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Windows NT not booting

  • 09-10-2010 11:00am
    #1
    M5
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,161 ✭✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    Having a problem with a windows NT PC. The software crashed and wont boot. I have tried to use the disk in another machine and the drive shows up as unformatted. I can access the files on the drive using a program called getdataback. I recovered all the files but i need to get the disk booting again. I can not reinstall as the applications on the machine are no longer available and the pc is useless without them. so....

    1. can i make the files that i recovered bootable or
    2. can i recover the partition and return it to a bootable state?

    Cheers,
    M5


Comments

  • #2
    bonzodog2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,254 ✭✭✭bonzodog2


    If you can find the locations of the registry files for NT (can't help you here as I never had NT ...) and recover them with getdataback, and if you can do an install without formatting (again, don't know ...) then I'd think you could copy the recovered registry files back after a reinstall and the installed programs should work again.

    But thats just my guess !

    And to address your questions directly ...
    1. files are not bootable, partitions are, or aren't
    2. maybe. can you image the entire drive to a file, for safety ? If its an NT machine the disk probably isn't very big by todays standards...
    you could try a default-options NTFS format on the disk (after imaging) and copy the partition table somewhere (I'm guessing an NT PC would have a floppy drive, don't know if NT supports flash drives, but I'm guessing not), restore your saved image and copy the saved partion table back.

    I'd suggest some serious googling here. I don't know if NT used more than 1 sector for booting, but AFAIK the partition table itself is always 1 x 512 byte sector. you could save this with a 'live linux cd' with this command:

    dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/floppy/ptable.bin bs=512 count=1

    or something similar, and restore it by swapping the if= and of= parameters

    I hope some of this helps, but get further advice if the PC is seriously mission-critical


  • #3
    M5
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,161 ✭✭✭✭M5


    bonzodog2 wrote: »
    If you can find the locations of the registry files for NT (can't help you here as I never had NT ...) and recover them with getdataback, and if you can do an install without formatting (again, don't know ...) then I'd think you could copy the recovered registry files back after a reinstall and the installed programs should work again.

    But thats just my guess !

    And to address your questions directly ...
    1. files are not bootable, partitions are, or aren't
    2. maybe. can you image the entire drive to a file, for safety ? If its an NT machine the disk probably isn't very big by todays standards...
    you could try a default-options NTFS format on the disk (after imaging) and copy the partition table somewhere (I'm guessing an NT PC would have a floppy drive, don't know if NT supports flash drives, but I'm guessing not), restore your saved image and copy the saved partion table back.

    I'd suggest some serious googling here. I don't know if NT used more than 1 sector for booting, but AFAIK the partition table itself is always 1 x 512 byte sector. you could save this with a 'live linux cd' with this command:

    dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/floppy/ptable.bin bs=512 count=1

    or something similar, and restore it by swapping the if= and of= parameters

    I hope some of this helps, but get further advice if the PC is seriously mission-critical

    I have a clone of the drive and am working on that so im safe enough. Will give that a go if below does not work! Cheers
    bedlam wrote: »
    TestDisk may be able to help you recover and get the disk booting.

    Giving this a go as we speak.....

    .....and no joy. It sees the partition but its sees it as empty. Going to build another clone and try again


  • #4
    vibe666
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,016 ✭✭✭✭vibe666


    bedlam wrote: »
    TestDisk may be able to help you recover and get the disk booting.
    doesn't look like testdisk is working this time, but it's an invaluable tool that has gotten me out of trouble more than once when plenty of paid for (allegedly) pro tools had failed, so its one to keep it in your arsenal at all times. :)


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