[Windows 7] Will Not Boot, OS Not Detected Even in System Recovery HELP!

I have an HP Pavilion G7 that I've owned for less than a year. It's a Windows 7 64-bit system with Intel CPU and 750 GB hard drive. I can get any other details from the BIOS panel if required.


BACKGROUND:
A few weeks ago I had an issue where the system crashed. I had been having overheating problems, mainly due to Firefox's load on the CPU. The app CoreTemp would shut the system down at a certain threshold, and worked as it should, but on that day Firefox plus other windows open precipitated a crash.

I've since resolved the heating issue by simply blowing compressed air into the vents, one of many things I've done over the past few weeks to get this system back to normal.

Immediately after the crash I experienced extremely long and slow log ons -- I'm talking 90 minutes from powering on to getting to the desktop. I did everything I knew of -- scannow, chkdsk, System Restore -- to get everything back to pre-crash operation. I finally worked it back down to a 45 minute startup by dealing with what at the time was appearing to be Context Menu corruption (using ShellExView) and possible desktop shortcut corruption.

The slow log ons were characterized by long black screens between each stage -- after "Starting Windows", after presenting the user accounts, after logging in, and longest when waiting for the desktop.

Once I cut the time down, the problem became freeze-ups. If the system was idle for too long, nothing would work and sometimes I could not even shut offf open process with Task Manager. if open, it was frozen, if not open I could not open it, and would have to do a hard reboot to get going again, again suffering an extended startup. This was happening five or more times a day, leading to lots of wasted time.

Knowing the operating system was likely corrupted, I finally made up my mind to attempt a Installation Upgrade, but wanted to back up my documents. Both Acronis True Home and Windows Image maker would stall. I tried the former at least ten times and the latter 3 times. Acronis would either stall at the 40% point, or the system would freeze and it would stop anyway. Windows Image would fail to complete, citing an (unremembered) error. The one time Acronis got 2/3s through, when I moved a cursor and tried to close another window the system blue screened.

I've wanted to just reinstall for at least a week, but hesitated because I could not complete even one back up, and had to delete my former month's old)( backup to make room for a new one. Now I have nothing.

I know there were bad sectors on the disk, but deprioritized dealing with that because I could barely get the backup done or have a freeze-free session. It seemed that besides the slowness and freezes everthing was operating near normally. No messages for corrupted files, etc. I know the bad sectors were keeping Acronis from completing the backup, but a prompt gave me the option to ignore the errors and only copy occcupied sectors.

I've been keeping the computer on just to avoid having to turn it back on and although operations were as normal as they've been for two weeks, I finally decided to take my chances on an upgrade install (which supposedly does not touch documents, but wanted to do this as risk-free as possible) , but wanted to try one last thing.

I'd seen an option for "Disk Repair" somewhere in/on one of the Control panel applets. I started it, hoping for the best, at 10 AM yesterday. It ran all night and was about 75% finished (based on file count) whenI woke up at 4 this morning and occcupied myself for several hours.


THE PROBLEM
When I returned to the laptop at 9:30, it was on the Startup Failed screen. I assumed the disk repair haad finished and attempted to rebooot the machine.

It went into a black screen with no activity whatsoever.

• Can get into Safe Mode. "Last Known Good Configuration" stalls after windows startup.
  
• "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" stalls partway through the driver loading. It might continue after a long period of time, but I am now too panicked and desperate to wait and see how long that takes.
  
• (At some point early in this process -- can no longer remember exactly -- got blue screen with error "unmountable_boot_volume" 0x000000ED.
  
• Pressed ESC key to get to HP's Startup Menu. F1 System Information, F9 Boot Device Options, and F10 BIOS Setup are accessible.
  
• F2 System Diagnotics Memory Test is passed. Its hard disk quick test says "SMART Check: NOT INSTALLED" and "Short DST: NOT INSTALLED". I got results from both of these when this all first started two weeks ago.
  
• F11 System Recovery returns "Boot Device Not Found. Please install an operating system on your hard disk. Hard Disk (3F0)" (This differs from a couple of hours ago, when it would stall on the System Recovery opening screen.)
  
