having trouble recovering data

[reaper]

hi all,
here is my situation, a friend of mines sister has a pc , it boots up to blue screen
no matter what option you use, safe mode, command prompt whatever
it is windows 2000
the auto recovery cd does not work
i tried the last known good configuration, i didn't try a boot disk with boot files, but i know 4.0 and i don't know if this is any different

so what i was did, was put the hard drive in a working pc that had windows 2000
i don't even know if i would still be able to access the ntfs file system, without using another program, but i wanted to see if the data was still there.  i assume it is as windows loads till blue screen

no matter what drive the bios is set to boot of, it always loads the bad windows
i think you have to change a file on the working windows, or something to make it boot to the certain windows

i installed knoppix, a linux live cd, to access the data, and copy it to the good drive.  but for some reason it didn't work
the knoppix didn't load with the hardware of the working pc i have

can anyone help me with a solution to get the data back
prefferably with windows, and not with linux

[[BTF] Reflex]

I dunno man...  putting the drive in a working pc is where I would have gone

can't think of why its not working...  linked to the same problem that stops it from going to a prompt in the first place.

Imma forward this to my PC-Guru (Dad)  and see what he makes of it

[[BTF]Defiant!]

Sounds like an extremely frustrating problem.  There are sites on the net which will guide you through these kinds of problems, but here are some suggestions..

1) I'd think about what caused it.  Was something installed or uninstalled?  Hardware added or removed?

2) I'd try to avoid the bood drive issue by booting off of a CD/DVD.  This can be a linux disk or if you're more comfortable with Windows, you can use WinPE or BartPE http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=winpe+bart&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=winpe+bart&btnG=Google+Search.  You'll need a good machine to make the image, but once you have it you can browse around your machine without modifying it.

--> If it runs fine then you know your local disk has problems or the software on it has problems

--> If it doesn't run fine, either your bootcd is bad or, more likely, there is a hardware conflict on the machine.  Assuming a h/w problem, try running with things like funky video cards removed and replaced with a 2d card.  Also, running a mem test from the boot cd is a good idea.

3) If you have multiple disks (logical or physical) each with windows on it, you can modify the boot.ini and ntldr (NT loader) to set which gets booted to.  I don't recommend playing around with it, read up first.

4) At this point, I'd consider backing up your data, using step 2, and reinstalling.


Def

[reaper]

3) If you have multiple disks (logical or physical) each with windows on it, you can modify the boot.ini and ntldr (NT loader) to set which gets booted to.  I don't recommend playing around with it, read up first.

--that's the information i'd like --
the linux cd's aren't booting properly with the hardware

also i'm not able to modify those files on the bad windows
i suppose i could boot to dos, and run a program to access the ntfs files and modify there, if i knew what to modify it too

[[BTF]Defiant!]

3) If you have multiple disks (logical or physical) each with windows on it, you can modify the boot.ini and ntldr (NT loader) to set which gets booted to.  I don't recommend playing around with it, read up first.

--that's the information i'd like --
the linux cd's aren't booting properly with the hardware

also i'm not able to modify those files on the bad windows
i suppose i could boot to dos, and run a program to access the ntfs files and modify there, if i knew what to modify it too

I don't know of a good reference for this, recommend searching at www.google.com or www.microsoft.com's help

Def

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

Do Not Reinstall YET.
Make sure to put each drive on thier OWN IDE, Not the same IDE. Put bad drive only on Secondary IDE as Master and disconnect cdroms.
If supported, tell BIOS to boot from DRIVE 0 and "disable" second and third boot options.
It will boot with good drive. back up your files.
Now, the underlying problem is that your drives "registery" has crashed.
Since Win2K has no System Restore like ME and XP you have to have a fairly recent back up of the registry, wether it's a export of the registry, or a "system state" back up . If you have either of these you can save your installation.

If you have either of these, post here and i'll explane how to get your registry back.

If you do not have either of these. You have no chose but to reinstall.

