Windows eXcresence Personified and disappearing HDs

[Patrick]

I had a power outage here in Mexico City, and when the
power came back I rebooted to find that my second HD was
listed as a RAW FS. Since this is the disk I use for all
of my buiness work, I nearly went nuts. I rebooted to a
Win98 floopy with the tools and checked the drive. Did DIR
E: and everything was there. All the files are there and
can be accessed at the dos level. But, Win eXcresence
Personified says that the disk is unformated. Does anyone
have an Idea what winXP has done? I am in Mexico and all
of my recovery software is in the U.S. I tried to have it
shipped in, but the Mexican customs would not let it in
without receiving a bribe of 5,000 pesos (Note: I said
BRIBE not Customs duty. The duty was 100pesos). So, I am
between a rock and a hard place. Anyone know how to get
Billgates' revenge software to begin working again? I have
noticed others that have had this problem, but no one as
yet has posted a solution to the problem only vague
statements that they had a hard time recovering the files.
I tried Micro****, but they want a credit card (which I do
not have), and their knowledge base is a useless
collection of misinformation. Please, I am stuck with this
software, because I have to use what my customers use, if
there is anyone out there that knows how to correct this,
let me know.

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

The Windows XP operating system did not cause your problem.....
you did by not taking the necessary precautions of installing a
simple $99 battery backup for your PC. Was $99 too large an
investment to protect your hardware from catastrophe? Do you
not maintain regular backups of your files? You eXPerienced
a hardware failure and Windows XP will not run on failed hardware.
Since you have no access to your recovery CDs, there is nothing
you can do at this point and no magic wand will fix your hardware failure,
unless you perform the following:

Solution:

1. Purchase a new hard drive.
2. Purchase a "Full Version" of Windows XP
3. Configure your drives so the new one is Master and old one Slave.
4. Install Windows XP on the new drive and reinstall your programs.
5. From within the new Windows XP, explore the old drive and manually
copy files from old drive to the new drive. If you run into an "Access
Denied" errors, read the following:

How to Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&Product=winxp

UPS Selector
http://www.apc.com/template/size/apc/index.cfm

Maxtor OneTouch USB
http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/external/onetouch/onetouch_usb/index.htm


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Patrick" > wrote in message:
...

|I had a power outage here in Mexico City, and when the
| power came back I rebooted to find that my second HD was
| listed as a RAW FS. Since this is the disk I use for all
| of my buiness work, I nearly went nuts. I rebooted to a
| Win98 floopy with the tools and checked the drive. Did DIR
| E: and everything was there. All the files are there and
| can be accessed at the dos level. But, Win eXcresence
| Personified says that the disk is unformated. Does anyone
| have an Idea what winXP has done? I am in Mexico and all
| of my recovery software is in the U.S. I tried to have it
| shipped in, but the Mexican customs would not let it in
| without receiving a bribe of 5,000 pesos (Note: I said
| BRIBE not Customs duty. The duty was 100pesos). So, I am
| between a rock and a hard place. Anyone know how to get
| Billgates' revenge software to begin working again? I have
| noticed others that have had this problem, but no one as
| yet has posted a solution to the problem only vague
| statements that they had a hard time recovering the files.
| I tried Micro****, but they want a credit card (which I do
| not have), and their knowledge base is a useless
| collection of misinformation. Please, I am stuck with this
| software, because I have to use what my customers use, if
| there is anyone out there that knows how to correct this,
| let me know.

[Wislu Plethora]

>-----Original Message-----
>I had a power outage here in Mexico City, and when the
>power came back I rebooted to find that my second HD was
>listed as a RAW FS. Since this is the disk I use for all
>of my buiness work, I nearly went nuts. I rebooted to a
>Win98 floopy with the tools and checked the drive. Did
DIR
>E: and everything was there. All the files are there and
>can be accessed at the dos level. But, Win eXcresence
>Personified says that the disk is unformated. Does anyone
>have an Idea what winXP has done? I am in Mexico and all
>of my recovery software is in the U.S. I tried to have it
>shipped in, but the Mexican customs would not let it in
>without receiving a bribe of 5,000 pesos (Note: I said
>BRIBE not Customs duty. The duty was 100pesos). So, I am
>between a rock and a hard place. Anyone know how to get
>Billgates' revenge software to begin working again? I
have
>noticed others that have had this problem, but no one as
>yet has posted a solution to the problem only vague
>statements that they had a hard time recovering the
files.
>I tried Micro****, but they want a credit card (which I
do
>not have), and their knowledge base is a useless
>collection of misinformation. Please, I am stuck with
this
>software, because I have to use what my customers use, if
>there is anyone out there that knows how to correct this,
>let me know.
>.

