Repair installation crashes disk

[Steve Wright]

I have recently been forced to perform a repair installation of XP Home due
to a corrupted registry message.

The repair installation left we with no option but to format the hard disc
and perform a full new clean installation.

When the machine tried to boot, the boot record (or whatever) has been
cleaned and now the disk is totally inoperational.

So any ideas on how to repair the disk? The disk is an 500g Seagate an less
than 2 years old with light use.

Let me be clear - the disk was working fine, until XP reformatted it. Now
the disc is trashed.

 

[Paul]

I have recently been forced to perform a repair installation of XP Home due
to a corrupted registry message.

The repair installation left we with no option but to format the hard disc
and perform a full new clean installation.

When the machine tried to boot, the boot record (or whatever) has been
cleaned and now the disk is totally inoperational.

So any ideas on how to repair the disk? The disk is an 500g Seagate an less
than 2 years old with light use.

Let me be clear - the disk was working fine, until XP reformatted it. Now
the disc is trashed.

Start, by slaving it to another computer, for a look. In other words,
another computer has a working boot disk, and the trashed disk can be
connected as a data disk. Is it still visible ? Can you save the
user data files at least ? Google on "Take Ownership", if the host
computer is denied access to the files.

And you should be as clear as possible, about what has happened. A repair
install should not format the disk. Maybe something like a clean install
could do that, but you'd know, when heading down that road, there
would be consequences. You need to explain as clearly as you can, what
steps you followed. You can search one of the image search engines,
for a picture of what screen you were using.

http://www.altavista.com/image/default

http://images.google.ca/imghp?hl=en&tab=gi

A repair install, finds an existing partition, so that it can copy
over the system files again.

http://philscomputerrepair.com/images/xp_repair_install.jpg

A clean install, might have offered an option like this. This case,
might be with a new disk, which has no file system on it. If the
file system for C: was damaged, or the partition table was missing,
you might have seen this (followed by your "format" operation).
And if "C:" was listed, and you selected C:, then that would be
a different scenario. Someone helping you, needs to know as precisely
as possible, what you saw, and what you did.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/images/XP Home Setup Graphic/FF.gif

If a partition table was damaged, you can use TestDisk to fix that.
Of course, the more operations you've done after that, the more
damage you've done. Some of these tools aren't going to do anything
productive, if you've done too many things to the disk. TestDisk can
even find partitions which were deleted long ago, and when I was
testing this, in fact I didn't want that partition to come back.
So the configuration it offers to you, might not be what you want.
You need some idea, how many partitions were on the drive before,
to know whether to accept and write out, a new partition table.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

Formatting doesn't necessarily delete everything, so there may still
be some stuff you can salvage.

If you want to try a file scavenger, and copy whatever can be found
off the trashed disk, you can try this. One poster a while back,
got some data off a drive using this. You would likely need a spare
disk, to provide enough space for recovery.

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/WoundedMoon/win32/driverescue19d.html

Some of the endless stream of $39.95 data recovery applications,
will offer to scan a disk to see if they can see some data. And
then, to actually get the data, you have to pay them for a license
key or whatever.

Paul

 

[Steve Wright]

Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry,
what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

 

[Paul]

Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry,
what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

The Windows registry, consists of five files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_registry

%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\:

# Sam – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM
# Security – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY
# Software – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
# System – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
# Default – HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

There is an example here, of copying some files from a repair
directory, to the config directory. You'll notice in the
procedure, they make backup copies of the original files.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I'm not an IT guy, so that is just a hint at the possibilities. Since the
repair files are smaller than the original ones, there should be
"side effects" from copying the repair ones. I don't know if the
intention is to use the original ones again at some point or not.

OK, I downloaded the Guided Help file 307545.exe, and in one of the
text files, it mentions:

"Then, restore the registry to a recent restore point that was created
before the registry became corrupted."

So to get around the mess, that copying the repair registry over would
make, they are suggesting you use a System Restore point, to restore the
original registry (a date from before this happened). That is how the
registry gets returned to its more normal, bloated self

So once the "Repair" registry files are copied over, you reboot, and
run System Restore, to put the system back the way it was.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry,
what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

[Reposted - I have to be careful, which news server I use, as there is a
partition between the Microsoft web site, and the USENET groups of
the same name. I can never be sure these will get through...]

