Disk Recovery

newbie · 21-09-2007, 21:36

I have a HP m370uk media desktop (Windows Media Centre) and it has just started playing up when you try to boot it. It shows the "HP Invent" blue screen, then the screen goes black and the cursor sits flashing away in the top left corner of the screen. If I switch off & on again a number of times, it eventually boots and eveyrthing appears to be OK (until you try and boot again).

Do you think this sounds like a disk problem and if so, would something like Symantec's Ghost package do a complete image copy of the drive, including the hidden partition and any disk tattoo that may be used on the HP's?

If not, can you suggest anything else that will allow me to salvage the complete contents of my disk.

Thanks.

21-09-2007, 21:39

look in event viewer. Back up whatever you need to save as a matter of urgency. Can you source a oem cd that matches your install ?(ie xp media centre) make sure you have your serial sticker if not get the key using a program such as Everest) as if you do need to reinstall I would do it from scratch with new drivers and no bloat and just delete the hidden partition with out of date drivers and bloat etc

If the operating system is stable and you can get a full ghost image you do not need the initial install partition as its just a ghost image anyway. But only rely on what you have if you know its stable

Halcyon · 21-09-2007, 21:43

Edit: Zingle, you are fast

I would suggest that when it does boot up ok and you can get in you should make a backup of all your important data so that you don't loose anything.

I wouldn't reccomend using Ghost to make an image as it sounds like it is already having problems so imaging it could just port those problems over.

First quick fix to try is on bootup press F8 key and see if you get an option to load last known good configuration. See if that sorts it out.

If you say you have a recovery CD that came with the system, stick it in the drive and reboot. You should be given an option to do a repair install.

newbie · 21-09-2007, 21:47

Zingle - I can get another copy of Windows and reformat the drive, but I didn't really want the additional expense of buying windows again.

I thought I could buy ghost (or something), create an image, reformat the drive, then reload the image.

Is that not a good idea?

---------- Post added at 21:47 ---------- Previous post was at 21:45 ----------

Halcyon - Does that mean you thinks it's more likely to be a software problem than a hardware one? If that's the case, then any idea why constant rebooting eventually gets by the hang?

21-09-2007, 21:48

thats should work as long as your install is stable and not what is causing the problems.If you source a media centre copy and use your legal key you are doing nothign wrong and will not need to buy windows again

when you say the curser is flashing at the top of the screen thats the system looking for boot path not actually accessing windows yet its just looking for the mbr. This could mean the hdd does have problems and also means it may well not be your windows installl causing this.

newbie · 21-09-2007, 21:53

Zingle - Could I "ghost" the hidden partition, reformat the drive, reload the ghost, then do a System Recovery?

21-09-2007, 22:12

you can ghost the whole drive but I have no idea if it will work never tried

Shaun · 22-09-2007, 14:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by newbie

Zingle - Could I "ghost" the hidden partition, reformat the drive, reload the ghost, then do a System Recovery?

Can I ask how big the drive is and where you intend to ghost it to.

If it's more than 40GB you're looking at either backing up to DVD or straight to the new drive. The worry with the last option is that the drive may fail before the new drive arrives.

Personally I'd go the way Zing suggests.

Back-up your photos, documents, music and anything else to DVD/CD and then download a copy of XP that matches your key and then format the whole drive and reinstall XP on the drive. That way you have a fresh (legal, as you own the licence to the key you used even if you didn't use the disk you got with the machine) copy of XP to play with.

You'll soon know if the disk is borked as you'll still get the same problems. then it's time to buy a new disk.

If you go ghosting and it is a software issue then you're just porting it over to a new drive that will have cost you money for no reason.

popper · 22-09-2007, 19:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by newbie

I have a HP m370uk media desktop (Windows Media Centre) and it has just started playing up when you try to boot it. It shows the "HP Invent" blue screen, then the screen goes black and the cursor sits flashing away in the top left corner of the screen. If I switch off & on again a number of times, it eventually boots and eveyrthing appears to be OK (until you try and boot again).

Do you think this sounds like a disk problem and if so, would something like Symantec's Ghost package do a complete image copy of the drive, including the hidden partition and any disk tattoo that may be used on the HP's?

If not, can you suggest anything else that will allow me to salvage the complete contents of my disk.

Thanks.

iv had a few drives do exactly that recently, the cause can be several things, non of them good.

the fact you can at the moment power off and back on and eventually get it up is a life saver as it were if you act quickly.

if your drive is click and clunking , that points to bad blocks, usually at the begining but not always.

another bad drive i had, was the pata pins were coming loose and nearly snapped ( due to being pulled off and on several machines over time) and that is now still working as i dont pull the drive end cable off it anymore after i did a temp repair and its now in the freeNAS machines as a temp store.

the tools i use as a life saver sometimes are , drive image pro, partition magic.

the one app everyone should buy as a true saver for checking your older drives is HDD Regenerator

and when i say that i really mean it, its not fast even on a current machine, but it will find and mostly fix any bad blocks that are clunking and its dos based, you can make a self booting floppy or cd to run it, but you will not be sorry you payed for this app.

you really most buy HD regenerator at some point.

if your problem isnt bad blocks (after running HD regenerator, you will know), its going to be the drive logic failing probably, and in which case you need to grab yourself a new drive, put it on the chain, and use drive image pro to clone the old drive to that new hd while its still functioning ASAP.

you can then use partiition magic to make and resize your partitions as you please and not loose your data there, never assume it wont go wrong though, so have/make a backup anyway.

using partition magic,i usually make a standard smallish drive C for the booting, and a drive D partition for all data and the program files dir etc, if theres more than one drive permanenty installed i move the virtual memory binary file to that seperate drive to keep the drive heads access far lower on the c drive and so decrease the potential of bad blocks forming longer term.

Hom3r · 22-09-2007, 19:08

there is a command that repairs the MBR.

All I remember is that it ends with /mbr,and the the front part

popper · 22-09-2007, 19:17

i cant stress this enough though , if your not sure, dont do this (the url below)as it can totally mess up, but rather than type my procedure, if your willing and able, you can follow this plan to fix several problems, but its not really for this OP case, that is perhaps fixable as already said above, BUT you might find this info useful at some point in time though, at your own risk as always....

http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp

Dai · 22-09-2007, 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hom3r

there is a command that repairs the MBR.

All I remember is that it ends with /mbr,and the the front part

You're possibly thinking of FDISK /MBR
I think that's undocumented but it works.

22-09-2007, 21:42

doesnt just fixmbr do that

newbie · 25-09-2007, 17:54

Good news

The recovery CD had a "reformat and reinstall" option which has reformatted the hard drive, re-partitioned it, and re-installed all of the original software. I'd managed to back up all of my personal stuff, and have restored that too.

Now I've just got to re-install all of the software that's been added over the last three years

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions & help.