Damaged NTFS volume won't boot.

[Buddy Ray]

This is a tough one.
System was off this A.M. (I always leave it on) so I
assume power failure last night.
System would not boot. Comes to the splash screen then
does a STOP: (some addresses) NTFS.SYS - (some more hex
adddreses.

After working with it for a while, I'm convinced that bad
indexes or something in the structure of the NTFS drive
is crashing the NTFS.SYS.

Can't boot in safe mode or run the Recovery Console
because all of these modes attempt to mount the drive and
crash with the same error.

I replaced the drive, loaded XP and the system works fine
(so It's not HW). I then made the bad drive D: and it
crashes on boot when that drive is in the system, either
on normal, safemode or recovery boot.

I tried building an XP boot disk - but found that, due to
lack of enough space on a floppy, all that does is start
the boot and switch to the HD. Like everything else it
crashes when it mounts D:

I need a way to run Chkdsk on that drive. I know that if
chkdsk is set to run on boot, it runs before the drives
are mounted because I can force a check disk on C: and it
will run the check disk before mounting D: and crashing.
But I can't get to D: to set the bad flag, I can only run
chkdsk on C. And I can't figure out where Windows sets
the instruction to run Chkdsk on boot to see if I can add
a parameter to force it to check D:

I wouldn't be fighting this so hard, but of course this
drive contains some mission critical, unbacked up data.

All suggestions welcome - I've searched the knowledge
base all day and haven't found anything useful.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

This is a tough one.
System was off this A.M. (I always leave it on) so I
assume power failure last night.
System would not boot. Comes to the splash screen then
does a STOP: (some addresses) NTFS.SYS - (some more hex
adddreses.

After working with it for a while, I'm convinced that bad
indexes or something in the structure of the NTFS drive
is crashing the NTFS.SYS.

Can't boot in safe mode or run the Recovery Console
because all of these modes attempt to mount the drive and
crash with the same error.

I replaced the drive, loaded XP and the system works fine
(so It's not HW). I then made the bad drive D: and it
crashes on boot when that drive is in the system, either
on normal, safemode or recovery boot.

I tried building an XP boot disk - but found that, due to
lack of enough space on a floppy, all that does is start
the boot and switch to the HD. Like everything else it
crashes when it mounts D:

XP doesn't really boot from a diskette. At best, it loads drivers from
*six* diskettes and looks for the CD to run setup. Better to just boot
from CD or at worst use a W9x boot disk with CD drivers, boot, go to the CD,
change to the \i386 directory and run winnt.exe to get into the repair (not
recovery) console.

I need a way to run Chkdsk on that drive. I know that if
chkdsk is set to run on boot, it runs before the drives
are mounted because I can force a check disk on C: and it
will run the check disk before mounting D: and crashing.
But I can't get to D: to set the bad flag, I can only run
chkdsk on C. And I can't figure out where Windows sets
the instruction to run Chkdsk on boot to see if I can add
a parameter to force it to check D:

I wouldn't be fighting this so hard, but of course this
drive contains some mission critical, unbacked up data.

All suggestions welcome - I've searched the knowledge
base all day and haven't found anything useful.

If you absolutely cannot get the drive to mount, and the data is truly of
value, I will mention that data recovery services should be able to get the
data for you. These services are definitely not free.

You may not actually want to run chkdsk on that drive, but rather first just
make a raw copy to get whatever you can off of it, in case chkdsk causes
more data damage trying to fix the problem.

I'm not entirely sure from your description - you *have* booted from the CD
and gone into the repair console, not the Automated System Recovery? If you
haven't and can get there, you can just use the command prompt to manually
recover the data from the bad drive to the new one.

To this end, you might try simply using a disk-cloning utility to make a
copy of the bad drive.. assuming that you can boot from the clone-utility
floppy with the bad drive in the system. I've had decent results with
Ghost, Drive Image, and the Maxtor MaxBlast utility (which requires at least
one of the two drives to be a Maxtor product). A replacement drive won't
be that expensive and will likely come in handy later (or sooner) anyway...

HTH
-pk

 

[qwerty]

Could be corrupt mbr or bootloader or hosed/missing
system files.
Boot up with XP cd and run Fixboot command and see if
that unfudges your PC. Below is from Help and Support.

FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system
partition. The fixboot command is only available when you
are using the Recovery Console.

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This
replaces the default drive, which is the system partition
you are logged on to. An example of a drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector
to the system partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will
write a new partition boot sector to the system partition
you are logged on to.
Related Topics

 

[Malke]

XP doesn't really boot from a diskette. At best, it loads drivers
from
*six* diskettes and looks for the CD to run setup. Better to just
boot from CD or at worst use a W9x boot disk with CD drivers, boot, go
to the CD,
change to the \i386 directory and run winnt.exe to get into the
repair (not recovery) console.


If you absolutely cannot get the drive to mount, and the data is truly
of value, I will mention that data recovery services should be able to
get the
data for you. These services are definitely not free.

You may not actually want to run chkdsk on that drive, but rather
first just make a raw copy to get whatever you can off of it, in case
chkdsk causes more data damage trying to fix the problem.

I'm not entirely sure from your description - you *have* booted from
the CD
and gone into the repair console, not the Automated System Recovery?
If you haven't and can get there, you can just use the command prompt
to manually recover the data from the bad drive to the new one.

To this end, you might try simply using a disk-cloning utility to
make a copy of the bad drive.. assuming that you can boot from the
clone-utility
floppy with the bad drive in the system. I've had decent results
with Ghost, Drive Image, and the Maxtor MaxBlast utility (which
requires at least
one of the two drives to be a Maxtor product). A replacement drive
won't be that expensive and will likely come in handy later (or
sooner) anyway...

HTH
-pk

You've gotten great advice, but I'd just like to add that when I have to
rescue client data from an XP drive that crashes my own good XP
(formatted ntfs) when slaved in that box, I've had success by slaving
the bad drive in a Win98 box and then booting with Knoppix to get the
data. Knoppix, in case you don't know, is a special Linux distro that
runs entirely from a cd. The reason for slaving the bad drive in a
Win98 box is that while *reading* ntfs from Linux is supported,
*writing* to an ntfs drive (which you would have to do to copy the data
to the good XP install) is not supported. So I just copy the data to my
Win98 box and then burn it onto a cd-r.

Malke

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the great advise,
The below gives me some things to try.
It was the repair console I was trying to boot into -
don't have an Automated Recovery disk made. I was just
typing late at night after a long frustrating day.

I can't get into repair console because it tries to mount
drive D: something I think should be a controlable option.

Somewhere in the OS (it's not in Boot.ini and it happens
before the registry is read) there is something that
tells the OS loader that it needs to run Chkdsk. Does
anybody know where/how that is set?

Buddy

 

[Robert Green]

This is a tough one.
System was off this A.M. (I always leave it on) so I
assume power failure last night.
System would not boot. Comes to the splash screen then
does a STOP: (some addresses) NTFS.SYS - (some more hex
adddreses.

After working with it for a while, I'm convinced that bad
indexes or something in the structure of the NTFS drive
is crashing the NTFS.SYS.

Yes, it sounds like the volume is corrupted, which could have happened
when it came down with the power failure.

Can't boot in safe mode or run the Recovery Console
because all of these modes attempt to mount the drive and
crash with the same error.

I replaced the drive, loaded XP and the system works fine
(so It's not HW). I then made the bad drive D: and it
crashes on boot when that drive is in the system, either
on normal, safemode or recovery boot.

I tried building an XP boot disk - but found that, due to
lack of enough space on a floppy, all that does is start
the boot and switch to the HD. Like everything else it
crashes when it mounts D:

I need a way to run Chkdsk on that drive. I know that if
chkdsk is set to run on boot, it runs before the drives
are mounted because I can force a check disk on C: and it
will run the check disk before mounting D: and crashing.
But I can't get to D: to set the bad flag, I can only run
chkdsk on C. And I can't figure out where Windows sets
the instruction to run Chkdsk on boot to see if I can add
a parameter to force it to check D:

I wouldn't be fighting this so hard, but of course this
drive contains some mission critical, unbacked up data.

All suggestions welcome - I've searched the knowledge
base all day and haven't found anything useful.

Here is a fairly easy way to evaluate the situation...

