windows died and I cant access c: drive from dos

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Cardeiro
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Mike Cardeiro

Hi

I have a win xp machine that has kind of croaked, and I am trying
deperately to get some files off it. It wont launch safe mode. when I
go into windows recovery, it will not list the directory of the c
drive at the c prompt.

so I put in a floppy with md-dos, thinking I could acces the C: drive
that way, when I tried to change to the c drive it said something like
unrecognizable disk...is it because the hard disk is ntsf? is there
anything I can do to access the c drive (provided of course that it is
not fried, but I was not able to access the d drive either, which is a
completely separate hard disk)

thanks

Mike Cardeiro
 
Hi

I have a win xp machine that has kind of croaked, and I am trying
deperately to get some files off it. It wont launch safe mode. when I
go into windows recovery, it will not list the directory of the c
drive at the c prompt.

so I put in a floppy with md-dos, thinking I could acces the C: drive
that way, when I tried to change to the c drive it said something like
unrecognizable disk...is it because the hard disk is ntsf? is there
anything I can do to access the c drive (provided of course that it is
not fried, but I was not able to access the d drive either, which is a
completely separate hard disk)
Click to expand...

Booting with a DOS floppy is useless since the drive is formatted to
the NTFS file system which can not be "seen" by DOS.

Boot the system with your XP cd rom (if you have a retail copy) and
use the recovery console to access drive c. If you have a proprietary
copy of XP (for example: from Compaq, HP, etc) follow their
instruction to recover your system. Be careful using a recovery cd
as it can easily wipe out your drive!
 
from the said:
Hi

I have a win xp machine that has kind of croaked, and I am trying
deperately to get some files off it. It wont launch safe mode. when I
go into windows recovery, it will not list the directory of the c
drive at the c prompt.

so I put in a floppy with md-dos, thinking I could acces the C: drive
that way, when I tried to change to the c drive it said something like
unrecognizable disk...is it because the hard disk is ntsf? is there
anything I can do to access the c drive (provided of course that it is
not fried, but I was not able to access the d drive either, which is a
completely separate hard disk)
Click to expand...

Dos can't read NTFS disks/columnes/partitions (pick your own term),
unless you get a 3rd party add-in .. then you can read, but not write
them.

The repair console is your best bet - what does a chkdsk c: (without the
/f, in the first instance) show? Do you have a spare disk you can
install a new copy of the OS on (or another PC that already has one)
where you can mount the broken C: disk as a 'slave' and try reading it
(although if DIR C: won't list the contents, that isn't very encouraging
- I'm sure you are aware recovery console 'dir' has some restrictions,
but the root of any drive should be listable).
 
Mike said:
I have a win xp machine that has kind of croaked, and I am trying
deperately to get some files off it. It wont launch safe mode. when I
go into windows recovery, it will not list the directory of the c
drive at the c prompt.

so I put in a floppy with md-dos, thinking I could acces the C: drive
that way, when I tried to change to the c drive it said something like
unrecognizable disk...is it because the hard disk is ntsf?
Click to expand...

Yes. DOS does not handle NTFS. But there is a free add-on that should
do enough to allow you to safeguard the data: (get the zip with manual)
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm
 
I was able to access my drive with the ntsf reader boot disk and
salvage the one file that I absolutely needed...what a cool f-ing
program!

Mike Cardeiro
 
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