• F5 on startup: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"
  
• F8 (Windows Boot Manager) on startup: "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change etc." Status: 0xc0000225
  
• Windows 7 System Repair and installation disks initially did not go beyond their blue wallpaper. Managed to get the installation disk to get to it's startup, but then after selecting the repair option it stalls (or is taking a very long time) to go to System Recovery Options.
  
• Same with repair disk. Long wait. After a few tries got into System Recovery Options.
  
• Startup Repair: "Startup Repair cannot repair this system automatically." [View problem details reads: "Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline"]
  
• System Restore: "There was an unexpected error. The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002) Please close System Restore and Try again."
  
• System Image Recovery: as already stated, no longer have one
  
• Windows Memory Diagnostic: did not run, don't want to restart just yet
  
• Command Prompt: The boot drive C: (D: in System Recovery) is not being recognized.
  
• Trying to change directory to D: returns "The system cannot find the drive specified."
  
• Trying to run chkdsk /r using both "C:" and "D:" returns "Cannot open volume for direct access."
  
• I opened Diskpart, ran "List Disk" and it says "There are no fixed disks to show."
  
• I've tried bootrec / bootrec.exe with the various switches from X: and get "The system can't find the path specified."

I know Windows 7 is visible. It showed at the stage where thh repair disk was scanning for installations, along with the proper disk size.

I am begging for help here. At least a decade of documents, thousands of bookmarks, passwords and more -- my livelihood -- are at stake. I had to create a new account here at one of the few places where I have a current password written on piece of paper I found from last year. All other passwords are strong and in roboform, and I have hundreds. Near the end of this mess I just wanted to backup my files, and if that is the best I can hope for now it would be a godsend.

Have scores of tabs open on a borrowed laptop. Seems this problem is not so rare and actually fixable, but I need some guidance. Trying to follow the directions I find, I'm hitting dead ends, even though the symptoms seem classic and as usually described.

Thank you in advance.

 

Priority must be given to salvaging your documents. Several ways this could be tackled but I would start by booting the computer from the Acronis Rescue Media, usually a CD. However as you appear not to have made any file backups or disk images with Acronis it is very likely you haven't either created the rescue CD or downloaded the rescue media ISO. However if you have a record of your Acronis serial number it is not too late to register the product on their website, after which you can download the rescue media ISO. That has to be burned as ISO to CD and the computer booted with it. You also need an external drive attached on which to store the backup file you are about to create. Assuming that both your hard drive (the source drive) and the external drive (the target drive) are visible in Acronis you can then proceed to create a full disk image.

If you can get to that point then most of your stuff will be recoverable by means of mounting the image on another computer also running Acronis. However this method may fail or be simply impractical for you to try, in which case the next approach would be to download and burn a Linux live CD, but of course both of these approaches require access to a second working computer with a CD/DVD burner. I am only suggesting Acronis first in the belief you may be to some extent familiar with it, otherwise you may as well go straight to the Linux method. Any Linux live CD would enable you to boot the laptop and search for and retrieve your files to an external drive.

From your account of the problem I would consider it unlikely, though not impossible, that you will be able to get this system booting normally again, at least in the near future, hence the concentration on data recovery.

 

I have an external drive, the one I was attempting to backup to before.

No, I did not burn Acronis rescue media, just the Windows recovery disks and an installation disk downloaded from DigitalRiver. In the time between the initial post and now I have been searching for appropriate live CDs and ordered a drive enclosure from eBay which I hope would arrive by Wednesday latest.

Also, after posting the above message, I checked the external drive. Although the Acronis backup folder was empty, the WindowsImageBackup folder contained a large file of 513Gb. This is about the size of the occupied portion of the drive I was attempting to backup.

I'm afraid to try anything with it. If it is somehow corrupted or not complete I might lose it, and whatever might be currently recoverable from the laptop. My experience with System Restore has always been that once it doesn't work, not only can one not revert back, as promised, but the other restore points also get wiped.

I am pretty computer savvy and ready to use whatever live CDs you can suggest to assist in data recovery. If you could make a suggestion off something you're familiar with it would be easier for you to assist me (I'm looking at Knoppix, though).

I'm not heavily familiar with Acronis except for using it for data backup. Right now it would be more expeditious to burn a live cd. The laptop I've borrowed to send this has a dvd burner. I do not have a record of its serial number.