[reaper]

i dont' think it's the registry, however i have given up on determining why windows blue screens
i believe the last known good configuration, boots to an older version of the registry anyways

as far as placing the drives i tried all different settings.  boot from disk 0 , 1, 2, 3 4 etc.. because i don't know how the bios scheme relates to the physical connections
however i didn't use another ide channel for both drives, or disconnect cd roms
i beleive you have to alter the boot.ini file to pick which windows to load
anyways thanks for the input,  i think i have to bring the drive to a pc where i can load linux from a cd to get the data off

[Art]

I had a similar situation and had to boot with an old win98 floopy to dos. I then copied all the data that way ... !@%!#@% long filenames. But my system was fat32. I/ve never used an ntfs format, so am unaware if the dos would be able to read it. I'm assuming it won't, since no one has mentioned it.

 

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

Boot,ini only alters what "installation" to boot from if you have more than one operating system on same drive

Last known Config only loads ceartain reg files that contain driver information for hardware and settings

There are 5 Reg files

Drive 0 is Primary Master, <<Diable>> all other options.

And I have never got Knoppix to copy files.
Has to do with Win2K's security settings

But, you can load recovery console from cd and copy files that way.
Just pop in Win2K cd when asked hit r to repair from recovery console

[ToxicMonkey^MZC]

WinPE, BartPE.  Case solved.

[BadBrent]

Bah...doing a repair on the hard drive is a waste of time IMO.

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

Bah...doing a repair on the hard drive is a waste of time IMO.  What you should really do is get ahold of a copy of Norton Ghost, and ghost the image of the hard drive onto a spare HD/partition if you have one.  That way you can reformat the drive, reinstall all of your OS and goodies and shit, and then install NG on the new installation and read your old drive image like a ZIP/RAR file and copy/extract data out of it.  That seems like the only logical thing to do, in my opinion any how.

Hit the Nail right on the Head with that one.

[reaper]

thanks for the help.  some of this seems  a bit to much for me.
because i just want some data of the disk

if boot.ini only deals with windows on the same disk, why is it always booting of the windows disk i don't want to use
i tried telling the bios to boot from every choice it had , disk0,1,2,3,4 , and it recognized both disks!

i'm going to put linux on a disk and copy the files that way.
whoever posted it, you can view / copy the ntfs files from linux

[reaper]

a think i need to use linux and transfer it like that.
but this is driving me crazy. with both drives in , it always boots to the bad drive.
a couple questions!

1) how do you determine if you have a cable select cable
2)how do i set my drive as slave. when all it says is this!
jumper x = master on, slave off
jumper y = cable select
jumper z = limit capacity to less than 32 gigabytes

and there's one more spot, but that's all the documentation says on the drive...

on a side note.
i have two disks, both with windows. i need to boot to one, to view the files on the other

it always boots to the bad windows
i have the good disk, come up as master, as slave, on primary and secondary ide.  always the same thing, doesn't matter what disk bios says to boot to.
i even switch the disks arrangement and same thing

i think it must be a windows thing somehow, which windows ends up booting

i will try linux and update this thread with that. i had trouble before, because the hardware wouldn't run knoppix.
but i just brought the disk to my house, and the first thing i tried was put the hard drive in my pc... same shit!!!!!!! : /

[reaper]

ok !@! i got the data off.
here is how you do it, i believe the best way, and free way : )
got hardware that works with knoppix -
put in both hard disks
copied files to a network share with samba ( i used ftp)
because you can't copy from disk to disk with linux yet, no ntfs write (although i hear there working on a good one)

i believe i could of copied from the working windows; however that would require altering boot.ini which i didn't know how or want to do.
no matter what hard drive, the bios boot at, it always load the failing windows. no matter if the disk was master or slave either ( which shouldn't of mattered, as i can configure bios)

anyways knoppix rules, and here is information how to recover data, and how to possibly fix the ntfs.sys related blue screen, code x

http://www.retosphere.de/tipsandtricks/ntfserror.php?menu_id=24&