While in the process of using a thumb drive to move stuff between 
machines somehow the damn "disk manager" in the drive got confused, 
decided to run against the HDD, and ate my MBR and partition table. 
So... Partitions where, mostly, recovered, using testdisk. The problem 
being, this was a dual boot, so either grub is missing, or the partition 
which had its boot menu on it is gone. So, few problems:

The version of linux I had installed doesn't recognize itself on the 
drive, so can't recover.

I don't have a full copy of dos, anyplace, any more, so the tools to run 
fdisk /mbr, or the like, are not there.

Recovery console for XP insists I have an admin password (But I never 
used one on that old machine), so won't get me to a prompt, so I can do 
that.

Knoppix won't auto-mount the main drive, and attempting to dd the mbr, 
to wipe the grub loader (i.e. dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hdc bs=446 
count=1), tells me, "This is a directory"...

Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old 
machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine 
yet. :(

Post a reply to this message

On 23/04/2012 6:09 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old
> machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine
> yet. :(

Can you physically remove the HDD from your old m/c and connect it to 
the new one via a usb adaptor?
If so, easy peasy.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old 
> machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine 
> yet. :(

  I know this is just pouring salt on the wound, and it doesn't help you
solve the problem, but... Whenever you have some important data that you
don't want to lose in one single place, usually a hard drive, you are
taking the conscious risk of losing it. It often feels the same like the
idea of getting robbed: When it has never happened to you, you can easily
get the false sense of safety that it probably won't ever happen either,
but if it some day happens, it can be a real shock. Suddenly you wake up
to the realization that it really *is* a real danger. The same goes for
keeping important data in one single place, with no backups. It may feel
like a risk one's ready to take, but when the day comes when that data is
lost (or even just possibly lost), it's when reality really stings.

  Let this be, once again, a lesson for everybody: Backup your important
data. It doesn't matter how much of a hassle it may feel, just do it.
(Also, make sure that your backups work. Don't keep your backup in one
single disk for years. Writable CDs and DVDs degrade over time, and after
a decade or so you might find out that the computer can't read the disk
anymore. Re-backup to a new disk every now and then. Writable DVDs are
cheap.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 4/23/2012 10:18 AM, Stephen wrote:
> On 23/04/2012 6:09 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old
>> machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine
>> yet. :(
>
> Can you physically remove the HDD from your old m/c and connect it to
> the new one via a usb adaptor?
> If so, easy peasy.
>
May have to. The problem is, this was the boot drive, so since you can't 
read the registry, that I know of, unless its in plain text, what little 
I "could" get from the drive isn't much. The data partition is on that 
too, but only some programs, most of the data-data was moved off to 
bigger externals. Luckily I recently got an IDE drive case, for hooking 
up to USB, so I can do it, otherwise, it wouldn't even be possible on 
the new machine (since they don't have IDE much any more).

The biggest problems is a) not knowing what all my applications where, 
that where installed, or b) any easy way to get registry keys off the 
drive (I already have one game that decided to malfunction a while back, 
and when I tried to reinstall it, I couldn't find the key. It didn't 
occur to me to get the key out of the registry first).

It would definitely be more convenient if I could get it to boot.

Oddly, I tried both an older DOS disk, and to run a disk diagnostic disk 
that I think belongs to the drive itself. The first one showed:

Unable to find command processor, for example, C:\Command.com, press 
enter to try again, or reboot the machine.

A>

The diagnostic disk did the same thing, only with C> on it. Why this 
would happen, unless it was somehow trying to look at the HDD for it, is 
beyond me. Very odd....

Post a reply to this message

On 4/23/2012 10:53 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<kag### [at] gmailcom>  wrote:
>> Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old
>> machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine
>> yet. :(
>
>    I know this is just pouring salt on the wound, and it doesn't help you
> solve the problem, but... Whenever you have some important data that you
> don't want to lose in one single place, usually a hard drive, you are
> taking the conscious risk of losing it.

The single most annoying thing about this is, well, three most annoying 
things:

1. Almost every "recovery" system relies on the machine booting 
properly, to restore the contents. Unless you are making whole images of 
the disk (which is a massive problem itself, to span across DVDs/CDs, 
this is a major problem. In this case, I can't even get the disk 
diagnostic, which boots its own OS and software, from a floppy, to boot, 
so it would need to be something run from a live CD (which did boot). 
Possible, but not necessarily if the failure was of the type, and scale, 
I had here.

