app crashed Win2k, won't boot anymore

[H Gohel]

Win2000 Pro SP4 + latest patches

History of the crash:

Installed and ran Pinnacle Studio 8.10.4 (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/) on
Saturday to capture some videos and subsequently burn them on DVD/VCD.
During the capture I noticed I made a mistake, so I clicked "Stop Capture"
and the app crashed. I didn't think much of it, and attempted to restart
it...wouldn't restart. Tried to start IE6 from the desktop wouldn't
start. OK, so I thought I thought I would log-out and log-in again, and
when I did, Win2000 complained about registry problems. This time icons
would not show up on my desktop - only generic icons. So I thought I
should reboot, so I tried that, but the machine never came up again.

After the BIOS screen, it just hangs. No error messages nothing.

So I booted from the Windows 2000 CD and went to recover console. Noticed
that there was nothing on the C drive but one file (very large one
according to DIR), and the name was something funky with graphic
characters in it.

I ran two commands: fixboot, which completed ok, but didn't help in
rebooting the computer to normal, and second, I ran "chkdsk" which said
that there were errors on the disk, but still no help in normal boot.

Since then, I don't see any files on the C: drive -- not even the one with
the funky name. Went to MS KB, and read about how to copy NTDETECT.COM,
NTLDR and BOOT.INI to the machine from the CD, and did that, but those are
the only files on the drive, so Windows still doesn't boot...complains
that it's missing files in the system32 directory.

All attempts to use the recovery console - manual or automatic result in
Windows telling me that unless I have an ERD, I can't proceed, because it
could not find a valid installation on the hard disk.

I've refrained from installing Windows on the disk again, because I'm
hoping that I'll be able to recover data from it (ofcourse, I don't have a
current backup ).

Any help? Thanks very much!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

This looks pretty grim. I suspect your only chance of recovering
anything would be if you did this:
- Install the disk in some other Win2000 PC
- Try some of the tools below

If this is not an option then you can do this:
- Borrow or buy small hard disk (2 GBytes will do nicely)
- Remove your existing disk
- Install the small disk
- Install Win2000
- Install your damaged disk as a slave disk
- Try some if the tools below

Some of these tools are free, others cost money.

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/downloads.htm
http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,001CVX,.html
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz

 

[H Gohel]

Pegasus,

Thanks for your reply. Following the links you listed, I downloaded
BootMaster and that enabled me to recover the MBR records for the
parititions. However, all files are still "missing" from the boot
partition, so I think I'm going to download some file recovery programs to
see they can find anything.

At the moment I'm copying the drive over to a new drive for safety. Then
I will attempt recovery and/or installing Win2K on the new drive like you
suggested.

Out of the web sites you listed, two of them seem out of date - the ZDNet
one and the specific page at diydatarecovery.nl. What was the ZDnet link
about? Maybe I can find it if you have a cached copy lying around.

This is taking a lot of time, but I'm hopeful about the data recovery.

Thanks for your tips.

Himanshu

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/downloads.htm

The exact page is not valid, but the site is great! However DiskPatch
doesn't seem to be as easy to use as BootMaster...

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,001CVX,.html

This URL isn't valid.

http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz

BootMaster is great! It found all my attempted dual-boot partitions
which I had forgotten about.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanks for your update on the links I quoted. I collected them
from other posts, but obviously they are no longer valid.

 

[H Gohel]

Thanks for your suggestions, Pegasus. I've managed to recover most of
data from the drive...details follow:

This looks pretty grim. I suspect your only chance of recovering anything
would be if you did this:
- Install the disk in some other Win2000 PC - Try some of the tools below

If this is not an option then you can do this: - Borrow or buy small hard
disk (2 GBytes will do nicely) - Remove your existing disk
- Install the small disk
- Install Win2000
- Install your damaged disk as a slave disk - Try some if the tools

below

Here's what I had to do for the data recovery:

+ Copy the damaged partition sector-by-sector (not skipping any bit on the
drive) to a spare hard drive using Partition Commander. This took about
10 hours for 40GB.

+ Download a demo version of Runtime Software's (http://www.runtime.org/)
GetDataBack

+ Run GetDataBack on the damaged paritition to see what it can recover.
Took about 6-8 hours all together for a disk scan and recovery tree to be
built. This is where I found I could recover most of my documents and
files using this software, so I purchased a copy. Unfortunately due to
running chkdsk and attempts at manual recovery, I had overwritten parts of
the drive which meant that GDB was not able to the directory structure
back, but it was able to get all my data as far as I can see (time will
tell though).

+ Recovered the data and saved it to a second hard-disk

+ Wiped out my original hard-disk, and install the OS. Copy the recovered
data (or parts of it) to the reinstalled drive.

More importantly, here's what *NOT* to do when you disk crashes:

- Write *anything* to the disk - at all, really, nothing!
- Run chkdsk (like I did) becauase it writes data to the disk in the form
of FILE????.chk which overwrote some valuable information and hampered
complete data recovery.

Lessons learned:

+ Backup, backup, backup!
+ Separate personal data from installed programs so that it is easier to
locate and backup.
+ Make snapshots of the disk's boot record and partition info
+ Make snapshots of windows registry and make recovery disks
+ Install the Emergency Recovery Console
+ Write down license keys for software purchased online, because email may
be destroyed with a disk-crash
+ Burn service packs for 3rd party to a CD so that it doesn't need to be
located and downloaded with a system crash
+ Backup, backup, backup!


The US$69 spent on Runtime Software's GetDataBack is well worth the money.

Hope this helps someone else in a similar situation.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I wish people would read it ***before***
they're in trouble . . .

I have added a few comments to your "lessons learnt" - see below.

Thanks for your suggestions, Pegasus. I've managed to recover most of
data from the drive...details follow:



Lessons learned:

+ Backup, backup, backup!
+ Separate personal data from installed programs so that it is easier to
locate and backup.

On the many PCs I'm responsible for, I always split the hard disk:
Drive C: for the OS & apps, drive D: for data. This has three huge
advantages:
a) When Windows disgraces itself, the problem affects only drive C:
in most cases.
b) Backing up data becomes a breeze.
c) I can easily image the OS, and restore it within 30 minutes when
necessary.

+ Make snapshots of the disk's boot record and partition info

I go much further: I use an imaging program (DriveImage, Ghost)
to create an image file of drive C:. I update this file twice a year,
and keep the two most recent copies.

+ Make snapshots of windows registry and make recovery disks

Included in the image file.

+ Install the Emergency Recovery Console

Can't be bothered - imaging is much more effective.

+ Write down license keys for software purchased online, because email may
be destroyed with a disk-crash

.. . . or copy them to an other PC or laptop on a weekly basis.

+ Burn service packs for 3rd party to a CD so that it doesn't need to be
located and downloaded with a system crash

Of course!

+ Backup, backup, backup!

Every week!