However, a new development is that System Recovery no longer detects the operating system, so when I go in, using the installation CD, the window after a search for installations is blank.

All error messages resulting from various commands deny the existence of the C drive.

Thanks for your quick response. I am monitoring this thread so should be able to respond quickly. I am in the Eastern Time Zone and will probably be up late tonight trying to deal with this.

 

You have a bad sector on your primary drive
Try (Seatools for Dos) to fix the bad sector
if this does not work replace the drive

 

I have found a copy of Seatools but the checking will have to wait until tomorrow, when I buy some blank CDs. I will be burning Knoppix to DVD tonight.

Presumably Seatools will help repair the bad sectors? This is sort of how I got into this mess. A Windows disk repair (right click the drive --> Properties --> select Tools tab --> Error checking "This option will check the drive for for file system errors") is directly responsible for no longer being able to boot.

Throughout the process the window listed the files found in bad sectors and that they were being either moved or repaired. It ran just under 24 hours before I came back a couple of hours after having last checked to find the error screen. Up until then the system had problems but at least I could boot to the desktop.

 

Seatools does a much more indepth scan of the drive than Windows
I have ever Windows disc from 95 to Win 8,1 and there recovery option sucks
on all them a flaw from Windows
I have other bootable C drive repair discs I,ll find them a get back to you

 

Thank you. I don't trust Windows tools period, usually, but was getting desperate to try anything after grinding at one pop-up problem after another for the past two-and-a-half weeks since the initial crash.

Yes, their recovery options suck. It bugs the heck out of me how the System Restore points are always deleted when trying to revert back after an unsucccessful restore.

Hopefully the Windows image I found might be useable, although I got error messages the times I tried saying it could not be completed. Size-wise it looks like it might be okay; at the least I may be able to mount it and extract some of my files.

 

Can you reinstall Windows 7 if not I have disc with all versions
from starter to pro 32bit or 64 bit

PM me with your eddy (email)

 

I can reinstall Windows, I have the disk.

What am I risking by doing so? I've seen hints in my research that people with similar problems have been able to retrieve their files, that a "lost" partition may become visble during the install process (either upgrade or custom installation).

However, I can no longer do an upgrade install because it must be done from inside Windows, and I think the custom install that would save my files to Windows.old might not work either. Right now my old C: drive is invisible to the system and any restore processes.

I had about 200Gb free (of 750) before all this. If I tried to reinstall within a newly created partition, would the new one not broach the old one? Is it possible I might be able my to retrieve or see my old files from within the new partition?

I'll be up another hour or so, then not on again until late morning Sunday.

(I will try to PM you, but not sure if this is a forum that requires a minimum number of posts to do so.)

 

(Yes, as I thought, minimum of 50 posts is required before being able to PM.)

 

If Majorgeeks has a 50 post minumim too answer
how come i have never heard of this?

 

When I click on the dropdown from your handle to send a PM, the message I get starts:

"Sorry, private messages are limited to regular members with over 50 posts. Please start a new thread in the appropriate forum. "

Not sure what a "regular member" is. Maybe the policy is new, the threshold was upped recently, or you exceeded the threshold before making your first attempts to PM, thus no error messages.

I will be going to bed soon. Perhaps you can try PMing me instead. I'll be on again as earky as possible.

Also, I tried to mount both *.vhd (Windows System Image files) using this borrowed laptop, just to see what might have been saved. The smaller is the boot files. The larger is the files I think I want, but it is in RAW format and I get a message that it is "unreadable or corrupted" after mounting it from within Computer Management's Disk Manager.

 

OK get back to you tommow b1

 

OK, back online - 5 hrs ahead of you. You do need to make a basic decision now - are you going to attempt a reinstall as you are being advised, or are you going to attempt first to recover your files? If you reinstall that is the end of your data, it will no longer be recoverable. As you say yourself, a repair install isn't possible as you need first to boot into an Administrator account.

I'll assume you want at least to try to recover your data first, and the overnight news that you do in fact have a WindowsImageBackup on another drive has to be your best hope. Normally you would, in this situation, attempt to restore your backup using a Win 7 System Repair disk or an installation disk to boot the computer, but given the state your hard disk seems to be in that doesn't sound too hopeful of success. However it seems it is actually possible, using another computer, to mount the backup as a drive and be able to copy off your files. Full instructions HERE.