The Windows registry, consists of five files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_registry

%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\:

# Sam – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM
# Security – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY
# Software – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
# System – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
# Default – HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

There is an example here, of copying some files from a repair
directory, to the config directory. You'll notice in the
procedure, they make backup copies of the original files.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I'm not an IT guy, so that is just a hint at the possibilities. Since the
repair files are smaller than the original ones, there should be
"side effects" from copying the repair ones. I don't know if the
intention is to use the original ones again at some point or not.

OK, I downloaded the Guided Help file 307545.exe, and in one of the
text files, it mentions:

"Then, restore the registry to a recent restore point that was created
before the registry became corrupted."

So to get around the mess, that copying the repair registry over would
make, they are suggesting you use a System Restore point, to restore the
original registry (a date from before this happened). That is how the
registry gets returned to its more normal, bloated self

So once the "Repair" registry files are copied over, you reboot, and
run System Restore, to put the system back the way it was.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry,
what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

[ One more time, from aioe.org ]

The Windows registry, consists of five files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_registry

%SystemRoot%\System32\Config\:

# Sam – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM
# Security – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY
# Software – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
# System – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM
# Default – HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT

There is an example here, of copying some files from a repair
directory, to the config directory. You'll notice in the
procedure, they make backup copies of the original files.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

I'm not an IT guy, so that is just a hint at the possibilities. Since the
repair files are smaller than the original ones, there should be
"side effects" from copying the repair ones. I don't know if the
intention is to use the original ones again at some point or not.

OK, I downloaded the Guided Help file 307545.exe, and in one of the
text files, it mentions:

"Then, restore the registry to a recent restore point that was created
before the registry became corrupted."

So to get around the mess, that copying the repair registry over would
make, they are suggesting you use a System Restore point, to restore the
original registry (a date from before this happened). That is how the
registry gets returned to its more normal, bloated self

So once the "Repair" registry files are copied over, you reboot, and
run System Restore, to put the system back the way it was.

Paul

 

[Anna]

I have recently been forced to perform a repair installation of XP Home due
to a corrupted registry message.

The repair installation left we with no option but to format the hard disc
and perform a full new clean installation.

When the machine tried to boot, the boot record (or whatever) has been
cleaned and now the disk is totally inoperational.

So any ideas on how to repair the disk? The disk is an 500g Seagate an
less
than 2 years old with light use.

Let me be clear - the disk was working fine, until XP reformatted it. Now
the disc is trashed.

Paul,

Thanks for your input and worthy comments.

Can I pick your brains a little further - if I have a corrupted registry,
what is the best way to repair it without doing a repair installation?

Steve.

Steve...
Although it's not entirely clear from your first post I'm assuming that the
Repair install of the XP OS failed and you subsequently fresh-installed the
OS as a consequence. Is that right?

And apparently (although again it isn't clear from your post) that
fresh-install didn't "take" and now you state "the disk is totally
inoperational". Do I correctly understand the sequence of events up to now?

If that is so, you should without delay first check out the HDD with the
Seagate HDD diagnostic utility available from Seagate's site. Since you
didn't mention anything about this I'm assuming you haven't already done so.

It's conceivable you may be simply dealing with a defective or failing HDD.
In any event it should be checked out. If it proves defective it may be
covered by Seagate's warranty.

Forget about repairing a "corrupted registry". If the Repair install of the
OS didn't correct things, that is that. At this point (assuming you've
fresh-installed - or tried to fresh-install - the OS, there's no practical
way to "repair" a "corrupted registry".

Naturally we're assuming that when you fresh-installed the OS the disk was
correctly installed/connected and you correctly undertook the process.
Anna

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

I have recently been forced to perform a repair installation of XP Home due
to a corrupted registry message.

The repair installation left we with no option but to format the hard disc
and perform a full new clean installation.

When the machine tried to boot, the boot record (or whatever) has been
cleaned and now the disk is totally inoperational.

So any ideas on how to repair the disk? The disk is an 500g Seagate an
less
than 2 years old with light use.

Let me be clear - the disk was working fine, until XP reformatted it. Now
the disc is trashed.

What kind of disk did you use to do a repair install? Was it a recovery CD
or a generic Windows XP Home type?

As you performed a clean install, Windows should be working unless there is
a physical problem with the drive itself. The fact that it is only two years
old is immaterial