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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
Hello all,
I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out with. My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios. I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and that is correct. Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors. Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired. None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other suggestions are welcome). I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done. The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this. I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge). To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me. Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully create and delete directories and delete files. All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my house (a very quick blip). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Greg Wilkerson |
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#2
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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
The "unrecoverable files" doesnt look good,at this point run the hard drive
MS-DOS chk utility from the drives mfg,they all have them.Download it to a formatted MS-DOS floppy,boot to floppy,run the tests.... "Greg Wilkerson" wrote: Hello all, I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out with. My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios. I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and that is correct. Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors. Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired. None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other suggestions are welcome). I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done. The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this. I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge). To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me. Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully create and delete directories and delete files. All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my house (a very quick blip). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Greg Wilkerson |
#3
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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
Hello Andrew,
The "uncoverable files" error encountered on chkdsk was fixed by running fixboot on the drive from the recover console. The manufacuter's diagnostics tests run successfully. Althought I'm not sure on this yet, I don't think this is a hardware issue. Thanks, Greg On Fri, 8 Jun 2007 22:21:02 -0700, Andrew E. wrote: The "unrecoverable files" doesnt look good,at this point run the hard drive MS-DOS chk utility from the drives mfg,they all have them.Download it to a formatted MS-DOS floppy,boot to floppy,run the tests.... "Greg Wilkerson" wrote: Hello all, I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out with. My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios. I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and that is correct. Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors. Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired. None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other suggestions are welcome). I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done. The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this. I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge). To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me. Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully create and delete directories and delete files. All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my house (a very quick blip). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Greg Wilkerson |
#4
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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
Greg Wilkerson wrote:
Hello all, I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out with. My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios. I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and that is correct. Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors. Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired. None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other suggestions are welcome). I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done. The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this. I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge). To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me. Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully create and delete directories and delete files. All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my house (a very quick blip). Any help would be appreciated. The directory access with the Recovery Console is restricted. From the Recovery Console you can access these folders: - The root folder of any drive - The %SystemRoot% folder and the subfolders of the Windows installation you are currently logged on to - The Cmdcons folder - Removable media drives such as CD-ROM drives The dir command will, or should fail on other directories, that is a security feature of the Recovery Console. That security feature can be changed by way of Group Policy settings when you are booted to the working Windows installation, it cannot be changed after the fact, if you cannot gain normal access to the Windows installation you cannot change the restriction. The Recovery Console is not really meant to and has never been meant to be used for file recovery, it is primarily designed to be used as a tool to repair Windows. While you can use special techniques to copy files to or from the allowed folders it is a rather primitive way of copying files. File recovery should be done from your data backups, of course you don't have backups or else you wouldn't be here asking those questions... To recover your files use a Live CD, like a Bart's PE disk, a Linux live CD or an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. You can also mount the disk to another Windows2000/XP installation and attempt to recover your files that way. If you mount the disk to another Windows installation you may have to grant yourself necessary permissions to the files or Take Ownership of the files in order to be able to gain access to them. If the above methods are not feasible you can do a Repair Install or a Parallel Install of Windows to attempt to recover your files. These two methods would be the least preferred methods, only to be done if you have no choice. You didn't really indicate why the computer continuously reboots, you simply said: " My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios". I can tell you with almost 99.99% certainty that the boot process makes it to Windows, it isn't stuck in a reboot loop at the BIOS, I have not really ever heard of a computer being in a reboot loop during the POST or before the handover of the boot process to the partition boot loader. If things fail during that phase of the boot process the computer usually just halts without rebooting. There are a few things that can done to try to identify the cause of the reboot loop. Did you try the available F8 boot options? Did you disable the "Automatically Reboot..." at the F8 screen? By way of remote registry edits there are also some entries in the registry that can be verified to see if the problem can be corrected. John |
#5
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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
Hi John,
First, thanks for the detailed and informative response. I didn't go into the real details in my original post because I didn't know if I would get any usable responses. I'll go into a little more detail, now. The phyical drive the OS is on is partitioned into 3 logical drives. The OS resides on one of those partitions. I have been getting various results from chkdsk. In one case, I received the earlier mentioned "unrecoverable errors" message. But, after booting to the recovery console and running fixboot, the chkdsk runs with no errors. I agree that the system isn't looping within the bios. After reading your post, I did try a safe mode start. I can get to the safe mode prompts, but select "safe mode" initiates a reboot (vicious circle begins again). So does booting to "Last Known Good Configuration". So, a safe mode recovery doesn't look good. I need to look into this "Disable automatic restart on system failure" option listed in the safe mode menu. I can't imagine what I am going to gain from that option, but hey, I might learn something. I have to bootlog option turned on, but it doesn't appear to writing anything to the problem drive when I try to boot from it. Are the other files I can check? I searched the drive for files modified within the last day and the results returned nothing informative. I had a drive laying around that had xp-sp2 on it. So, I added that drive to the system and booted to that. Then, I set the group policy to allow access to the drives. That