If that fails we need to have a last attempt using a live CD. I use Puppy and, time permitting, I would be able to help with that.

You did say btw that you had been using Acronis for file backups, so where are they? But even if you find them you can only recover them on a computer running Acronis so I'm not putting much faith in that as a solution. Putting data backups into a proprietary container is a very bad idea indeed.

 

By the way, I am able to get to the panel in System Recovery (via the installation disk) that attempts to restore a backups. It detects no System Restore points (I had SR turned on) because it can't see the drive. A dialogue box requests direction to a system image.

When I first went into the recovery panel the OS, it's size, and the drive letter were detected and visible. It was only when I entered on some subsequent attempt after trying Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, and some other options that it could no longer see the system install.

The link you mentioned is what I did last night. For the smaller vhd it was possible to see the files easily. The larger image returned a "unreadable or corrupted" message when I tried to click it open post-mount.

 

What I'd like to do is attempt to recover the data first, of course. I am not sure I was being advised to reinstall, just asked if I had the Windows 7 disks. I know it's destructive and that would not be my first line of attack.

If you did not see it in that density of text above, the WindowsImageBackup I found might be corrupt. As I had stated, it is the result of an cancelled process, and the mount was successful, but opening it wasn't. If it were corrupt I wouldn't be surprised, but if you know of any options/programs to repair or try to retrieve files from it if that happens to be the case I'd like to know what they are.

It seems like, at least, the order of recovery attempts would be: (1) try to access files using live cd, (2) try to access files via placing drive in enclosure, (2) attempting to mount my backup as part of the System Restore process, (last) doing a reinstall. Am I correct?

I've burned Knoppix to disk but will get PuppyLinux also -- saw it around as I was doing other research.

I ordered a 2.5" enclosure yesterday afternoon. If that is one of the early logical steps any further action would have to wait until I receive it, likely sometime between Tuesday and Thursday.

I had been using Acronis for backups, but only had room on the external drive's partition for one at a time (files totalled around 500Gb), so my backup options was to delete the last to create the newest. I had a backup from late February but because there were so many changes and additional documents decided to try one last backup. I expected, pessimistically, that something could screw up if I got rid of my last sure backup, and that's exactly what happened. Both the Acronis and Windows backups would stall , or explorer.exe would freeze, before competion.

Just to be clear about my hard disk, it is not making clicking noise or any other obvious signs of failure. I'm convinced that somehow something has happened that has "disappeared" the C drive from view. When I first when into recovery panel after the initial failed boot it was visible, then it disappeared. I am able now to consistently get into the recovery panel or installation via DVD, can access the HP system/startup tools, run commands in the command window, and nothing seems to be deteriorating further.

Everything I had/have tried to do pointed to the boot sector being corrupted in some way, and I've presumed, perhaps wrongly, that if the boot was okay the cartition might become visible again. Yes, there was some bad sectors, but up until I took the chance of running the Windows disk repair even the problems were consistent: long startup (40 minutes), but not worsening and always about the same length of time for each stage; explorer.exe freezing during intense CPU operations, but no sounds of high RPMs/clicking/etc from the hard drive; able to access and save files, get online, and perform other normal operatios without errors being thrown.

From the time of the crash to present I improved the situation (at one point explorer was crashing about every two minutes) by tracking down some context menu conflicts and reinstalling two drivers (audio and video). It seemed to me at the least there were a few more discrete problems to track down, and that at the most the OS was simply corrupted. Considering the latter, I became obsessed with trying to complete a backup before attempting an upgrade install, tried to do one last operation (disk repair) hoping to affect the dimsal backup completion scenario, but instead that was the last straw .

I found references last night to various softwares that supposedly can rediscover stranded partitions. Does using anything like those seem viable to attempt, or is that a function that is replicated within PuppyLinux? Are you familiar with or have an opinion about any such softwares, such as Partition Find and Mount, DMDE, or EaseUS Partition Master? (No, I'm not about to run any of these or take any further action on the drive without outside input first.)

