[ale] [OT] - system crapped out

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi Jim,

I have some thoughts which may or may not be helpful, but I'll throw them out anyway.

First, remove the hard drives and hook them up to a separate computer and run ddrescue or gnu ddrescue or some other one I cannot remember to extract and archive all the data from every READABLE sector on each hard drive separately.  Make sure the program either works at the sector level or that it supports the xp file system (ntfs?).  Make sure that said utility does not remap or delete unreadable sectors, but just ignores them.

Second, run Spinrite on each drive individually to try to recover most or all the data from otherwise UNREADABLE sectors and repair the sectors in place.  Spinrite will try up to 2000 times to read each sector, much more than the OS and most utilities will try to do.  It might do nothing useful, but it might recover the drive just enough to get what you need off of it.  I have heard many accounts of this and have had some good results myself.  Note that the recovery process can take days, sometimes weeks, or sometimes hours.  I can loan you my copy and help you use it if needed.  If it works, I would recommend buying it to support the developer.  I paid $ 89 years ago and have not regretted it.

Third, I think you said raid 1, which means mirrored, right?  Split the drives apart and remove the raid controllers and try to boot each drive individually.  Maybe one will boot.  Then, try to get your data, apps, drivers, off.

I think I have a Windows XP Pro CD around here.  That might help in rebuilding the mbr and recovering system files.  I need to keep the licence for myself though.

One last way out thought, you could try to boot a windows XP vm from the hard drives in question.

I was a little unclear on the final state of the machine.  Can you tell me what it's current state is?

I've had lots of experience with Windows over the years, but I'm not a guru.  In any case, I'll be glad to help if I can.

If you get the system up and running, do some image backups with something like Acronis Trueimage.  Make sure the backup can generate a fully bootable ready to run drive upon restore.  I like to clone my drives, so I can just pop in the backup drive rather than running a restore process.

Sincerely,

Ron


Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

>This is OT because the base system here is a zillion year old XP box
>(don't
>ask - software won't run on new crap)
>
>system became unresponsive to keyboard (USB) on the main connection on
>mobo
>but worked on front panel connectors. Then those quit.
>
>Clearly a hardware issue.
>
>Noticed smell of overheated electronics from power supply so replaced
>it.
>System had trouble booting but was OK going into safe mode.
>
>2 main drives in RAID 1 on a 3ware sata RAID card. System not happy
>about
>being shutdown uncleanly (many crashes before I was called) and ran a
>full
>chckdsk /r on boot drives which reported no errors.
>System will auto-reboot on normal startup at splash screen and now
>complains about new hardware (3ware controller!) in safe-mode. The RAID
>controller(s) were not changed so maybe a bit of drive scramble in that
>sector. Time to reload drivers. woo.
>
>Original driver disk nowhere to be found so using latest download from
>LSI
>(2009 - about when the controller card went in) to add driver to OS
>drive(s).
>
>Can't. Installer requires a VC++ something that requires the windows
>installer to run. But safe mode won't run the windows installer.
>
>reboot and cuss. Try floppy image - dug out usb floppy and found a
>single
>working floppy disk (thought I had tossed all of those?). Install would
>run
>but reboot asked for drivers again.
>
>cuss more when safe-mode now automatically reboots on startup. No way
>to
>access system drives anymore.
>
>Replace motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD drive and power supply. Boots to safe
>mode (YAY!) for new driver install. But original drivers for both RAID
>cards (other is an adaptec with a mirror pair with application data)
>were
>now needing to be installed. Plus now need to "re-authenticate" (cuss.
>spit.)
>
>????  How are the originally working 3 days ago drivers vanishing ????
>
>unplug EVERYTHING, all drives, all raid cards, and try to boot from a
>known
>good XP hard drive built on a different system
>
>It does the same thing as the other drives! Gets to the XP splash
>screen
>then reboots the systems.
>
>F8 - set no restart on error - no change, set debug mode - just
>restarts
>with no messages
>
>Insert original installation CD to try for recovery console - blue
>screens
>after _long_ fight to get driver disk (see floppy) to work.
>
>Try newer XP-SP3 disk - blue screens
>
>memtest says all RAM is just fine (single pass all tests).
>
>W   T   F   !!!!!?????!!!!!?????
>
><ihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindows>


--

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Ron Frazier
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linuxdude AT techstarship.com