At http://bootmaster.filrecovery.biz download the dual boot version
of the BootMaster rescue disk. Use it boot the system to DOS.

From the menus run ntfsFileRecovery (you might read the help file
first). This will mount the file system independently of XP, and using
the browse function you can get an idea of bad the damage is and what
is going to be recoverable.

The rescue disk also contains tools for rebuilding the MBR and partition
boot sector(s), though I don't think those are going to be involved in
this case.

Bob

Robert Green
BootMaster Partition Recovery
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz

 

[CS]

Here is a fairly easy way to evaluate the situation...

At http://bootmaster.filrecovery.biz download the dual boot version
of the BootMaster rescue disk. Use it boot the system to DOS.

From the menus run ntfsFileRecovery (you might read the help file
first). This will mount the file system independently of XP, and using
the browse function you can get an idea of bad the damage is and what
is going to be recoverable.

The rescue disk also contains tools for rebuilding the MBR and partition
boot sector(s), though I don't think those are going to be involved in
this case.

Bob

Robert Green
BootMaster Partition Recovery
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz

Are you sure that URL is a good one? Comes up as unavailable.

 

[Robert Green]

On 11 Dec 2003 14:18:24 -0800, (e-mail address removed) (Robert
Green) wrote:

Are you sure that URL is a good one? Comes up as unavailable.

Yes, it is a good URL. A couple of other folks reported some problems
yeserday - maybe the server was down for a while. But it is working
fine now.

Bob

 

[owlbird]

Hi, it's easy. Please visit http://www.ptdd.com and download Partition
Table Doctor to help you. Partition Table Doctor( PTD ) is a powerful
recovery tool for your harddisk partition tables, it checks and
repairs partition table error automatically

 

[Guest]

Thanks but this idea won't work. Note the comment in the
MS Help that "fixboot command is only available when you
are using the recovery console".

As I mentioned in my first message - when I run the
Recovery console, it uses NTFS.SYS to mount the drive as
it loads, and it's NTFS.SYS that is bluescreening when
windows loads. So it also bluescreens when the recovery
console loads.

Buddy

-----Original Message-----
Could be corrupt mbr or bootloader or hosed/missing
system files.
Boot up with XP cd and run Fixboot command and see if
that unfudges your PC. Below is from Help and Support.

FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system
partition. The fixboot command is only available when you
are using the Recovery Console.

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This
replaces the default drive, which is the system partition
you are logged on to. An example of a drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector
to the system partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will
write a new partition boot sector to the system partition
you are logged on to.
Related Topics

-----Original Message-----
This is a tough one.
System was off this A.M. (I always leave it on) so I
assume power failure last night.
System would not boot. Comes to the splash screen then
does a STOP: (some addresses) NTFS.SYS - (some more hex
adddreses.

After working with it for a while, I'm convinced that bad
indexes or something in the structure of the NTFS drive
is crashing the NTFS.SYS.

Can't boot in safe mode or run the Recovery Console
because all of these modes attempt to mount the drive and
crash with the same error.

I replaced the drive, loaded XP and the system works fine
(so It's not HW). I then made the bad drive D: and it
crashes on boot when that drive is in the system, either
on normal, safemode or recovery boot.

I tried building an XP boot disk - but found that, due to
lack of enough space on a floppy, all that does is start
the boot and switch to the HD. Like everything else it
crashes when it mounts D:

I need a way to run Chkdsk on that drive. I know that if
chkdsk is set to run on boot, it runs before the drives
are mounted because I can force a check disk on C: and it
will run the check disk before mounting D: and crashing.
But I can't get to D: to set the bad flag, I can only run
chkdsk on C. And I can't figure out where Windows sets
the instruction to run Chkdsk on boot to see if I can add
a parameter to force it to check D:

I wouldn't be fighting this so hard, but of course this
drive contains some mission critical, unbacked up data.

All suggestions welcome - I've searched the knowledge
base all day and haven't found anything useful.
.

.