 

So are you able to direct it? Apart from mounting the image this is your best hope!

 

Well, the install disk is in the DVD drive and the image is on an external portable drive. I did not yet plug it in and try to navigate to the image. In searching for the C drive via command window, Diskpart, et al, cmd finds X and D. The system on startup can at least detect that there is a flash drive in the USB port (by not continuing into startup, as the boot order was not correct and the iso for EasyRE -- or whatever -- was not burned correctly.)

I can get to the System Recovery panel and the install dialogues, so that whole sequence is still operating properly.


(P.S. I will be away for the next hour. I live in an intentional community and it's time for our morning program. Should be back on by 8;30 to 9 EST if my friend does not need her laptop back yet.)

 

I would use your friend's laptop first to try and mount the image using the link I gave you. If it works and you are able to locate your files, plug in the portable and start copying

 

I am going to try again, just in case, but I already did it once and was not able to open it, although it was mountable. (That's why I'm not hopeful it will work in System Recovery, especially since Windows' restoration options glitch even under optimal conditions.) I will report back.

Her laptop is Windows 8. Not sure if that would make a difference as to the readabilty of the *.vhd file. Computer Management and the Disk Managament snap-in look the same as in Windows 7.

 

When attempting to open the virtual drive in Windows Explorer: "Couldn't mount drive. The disk image file is corrupted."

When attempting to open the virtual drive via Computer Management --> Disk Management: "Location not available. G:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

Strangely enough, the file system is raw. Is this truly corrupted, or just unreadable? Any way to convert the file format? is it worth it to even try at this point, or only when other options have run out?

I'd like your permission to try to restore the image. Need to make sure there won't be a destructive effect on the hard drive if the restore fails.

 

Trying to download PuppyLinux from iBiblio and there are so many variations. I'm going with the latest Slacko.

I have to return the laptop and don't know when today I'll b eable to get it back, probably much later. So if my responses are more terse it is because I will be browsing and typing on a feature phone.

 

If you restore the image it will overwrite everything on the hard disk, or at least on the partitions that were included in the image, which will include C:. As you don't have the Acronis rescue CD with which you could have created, and if necessary later restore an image of the drive as it is now, the only other option I can suggest is to create a boot disk with one of the Acronis lookalikes - Macrium Reflect, Easeus Todo, or the free version of Acronis you can download from Seagate or Western Digital if you have one of their drives in your system. For that you would need the laptop of course.

Overall I think Puppy is the better bet at present, and I use Slacko too so good luck with it.

 

You asked earlier about partition recovery software. If Puppy can't see your system partition either then you could try Partition Wizard which I have used successfully on a number of occasions.

 

I'll look up Partition Wizard. Puppy has not been burned yet and I'm typing on the phone. May not have the laptop again for another few hours. Itks getting late where you are so I expect I'll have to look up how to view the partion / drives using it, unless the distro is intuitive. Knoppix is in and I've booted to its desktop, but will only look around and get a feel for it, not do anything unless i luck onto my files.

 

I've browsed through Knoppix and one of the few applications I recognized is GParted. I opened it and sitting in the main window is reference to an unallocated partition of 685.23 MiB. At this point I'll just shut the whole thing down, wait for the laptop, and get PuppyLinux burned. I don't know what i'm doing and don't want to screw anything up.
The path is /dev/zram0. There is add'l device info which seems consistent with a reasonably sized partition.

 

When you boot to Puppy you will have to go through a little bit of configuration to get a decent screen and an internet connection, though you can ignore the latter as you probably won't need it. At the bottom of the desktop will be some drive icons with labels like sda1, sdb1 etc, one for each drive or partition found. Click on one to mount it and you will see it's top level files and folders. Hopefully that will be sufficient for you to identify which Windows drive you are looking at, and once you have found - hopefully! - your C drive you can easily navigate through Users to your folders. You need to attach your portable drive and once that is mounted you will be able simply to drag and drop.

 

I'm in but the only drive icon I see is for the Live Cd itself (sr0). pmount also only sees the DVD. Not sure what to do next to try to search for my partition.

GParted partition manager is also on here but instead of opening straight to the main window, like in Knoppix, there is a dialogue to choose whether or not to scan all drives at startup. I just backed out of that.

I'll go ahead and (1) create one of your recommended boot disks, and (2) download Partition Wizard.

Between tonight and morning I'll see if I can ind some specific instruction on possibly making the partition visible. If I can find any files and get them copied, my next step would be to attempt to restore the WindowsImageBackup, although I expect it to fail.

(And duh... don't know what I was thinking about the 685 MiB. Somehow I was think Gigabytes while typing that.)

 

Try Partition Wizard first. If that doesn't make your C drive visible again there wouldn't be much point in trying to create an image, in fact it may not even be possible. With your WindowsSystemImage also corrupted, and your hard disk throwing up so many bad sectors when running chkdsk this is not looking hopeful at all.

I don't share your views about Windows recovery tools being useless btw. System Restore and chkdsk are both effective tools in my experience. Maybe your view has been affected by the problems your system has which may have made it impossible for them to work reliably.

Best of luck with Partition Wizard - you certainly need it!

 

Where should Partition Wizard be run from? It looks like it needs to be from within the drive itself, at least for some functions.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic about Windows. I too use chkdsk and scannow and find them both effective. Microsoft Security Eseentials is also in my start up programs. But I can't deny that of all the times I've used System Restore over the years, more often than not I get a message that it didn't make changes, then my other restore points are gone.

I'll check back in a few hours. have an errand to run right now. Thanks for all your help!

 

You are only interested in the partition recovery function and you run that from the bootable CD. It looks for the partition start and end markers and lists those it finds. If you accept any of them it rewrites the partition table in the boot sector and those partitions will then be visible in your OS. It does not do any other checks on the partition but you can if you want, once the partition is visible, run any of the other available functions you want.

 

Okay, I was not sure if Partition Wizard was meant to be bootable or not.

Back at the beginning I mentioned that I bought a drive enclosure. I expect it by mail sometime between Tuesday and Thursday. If the drive and its partition can't be seen as is now, I'm guessing it would be detectable once treated as an external, non-booting drive, right?

As a best case scenario, I can copy my files from the enclosed disk , then replace it back into the laptop to attempt to apply the WindowsImageBackup to the current configuration. If it works, upgrade install, if not, clean install, pending getting a new drive as soon as possible.

I am also going to make a copy of the image and see if I can find some program that will convert it from RAW to NTFS without compromising the data, just to see if it would not be considered "corrupt" by Windows if in the standard format.

I will be accessing the drive simply to check connectorss before doing any of the above. Just in case.

 

It doesn't make any difference where the drive is in the system. If its partition table is corrupt, or if the blocks containing the start or end markers are bad then it won't be readable. I'm not much help with WindowsImageBackup I'm afraid. I have tried it just to see what it could do but prefer third party imaging programs.

 

There's beeen an unexpected development. I spent late last night / early morning burning a variety of utilities onto CDs as bootable disks. Nothing destructive, just wanted to cover my bases. This afternoon, starting with Partition Wizard, then SeaTools, I worked through a number of apps and Linux distros. Nothing has detected the hard drive or its partitions.

I boot Slacko PuppyLinux for the second time and... this time the drives are showing on the bottom left, proper sizes and all:

Sda1 - Filesystem: ntfs Size: 199MB
Sda2 - Filesystem: ntfs Size: 698.3GB
Sda3 - Filesystem: vfat Size: 102MB

I'm apprehensive about exploring these. Right now will just step back and wait for my friend's laptop, available later this evening (typing on the feature phone right now). I'll use it to prepare my external drive by clearing space and formatting. Want to avoid any unnecessary activity on my system until I know what I have. Will just keep Puppy booted up and on its main window in the meantime.

 

Fantastic :cool sda1 is the Windows boot partition, sda2 is your Windows partition where your files are, and sda3 I believe will be a recovery partition which you should have used when new to create recovery disks. We have to hope now that things stay this way when you start exploring sda2 looking for your files.

 

I may not be getting anything done further until later today. I allowed myself to get a full night's sleep last night, and want to do a litte more research on how to access these files (probably a fairly simple process if everything is accessible, but I like to be overprepared).

As a sidenote, I did make recovery disks when I got this system. I also have various Live CDs (which I never had to use before) as well as the Windows recovery disks -- in another state in a storage room. I've been away from my belongings since last fall. Had I had access to those things at the beginning I might have been able to avoid getting this deep into mess, but becausee the OS was so unstable (the constant explorer crashing/stalling and the ultra-long bootups) it was difficult to perform basic operations and I got fixated on trying to do a backup, which also kept stalling.

I had found the option to create HP recovery disks somewhere deep in the Control Panel, but it told me that it was already done (and only one set is allowed to be made).

Beliive me, no matter what the result of this adventure, I'll be backing up at least weekly from now on. I've always only backed up sporadically. I'll also try to create a solution for which I can store at least two backups. The two-month-old image I had that I deleted to make room for my final backup attempts would be better than nothing right now.

 

Thanks for the update. As I said, copying files only entails mounting source and target drives and simply dragging and dropping and responding to the Copy or Move prompt, though you will need to create a directory structure first on the target drive. The process is non-destructive so you aren't risking anything by trying it.

I honestly didn't expect we would ever get to this stage so we need our luck to hold.

Posted from Puppy Slacko 5.4

 

Well, the luck is holding, partially.

I finally got up the nerve to explore the SDAs, saving sda2 for last. I mounted the drive and -- wonder of wonders -- every file and file folder appeared. However, the window took a bit of time to populate (it is over 600G) and as I explored other functions while waiting for it to catchup the Puppy desktop began to lag.

I control-A'd and was ready to copy to the portable drive, but wanted to confirm there was enough room. When I backed out of a command that I knew wasn't what I needed, then refreshed the Pmount window for about the six time in the session, the drives disappeared off the desktop and out of Pmount.

Back to Square One. Again loading other distros hoping they would turn up again, changing Windows BIOS boot order between Legacy and UEFI hoping that some sweet spot would cause the Windows boot sequence to proceed to "Startung Windows",, then stall. Somehow I had some intuition that the drive being somewhat operable, versus invisible, contributed to the success of those sdas finally showing up.

After all, I recalled from yesterday that the last thing that occured before the successful Puppy Linux attempt was that the eveing before, having mistakenly left the disc drive ajar during a disc boot attempt, Windows started booting and spontaneously ran chkdsk. It was late so I fell asleep while it was running and can't remember the computer's state when I finally woke up.

My intuition was confirmed earlier this afternoon when I again looked at the BIOS' "Error Log", which is nothing more than time stamps and error codes. I have been getting only two through this ordeal -- 3F0 (something like, no boot files or no operating system detected) and 301 (imminent disk failure). The successful Puppy sda detection was coincident with the first 301 after a series of 3FOs -- in other words, the disk was in some state of being able to be detected by Windows and stayed that for some time into a Puppy session.

After all my manouverings to get the sdas to appear again, I check the BIOS error log again to see a series of 3F0s. Thus I've spent a portion of early evening trying to "force" a 301, basically by playing around in the only accessible portion of Windows right now, a disk-driven System Repair/Recovery console.

I called up command prompt, ran sfc /scannow, and got an error message directing a reboot via ctrl+alt+del. When did that and let the reboot go through, a few minutes later it displayed an error message with 301 as the cause and a direction to press Enter to continue. I popped out the Windows DVD, inserted the Linux, pressed enter and the DVD whirred until Slacko quickly came up, once fully booted, again all the drives and partitions are on the desktop.

So I have a better idea of what I'm dealing with not. I'm going to try agin, more deliberately and carefully to copy the files and see what happens. I still have the enclosure to try (it was mailed out today). Hopefully some condition of how the drive interacts with the enclosure will trigger it to register as "active". The visibility/invisibility of my hard drive now does not seem as random as I originally thought, although it is clearly on its way to failure.

I'll keep you posted, and thanks for the spur to try Linux. I'm definitely exploring it more once I'm set up again. Always wanted to but never had the incentive to look into it.

 

600GB? Are you trying to copy your entire Windows installation? If so that doesn't serve any useful purpose so concentrate on \Users\You and try copying just a few of your files at a time, reason being that Puppy runs entirely in RAM so Ctrl-A on that volume of files would overwhelm it, and when it tries to create a temporary file on the hard disk that fails.

Only me theorising but worth a try.