2. The type of failure can matter. If the drive isn't recoverable, for 
some reason, you need a new drive, and well...

3. Finally, and this is the biggest one for me, and most people: How? I 
mean, DVDs are not a great solution, and the "backup" utilities, 
especially on XP, don't always support them properly. But, in general, 
short of another drive, or a tape system (expensive), there is no real 
good way to do it, not without multiple DVDs, or multiple something 
else, or, in the case of the one solution I did have, the bloody useless 
"backup" software, which just made backups of "known data types". Not 
programs, not settings, not anything that didn't register "document" to 
it. And, that could be thousands of things, some of which *are* data, 
except just not the sort of data that has a nice label, like jpg, or 
xls. And, there are so many of those crappy assed "solutions" out there 
that its hard to find the ones that are not total crap.

So, yeah, I have done backups, now and then. But it wouldn't have done a 
damn thing for me in this case, since the stuff I need isn't a) 
readable, or b) restorable, unless I could get the drive to boot again 
somehow. And, there was never any practical way to do a complete backup. 
Not with what I had available to do it. :( And restoring it from the 
backup..., well, that isn't much easier, without a solution that 
actually does that sort of thing for you, and correctly.

Post a reply to this message

> Oddly, I tried both an older DOS disk, and to run a disk diagnostic disk
> that I think belongs to the drive itself. The first one showed:
>
> Unable to find command processor, for example, C:\Command.com, press
> enter to try again, or reboot the machine.
>
> A>
>
> The diagnostic disk did the same thing, only with C> on it. Why this
> would happen, unless it was somehow trying to look at the HDD for it, is
> beyond me. Very odd....

your autoexec.bat sets the COMSPEC variable to point to a copy of 
command.com on the C: drive.  This is usefull for software that unload 
command.com from memory to get an additional 40K of usable ram, they 
need to know where to get it back when they're done.

If you have access to an editor, remove the "SET COMSPEC=" line from the 
autoexec.bat and reboot.  If not, rename autoexec.bat

This should allow you to run fdisk /mbr from the floppy.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

On 4/24/2012 5:09 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>
>
>> Oddly, I tried both an older DOS disk, and to run a disk diagnostic disk
>> that I think belongs to the drive itself. The first one showed:
>>
>> Unable to find command processor, for example, C:\Command.com, press
>> enter to try again, or reboot the machine.
>>
>> A>
>>
>> The diagnostic disk did the same thing, only with C> on it. Why this
>> would happen, unless it was somehow trying to look at the HDD for it, is
>> beyond me. Very odd....
>
> your autoexec.bat sets the COMSPEC variable to point to a copy of
> command.com on the C: drive. This is usefull for software that unload
> command.com from memory to get an additional 40K of usable ram, they
> need to know where to get it back when they're done.
>
> If you have access to an editor, remove the "SET COMSPEC=" line from the
> autoexec.bat and reboot. If not, rename autoexec.bat
>
> This should allow you to run fdisk /mbr from the floppy.
>
Hmm. Except, both disks this happens with are "intended" to run stand 
alone, not against a known OS. Or, they shouldn't anyway. Will have to 
check that, but I can't imagine it doing that. :p

Post a reply to this message

On 4/23/2012 22:40, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 1. Almost every "recovery" system relies on the machine booting properly, to
> restore the contents. Unless you are making whole images of the disk (which
> is a massive problem itself, to span across DVDs/CDs, this is a major
> problem.

It was more of a problem before Vista came out. If you're still using XP, I 
suggest finding a BartPE and a DriveXML. (I can offer them to you, as 
they're both free, for future use.)

> 3. Finally, and this is the biggest one for me, and most people: How?

USB hard drive.

> a nice label, like jpg, or xls. And, there are so many of those crappy assed
> "solutions" out there that its hard to find the ones that are not total crap.

UNIX has rsync. Windows has the backup and restore tool. MacOS has time 
machine. Which one is the problem?

> there was never any practical way to do a complete backup.

If you buy a USB drive, it's pretty trivial. You might have to cough up $100 
for one tho.

Tell me what system you have, and I'll tell you how to do it. I never work 
on a system I haven't already backed up, wiped, and restored at least once.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> UNIX has rsync. Windows has the backup and restore tool. MacOS has time 
> machine. Which one is the problem?

  Time Machine is the only one that's actually easy to use and fully
automatic, and has a good file browser for backed files...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 24-4-2012 7:23, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 4/23/2012 10:18 AM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 23/04/2012 6:09 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Anyone have any ideas how to fix this? Still a lot of shit on the old
>>> machine I use every day, since its not transferred to the new machine
>>> yet. :(
>>
>> Can you physically remove the HDD from your old m/c and connect it to
>> the new one via a usb adaptor?
>> If so, easy peasy.
>>
> May have to. The problem is, this was the boot drive, so since you can't
> read the registry, that I know of, unless its in plain text, what little
> I "could" get from the drive isn't much.

There is a copy of the registry somewhere. So you can reinstall that 
even if the current one is corruct.
At least my brother has done that for me once and apparently regularly 
doing it for other people as well.

-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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