allowed me to at least get to all the logical drives in the system (6, I think). That also allows me to recover all the files I need to. I ended up running a backup of the entire drive, plus I copied the "documents and setting" directory outright. So, I have at least limited the data loss to 0 (way cool). I did make an ASR disk for this computer after I upgraded to the disk configuration before this problem started. I hadn't thought about using that. I'll have to dig that up. As it stands now, it looks like I'm going to have to rebuild the OS. That's ok, though. It's been a few years since I did that and things will get cleaned up some. I'm not a systems guy, but a DBA. I can see value in the fixboot and fixmbr, but the restrictions on the rest of the commands baffle me. Maybe a system guy has a different view (probably so). The restrictions on the copy command are dissappointing. I can certainly understand why, but not having the option to enable more functionality limits the usefulness. I wish Microsoft would quit imposing its security morals on me. Give me the option of completely destroying my system. It's my computer. Thanks again, Greg Wilkerson On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 09:28:57 -0300, John John wrote: Greg Wilkerson wrote: Hello all, I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out with. My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios. I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and that is correct. Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors. Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired. None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other suggestions are welcome). I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done. The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this. I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge). To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me. Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully create and delete directories and delete files. All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my house (a very quick blip). Any help would be appreciated. The directory access with the Recovery Console is restricted. From the Recovery Console you can access these folders: - The root folder of any drive - The %SystemRoot% folder and the subfolders of the Windows installation you are currently logged on to - The Cmdcons folder - Removable media drives such as CD-ROM drives The dir command will, or should fail on other directories, that is a security feature of the Recovery Console. That security feature can be changed by way of Group Policy settings when you are booted to the working Windows installation, it cannot be changed after the fact, if you cannot gain normal access to the Windows installation you cannot change the restriction. The Recovery Console is not really meant to and has never been meant to be used for file recovery, it is primarily designed to be used as a tool to repair Windows. While you can use special techniques to copy files to or from the allowed folders it is a rather primitive way of copying files. File recovery should be done from your data backups, of course you don't have backups or else you wouldn't be here asking those questions... To recover your files use a Live CD, like a Bart's PE disk, a Linux live CD or an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. You can also mount the disk to another Windows2000/XP installation and attempt to recover your files that way. If you mount the disk to another Windows installation you may have to grant yourself necessary permissions to the files or Take Ownership of the files in order to be able to gain access to them. If the above methods are not feasible you can do a Repair Install or a Parallel Install of Windows to attempt to recover your files. These two methods would be the least preferred methods, only to be done if you have no choice. You didn't really indicate why the computer continuously reboots, you simply said: " My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios". I can tell you with almost 99.99% certainty that the boot process makes it to Windows, it isn't stuck in a reboot loop at the BIOS, I have not really ever heard of a computer being in a reboot loop during the POST or before the handover of the boot process to the partition boot loader. If things fail during that phase of the boot process the computer usually just halts without rebooting. There are a few things that can done to try to identify the cause of the reboot loop. Did you try the available F8 boot options? Did you disable the "Automatically Reboot..." at the F8 screen? By way of remote registry edits there are also some entries in the registry that can be verified to see if the problem can be corrected. John |
#6
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Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
Greg Wilkerson wrote:
Hi John, First, thanks for the detailed and informative response. I didn't go into the real details in my original post because I didn't know if I would get any usable responses. I'll go into a little more detail, now. The phyical drive the OS is on is partitioned into 3 logical drives. The OS resides on one of those partitions. I have been getting various results from chkdsk. In one case, I received the earlier mentioned "unrecoverable errors" message. But, after booting to the recovery console and running fixboot, the chkdsk runs with no errors. I agree that the system isn't looping within the bios. After reading your post, I did try a safe mode start. I can get to the safe mode prompts, but select "safe mode" initiates a reboot (vicious circle begins again). So does booting to "Last Known Good Configuration". So, a safe mode recovery doesn't look good. I need to look into this "Disable automatic restart on system failure" option listed in the safe mode menu. I can't imagine what I am going to gain from that option, but hey, I might learn something. *** If the computer is giving a bugcheck error message (blue screening) and you have the computer set to autoreboot on crash you cannot see the contents of the bugcheck message, the computer simply goes into a reboot loop. If the boot failure does give a bugcheck error message the information in the message may point to the cause of the problem. I have to bootlog option turned on, but it doesn't appear to writing anything to the problem drive when I try to boot from it. Are the other files I can check? I searched the drive for files modified within the last day and the results returned nothing informative. *** That's a bit like poking around in the dark. Without better information it is a crapshot suggesting that such a file or other is at fault. I had a drive laying around that had xp-sp2 on it. So, I added that drive to the system and booted to that. Then, I set the group policy to allow access to the drives. That allowed me to at least get to all the logical drives in the system (6, I think). That also allows me to recover all the files I need to. I ended up running a backup of the entire drive, plus I copied the "documents and setting" directory outright. So, I have at least limited the data loss to 0 (way cool). I did make an ASR disk for this computer after I upgraded to the disk configuration before this problem started. I hadn't thought about using that. I'll have to dig that up. As it stands now, it looks like I'm going to have to rebuild the OS. That's ok, though. It's been a few years since I did that and things will get cleaned up some. I'm not a systems guy, but a DBA. I can see value in the fixboot and fixmbr, but the restrictions on the rest of the commands baffle me. Maybe a system guy has a different view (probably so). *** The Recovey Console commands are not disabled, if you can log on to the Windows installation (via the RC) you will have all the commands available. Just type HELP and press enter. For help on commands use the /? switch, example: chkdsk /? The restrictions on the copy command are dissappointing. I can certainly understand why, but not having the option to enable more functionality limits the usefulness. I wish Microsoft would quit imposing its security morals on me. Give me the option of completely destroying my system. It's my computer. *** As mentioned earlier, the copy command is not restricted. The restriction is on what you can access and copy. I understand that you may find it too restrictive for your use but the Recovery Console is a repair tool. To repair Windows you only need access to the operating system folders. There is nothing that you can do in the users data folders to fix Windows. The IT or techs guys don't need access to confidential or sensitive user data, their job is to fix Windows, not to snoop about in comapany or user files. When you look at it from that point of view you then see that the restrictions make sense, and as I said in my other post, the restriction can be lifted if you want to. In my opinion it is best to have the restriction apply by default. Thanks again, You're welcome, good luck. John |
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