The fact that you tried to boot to a "floopy" and are
working in Mexico City without a credit card, and seem to
be suprised that representatives of the Mexican government
might be corrupt says it all, I think.

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Tue, 4 May 2004 10:42:40 -0500, "Carey Frisch [MVP]"

>The Windows XP operating system did not cause your problem.....
>you did by not taking the necessary precautions of installing a
>simple $99 battery backup for your PC.

Ah, blame the victim!

Yes, hardware failure happens and an OS should cope with it better
than this. In fact, an OS should have a safe maintenance mode (or
off-HD maintenance OS) to deal with such situations, as per
http://cquirke.mvps.org/whatmos.htm

>Windows XP will not run on failed hardware.

Not only will it not run; if it does run, it will likely make things
considerably worse - because Windows can't run without writing to the
file system, and this file system is at risk.

>Since you have no access to your recovery CDs, there is nothing
>you can do at this point and no magic wand will fix your hardware failure,
>unless you perform the following:

>Solution:

>1. Purchase a new hard drive.
>2. Purchase a "Full Version" of Windows XP
>3. Configure your drives so the new one is Master and old one Slave.
>4. Install Windows XP on the new drive and reinstall your programs.
>5. From within the new Windows XP, explore the old drive and manually
> copy files from old drive to the new drive. If you run into an "Access
> Denied" errors, read the following:

>How to Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&Product=winxp

>UPS Selector
>http://www.apc.com/template/size/apc/index.cfm

>Maxtor OneTouch USB
>http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/external/onetouch/onetouch_usb/index.htm

Now let's see the original problem...

"Patrick" > wrote in message:
...

|I had a power outage here in Mexico City, and when the
| power came back I rebooted to find that my second HD was
| listed as a RAW FS. Since this is the disk I use for all
| of my buiness work, I nearly went nuts.

So far, we have XP unable to see the file system. OK...

| I rebooted to a Win98 floopy with the tools and
| checked the drive. Did DIR E: and everything was
| there. All the files are there and can be accessed at
| the dos level.

Now you tell me, Carey; does that look like broken hardware to the
point where nothing can be expected to work?

I'd cherry-pick the data off from DOS mode (thank goodness he wasn't
on NTFS!!) using Odi's LFN tools. Yep; he can copy *everything* off
the HD (assuming he as somewhere else that's DOS-visible to copy to)
with a single Odi command - e.g. LCopy C:\* D:\BADHD /A /S

So far, so good - no need to install XP, blah blah blah.

Back to the story...

| But, Win eXcresence Personified says that the disk is
| unformated. Does anyone have an Idea what winXP
| has done? I am in Mexico and all of my recovery
| software is in the U.S.

Either there's something genuinely insane about that HD, in spite of
your promising DOS mode mileage, or XP's lost the plot. I did read
something about the differences in how XP and DOS mode see disks, to
do with the need for a valid media byte in the case of diskettes;
maybe that applies here. As things look hairy, I'd get your data off
onto solid ground (such as a new HD) first, and filldle later.

If all else fails, you can re-FDisk and reformat the HD (after
evacuating it, obviously) using BING or some other compitent formatter
that can do FAT32 up to 137G, and then copy everything back to it.

You can also do an observed DOS mode Scandisk surface scan, to check
for physical defects; look out for any pauses in the cluster counter,
as those indicate retries and a sick HD even if they aren't considered
"errors" by Scandisk of ChkDsk /r.

You can also use BING (from www.bootitng.com) to image your sick HD to
another - all without writing to the at-risk HD, of course. But half
an image is no cigar, so just in case the HD has only an hour or less
of spin time left (don't beat it to death via Scandisk etc. to find
out!) you should first cherry-pick using Odi's LFN tools.

http://cquirke.mvps.org/whatmos.htm covers Odi, BING, NTFS drivers,
Bart's PE CDR, ReadNTFS blah blah etc. with links to download these.

When it comes to repairing a damaged FATxx file system, see the data
recovery section in http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x



>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Who is General Failure and
why is he reading my disk?
>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -