Computer failure

JohnnyN

Well, my pc is buggered! Switched on this morning and it went to a black prompt page that said windows/sys32/blah file corrupt or missing. It won't load up. So it's down at PC World now. Let the cash cow start mooing!

MikeS

johnny it is just corrupt registry entries on your os

i can fix it in 30 mins through recovery console and reinstalling your old registry entries for you to boot up and system restore to most recent

u can post hard drive and i do it for a small fee or call me out and i can do it

pc world will say it is a hardware fault and charge u loads

i am restarting my IT business 😛

JohnnyN

i've already had to pay out £99.99 this afternoon for them to start the job!

MikeS

and what does the job entail

JohnnyN

Hard drive recovery as a worst case. If its not as serious then part of the money is refunded. I'm so pissed off about this.

vocky

it's like shredding ten pound notes getting pc world to look at a pc 🙁

MikeS

it wont be a hard drive failure as the partition is still active

two ways of doing it with xp for example

install xp using cd then come to screen and press R to repair instead of install
use recovery console and go the long winded way of moving registry entries around which is quite hard for the everyday computer use4r

Sjdickso

As mentioned two ways before a full rebuild.

Insert XP cd let it boot go to the recovery consol and then run a check disk command with a repair or do a full windows repair if the partion can be seen.

Other wise get the drive out in a caddy to get documents off then a rebuild.

MikeS

check disk wont do anything

it is the contents of your system32/config folder that is the problem

ie // config/ sam
//config/software
//config/security

Sjdickso

I have found that a checkdisk / repair somtimes works otherwise a full windows repair would 95% fix if the active windows partion can been seen.

MikeS

checkdisk just checks each cluster for damage

i seen xp repair itself with checkdisk on boot with a raid 0 setup

jonhnny n's most recent xp state is corrupted and it wont boot as a result, u can do the noob repair and just replace all your sys .dll files but if your clever enough and want everything the way it was last time then do the long winded registry modding

Sjdickso

You are correct but as said with the below command i have been able to restore a machine, other wise like you say the "NOOB" full windows restore will just replace all .dll and get it back to the origanal working state.

Chkdsk is available from the Windows Recovery Console and can be a very valuable tool in dealing with a system that does not boot properly. The command has got many systems rescued by the Recovery Console command
chkdsk C: /R
Switches for the Chkdsk command in the Recovery Console are not the same as those in Table I. There are only two:
/P : Does an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors. Does not check for bad sectors

/R : Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. Includes functions of /P

Sjdickso

Why would you not try a checkdisk first as it only takes 25 - 40 mins to run?

MikeS

you talking about a hardware related fault

johnny's problem is down to a weakness in the coding of xp, the problem he suffers will appear on everyone's xp install, it is a matter of time

if you understand this then you will see where i am coming from
md tmp
copy c:\windows\system32\config\system c:\windows\tmp\system.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\software c:\windows\tmp\software.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\sam c:\windows\tmp\sam.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\security c:\windows\tmp\security.bak
copy c:\windows\system32\config\default c:\windows\tmp\default.bak

delete c:\windows\system32\config\system
delete c:\windows\system32\config\software
delete c:\windows\system32\config\sam
delete c:\windows\system32\config\security
delete c:\windows\system32\config\default

copy c:\windows\repair\system c:\windows\system32\config\system
copy c:\windows\repair\software c:\windows\system32\config\software
copy c:\windows\repair\sam c:\windows\system32\config\sam
copy c:\windows\repair\security c:\windows\system32\config\security
copy c:\windows\repair\default c:\windows\system32\config\default

all your doing here in the recovery console is removing files from the config registry and moving the registry from the first time ever u booted up in xp from install [secret folder that m$ dont tell you it's use] to enable boot up and the use of system restore, if you turned off system restore then this process is pretty much useless as most of your programs registry are removed

Sjdickso

I do understand all the above. And i understand what the chkdsk does and full repair.

The above can help with a software / hardware issue. I did not mention either.

You dont need system restore on to do this either.

You are saying that every XP machine out will bomb out with error?

MikeS

you dont need system restore but if it is not enabled then u have never saved any restore points meaning you have to start afresh from day1 concerning the configuring of xp

if that is the case then do it the noob way via repair facility on xp disc

yes i am saying every machine will do it, might take a few years might not

it is more common on gaming rigs under high loads

i take it your a teacher dickso - what you qualified in

Sjdickso

MikeS said:
you dont need system restore but if it is not enabled then u have never saved any restore points meaning you have to start afresh from day1 concerning the configuring of xp

I dont agree with you on this, either that or i have not understood your comment.

No i am not a teacher.

End of the day we are just trying get Johnnys system back up and running with minimal cost. I dont think it matters which way resolves the issue.

MikeS

the repair folder keeps a copy of the system32/config folder from the initial boot up after install

if system restore is not enabled then you have no other saved system state apart from above

i dont know wot your trying to say ?

chkdsk will recover lost data as a result of hard drive failure - how can it if there is no template to go by, it will recover partition data to an extent

if you want to get technical then actually go into the boot record and fix the problem to make it bootable, look for the number 80 in hex

if chkdsk was this functional then what would be the point of mirrored raid arrays etc

Sjdickso

Raid and chkdsk?

I feel this going OT as you are now talking about raid = speed and fault tolerance a totally different subject then fixing a corrupt registry .

MikeS

chkdsk does not fix corrupted registry

chkdsk is mainly a diagnostic program to diagnose hard drive failures

u can use chkdsk /r to recover damaged clusters but by then i would think about changing the hard drive as the warning signs are there already

chkdsk is not a complete functional program to recover data, it recovers clusters and more times than most it creates further problems by turning the data into crappy little extensions thus making it even harder [.chk on c:\ root ], this happened on early viruses where it would corrupt your data and partition table and ppl used chkdsk or scandisk and it ended up converting the majority of the hard drive data to .chk file associations

as for raid 0 i use that on 2 x sata2 500gb drives for my pron collection and movies, i like speed and bandwidth for encoding and archiving
i never bothered with mirrored raid or raid1+0 as my skills are complete to recover data from most failures, i am currently experimenting with DOD purge algorithms concerning data recovery as i want to see how recoverable data is even after purging incase ppl try to recover data from hard drives i sell on

if you have access to another computer then i would drop the hard drive into that and use active data recovery software to recover your personal stuff but here all i am talking about is recovering an operating system from a non bootable state to get it working again

my latest coup is recovering data from raid arrays that have had a drive failure

cheesus man i feel like i am getting grilled here

if you want to question my credentials i am more than happy to send you copies of my BSc in Network engineering and MSc in network security diplomas [incomplete]