Quake3World

scared?.. very

last night my computer decided to reboot (after an update, prolly) and stranded at the login screen. it was very slow - took about 1.5 minutes to show the password prompt after clicking on my icon - and it took ages to login. longer than my patience would allow so i thought i'd just hit the reset button.
now i get BSOD about 5 secs after the WinXP loading screen.. it doesnt even get to the logon anymore.

using the WinXP CD w/ recovery console, i tried to run a chkdsk on the HDD. it instantly tells me there was an "unrecoverable error". can't dir it either.
i tried connecting a 2nd HDD with a WinXP install, but that BSODs even earlier.. however this is a very old 20GB drive which has been laying in a shelf for about 3 years, so that might just be dead.
also tried replacing the sata cable.. no dice

trying to do a install over the current XP is no option, it tells me the drive has one partition of 160gb, filled up 100%, so it wants to format.

time to buy a new hdd and forget about this one (and everything on it ) ?

its a 160gb SATA maxtor hdd, running on XP SP2. not sure about the mobo as im at work.. an asus which supports an intel 3ghz HT and pci-e 16

Download a Ubuntu or Knoppix live CD/DVD and see if you can access (and hopefully repair) it with that.

Aye, your only hope is to attempt a recovery of the data.

Other than that, Maxtor

MAxtor's have been the only Harddrives that have Survived for a longer perioud of time on my mediacenter... its gone through 4 WD's, 3 Seagates, and its running two Maxtor's for a little over two years, powered 24/7.

though, i do run WD's in all of the other computers with no issues, its just the mediacenter that eats them. :/

also, http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

ended up getting a new drive and a celan windows install. tried to hook up the dead drive, windows recohnizes it but crashes when it tries to access.

might give that spinrite a spin (yuk).. see if i can recover some stuff thats on there. luckily theres nothing reaaalllyy important on it so yea

fucking hell, spinrite is the bomb.
totally restored the disk. tip of the century!!

i know.

well, almost.
cant access my old docs and settings folder, gives an instant "access denied" error. properties says its 0 bytes, too.

still, the drive works which is a lot more than i hoped for \o/

the premise behind spinrite is to get an otherwise seemingly inop drive to work again, so at least it got that far.

how long did you have to run it?

indeed. i dont have to resort my music catalogue, was able to copy it off the old drive. apart from what was on my desktop, theres not a whole lot on there that couldnt do with a reinstall anyways

about 11.5 hrs. it started saying it would need 6 hrs so i let it running overnight, but this morning it still had about 3 hours to go after an already 9 hours.

yeah, historically that's fairly typical with spinrite. cool, glad it worked for you.

BA isn't looking all that happy...
Well, poopoo on you, my friend

try to take control of those folders that are saying access denied, And 0 bytes..

if you can brute force control/ ownership of it in your current windows install, you'll be able to access the files and etc within it.

its just that you're on a new install, thats all.

try it out, Google if you dont know how.

It might be XP being anal about ownership / permissions. Knoppix (any Linux distro actually) simply ignores such things, so that might be what you are looking for. There is a workaround for XP but I forgot how it works.

fixT. you guys are the fucking Men.

figured it was quite the coincidence if exactly that folder would be busted.

recovered some psds i thought i lost. ownage in a can

so did you knoppix it or pwn the permissions manually?

forced control

rawr!