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Forum : Windows XP Hardware
Repair installation crashes disk
From: Steve Wright Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 00:56:01 -0700
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%20Home%20Setup%20Graphic/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 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. news:guest@unknown-email.com... news:guest@unknown-email.com... 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 [Reply] Re: Repair installation crashes disk From: Mike Hall MVP Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 11:59:29 -0400 news:guest@unknown-email.com... 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 -- Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/ news:guest@unknown-email.com... Nope, formatting the drive would do no physical damage. Run the mfg's diagnostic to see if the drive is defective... if the diagnotic finds any problems...the drive should be replaced. |
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