 

[Pete]

I had this happen to me. There are no tools supplied with XP to recover the
damaged NTFS partition/volume that I found. Whatever this damage is, it
causes ntfs.sys to lock the volume and then crash/stop. (This is a security
feature according to NTFS.sys.) What I did was use the NTFS Reader found at
www.ntfs.com to recover any data I needed (not previously backed up). Then
reformat, repartition the drive, reinstall everything, and pray it doesn't
happen again. My HD and data aren't so big, so I went back to FAT32. There
are tools out there to clean up after XP when it is on FAT32
partition/volume. I would only use NTFS if you need its security and/or
space saving features.

Good luck!

Thanks but this idea won't work. Note the comment in the
MS Help that "fixboot command is only available when you
are using the recovery console".

As I mentioned in my first message - when I run the
Recovery console, it uses NTFS.SYS to mount the drive as
it loads, and it's NTFS.SYS that is bluescreening when
windows loads. So it also bluescreens when the recovery
console loads.

Buddy

-----Original Message-----
Could be corrupt mbr or bootloader or hosed/missing
system files.
Boot up with XP cd and run Fixboot command and see if
that unfudges your PC. Below is from Help and Support.

FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system
partition. The fixboot command is only available when you
are using the Recovery Console.

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This
replaces the default drive, which is the system partition
you are logged on to. An example of a drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector
to the system partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will
write a new partition boot sector to the system partition
you are logged on to.
Related Topics

-----Original Message-----
This is a tough one.
System was off this A.M. (I always leave it on) so I
assume power failure last night.
System would not boot. Comes to the splash screen then
does a STOP: (some addresses) NTFS.SYS - (some more hex
adddreses.

After working with it for a while, I'm convinced that bad
indexes or something in the structure of the NTFS drive
is crashing the NTFS.SYS.

Can't boot in safe mode or run the Recovery Console
because all of these modes attempt to mount the drive and
crash with the same error.

I replaced the drive, loaded XP and the system works fine
(so It's not HW). I then made the bad drive D: and it
crashes on boot when that drive is in the system, either
on normal, safemode or recovery boot.

I tried building an XP boot disk - but found that, due to
lack of enough space on a floppy, all that does is start
the boot and switch to the HD. Like everything else it
crashes when it mounts D:

I need a way to run Chkdsk on that drive. I know that if
chkdsk is set to run on boot, it runs before the drives
are mounted because I can force a check disk on C: and it
will run the check disk before mounting D: and crashing.
But I can't get to D: to set the bad flag, I can only run
chkdsk on C. And I can't figure out where Windows sets
the instruction to run Chkdsk on boot to see if I can add
a parameter to force it to check D:

I wouldn't be fighting this so hard, but of course this
drive contains some mission critical, unbacked up data.

All suggestions welcome - I've searched the knowledge
base all day and haven't found anything useful.
.

.

 

[owlbird]

Hi, it's easy. Please visit http://www.ptdd.com and download Partition
Table Doctor to help you. Partition Table Doctor( PTD ) is a powerful
recovery tool for your harddisk partition tables, it checks and
repairs partition table error automatically

 

[CS]

Hi, it's easy. Please visit http://www.ptdd.com and download Partition
Table Doctor to help you. Partition Table Doctor( PTD ) is a powerful
recovery tool for your harddisk partition tables, it checks and
repairs partition table error automatically

The web site does not mention this tool will work for any NT operating
system, ie: NT 4.0, Win2000, or XP. Do you know if it will work OK?

 

[Malke]

Hi, it's easy. Please visit http://www.ptdd.com and download Partition
Table Doctor to help you. Partition Table Doctor( PTD ) is a powerful
recovery tool for your harddisk partition tables, it checks and
repairs partition table error automatically

Why direct someone to a third-party application when XP's Recovery
Console is built-in? Boot with the XP CD and go into Recovery Console.
You can try fixmbr if the master boot record is damaged; fixboot also.
Post back with more specifics about the problem if you need more help.
Messing about with partitions if you don't know what you're doing is
dangerous if you care about the data on the drive.

Malke

 

[Pete]

The orginal post to this group is long gone. The problem described does not
allow booting to the recovery console, repair mode, safe mode or last known
good, all of which require ntfs.sys to load and access the ntfs volume.
Whatever the problem is with the ntfs volume, ntfs.sys STOPS, which stops
any boot process in its tracks, including recovery console. There is
nothing wrong with the partition info.