a Linux Live CD you should be able to burn the files you wanna keep to CD or copy them to a network share on another machine.

Try here for Live distros (I like PCLinuxOS): http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

Another option is Hiren's: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Or build yourself a Bart's PE bootdisk and add your own SATA drivers: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

HTH



TOG

 

[chudley]

Cheers Tox, I am sure the sites you have directed me to will help, even if not on this problem they are very handy links to know = reps

I have never heard of UBCD but will definately use it for something in the future.

I have Ubuntu and might give that a go or perhaps the one you mentioned PClinuxOS

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Let us know how it goes.



TOG

 

[chudley]

I have ran PClinuxOS but do not know how to explore the hard drive itself (its still got WinXP as its OS so might not show) could you help Tox?

Clicking on My PC doesnt show the C drive? I am Linux illiterate so please be gentle

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Hi mate

Sorry for the delay in getting back, I've been away.

Anyways my bad - the Live CD for PCLinuxOS doesn't have SATA support.

Give either Puppy or Slax live CDs a shot. They definitely have SATA support and NTFS read/write.

I must say my favorite recovery solution is Bart's PE, it's easily gotten me out of trouble more times than I can remember. Using PEBuilder it's real easy to integrate the exact SATA drivers for your disk controller. On mine I've also integrated the drivers for my mobo gigabit adapter and added Acronis True image to the boot CD. I can now simply boot from the CD and copy an earlier Acronis image from my NAS server (or just run chkdsk or Fix MBR). Takes a couple of minutes to boot from the CD unattended and I'm ready to go with my SATA disks detected and network shares up and running. Highly recommended.

Bart's PE is also very highly customizable and you can add loads of stuff to it. You can download a bootable USB stick version. 'UBCD For Windows' is an example of all the kind of stuff you can add.

HTH



TOG

 

[chudley]

Gonna give SLAX a go , will let you know how I get on

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

I felt a bit guilty about recommending something that didn't work for you (PCLinuxOS) so I downloaded the latest version of Puppy Live CD (only 80 MB) to double-check.

I had no problem burning files to CD from my Windows 'My Documents' folder (stored on SATA/NTFS hard disk) after booting the Puppy Live CD. Just a few clicks to do it.



TOG

 

[chudley]

Cheers Tog > goes to get puppy linux as well

 

[chudley]

Ok thought I would post the result here as I finally got it sorted. None of the above programs helped as the drive could not be detected by them due to it being corrupted.

The funny thing is it still showed as being ok when I used the ultimate boot disk to check it and also chkdsk.

Anyway the way I sorted it and recovered most of the files was by using a SATA/IDE to USB adaptor (very handy bit of kit) £24 brand new (there is one for sale in the FS section somewhere I think) This let me see the drive as an external drive in windows. I then recovered the files using PC inspector file recovery (which is free).

Another option which would have cost £40 is to buy active@bootdisk and hoped it could recover the files.

The first option was the best choice IMO as I still use the adaptor all the time.

Cheers to TOG for the help and support and hope thread helps someone in the future.

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Those adapter cables are well worth having as a standby in your toolbox.

If anybody's buying be careful because most of the ones on sale (esp. ebay) are not SATA II.

Saw one for £12 here (not that Chuds wanted to know that):

Link



TOG

 

[chudley]

^^ bugger lol