Screwed up both clone and source!!

I have managed to foul up the clone of my C: parttition, and somehow
fouled up the C: partition itself.

As you may have read, when I used XXCopy to copy recent changes in my C:
partition to my clone, I had 7500 files and directories that copied but
1300 that didn't.

Paul pointed out that it might be permissions, so I went back in** and
before starting to copy I changed permissions in the security tab for
the destination Drive to "full control". That allowed several files
two directories down in Program Files, iirc, to be successfully copied,

It seemed everything left was in the Windows directory so I changed the
permission for Windows to full control, and (though I can't easily read
my log files now) it either didn't change anything or it changed a few.

I added sxs\manifests iirc and a couple more directories and I got it
down to 335 errors from the earlier 1300, but adding the next couple
(to match where the errors were) didn' t change things.


So I rebooted and went back to my normal C: drive, which I had
hibernated before doing all this. It started up and looked fine, all
the program tabs were in the task bar and Eudora was showing, but when I
tried to save an email draft, it said it couldn't open the Outbox. I
looked in Explorer and it was there and not read only.

So I went to Agent, and it couldnt' find the ini file,

One or two more things like this and I restarted the computer.

Now it won't restart. It gets to the point where the 1/2 inch wide
3-boxes thing moves over and over from left to right in the 3" flat
bubble, and then it just restarts. And the clone, (which now has more
files, but is still missing 335) comes closer to starting, but it
doesn't start either.

I tried Safe Mode, by itself, with command line, and with Networking,
and it displays the list of files it's loading and the last one it shows
is
AVGIDSHX.sys which I guess relates to AVG, but iirc this is still a
good file and it's the one after it which is causing the problem.

In XP I once knew where the lists of drivers were, but I've forgotten
and it's probably different in Vista anyhow.


But a bigger problem seems to me to be that SO MANY files cannot be
opened, even text files using a Mini-XP CD.

And when I boot into Hiren's Mini-XP and use 7z File Manager, it says
that both the C and D partitions have total size of 4,359,820 big but
they both have 5,322,718,610,194,432 free space. Huh? Huh!!!!!

And while it says the RAMDrive the CD created and the MiniXP partition
X: are NTFS, it lists NO FILE System for C or D: Huh? Clicking on the
partition letters does nothing; it doesn't open up the list of first
level directories for C or D like it does for the two other
partititions. In a command window, it says for C: "The file or
directory is corrupted and unreadable."


Should I run CHKDSK, SCANDISK or something like that? Should I be
trying to fix the FAT table or whatever NTFS uses instead. The boot
record, the boot sector? Those partition size numbers are absurd.

Should I reload Vista from a Vista CD? Or will doing that now overlay
files that Scandisk could have restored?



I don't understand how I did this damage, especially to the source
partition, which afaik I changed not at all. Maybe if I knew how I did
this damage it would help to reverse it.

It's conceivable that, in those latter tries that didn't work any
better, I got mixed up adn changed the permissions in the source
directories and not the destinations, but nothing else could have made
use of these excessively permissive permissions between then and
rebooting into C: And the Outbox was there, it just couldnt' be opened
by me. How would increasing permission to "full control" cause that?
(And are permission settings made while running from a CD still there
after booting from C:?)

I never did any moves by hand. In every case I used the same bat file,
which only copied from C: to D: I have no bat files that modify C: and
I didn't even have to retype the name of the bat file. I just pressed
the Up-Arrow key while in the cmd window to recall my previous command.




(I have backups of all the standard data, but not my Firefox history,
bookmarks, and even if I had everything I want to fix this, not throw in
the towell, or at least learn what happened.

**I was using Hiren's btw. I wrote a good defense of any copyright
issues associated with it, but it's in my old partition that I can't
read or copy very well now. In brief it said that MS said that its
version of windows could be used to repair a licensed version of
windows, which makes sense and is what I'm trying to do.

Thanks in advance from a desperate guy.

micky wrote:
I have managed to foul up the clone of my C: parttition, and somehow
fouled up the C: partition itself.

As you may have read, when I used XXCopy to copy recent changes in my C:
partition to my clone, I had 7500 files and directories that copied but
1300 that didn't.

Paul pointed out that it might be permissions, so...

Thanks in advance from a desperate guy.

Do you have a full backup of the source drive made
with Macrium, Acronis, or Easeus ? Because that's
the best alternative at this point. Restore from
backup. Restore from a tool *designed* to make backups.
Not some cobbled-together script you wrote.

You can certainly try CHKDSK on the source partition.
You would do it from another computer.

You *never* *ever* **** around with Hibernated disks.
What were you thinking ? The session captured in
the Hiberfil.sys has *open* files. The NTFS journal
represents the state of those open files, keeping
track of everything that is in danger, and throwing
away changes if need be.

If you're going to play with computer disks, you
do a *full shutdown* before your next experiment.
There is *absolutely no point* in freezing
a computer in a hibernated state, then carting it off
somewhere and messing with it. CHKDSK hell awaits you...

*******

Your clone wasn't perfect. Odds are poor it will start.
But, ya gotta try anyway. It's all you've got.

*******

A Windows 7 Repair Install, requires a running OS, followed
by executing setup.exe off the installer DVD.

WinXP on the other hand, you can boot the CD and do a
Repair Install. WinXP is an *infinitely nicer* OS because
of this capability. Needing to have a running OS to
be able to repair it, makes repairing virtually useless.
If Win7 won't boot, you can't repair install it.

And this is why we run full backups with Macrium, Acronis,
or Easeus. To be prepared for lifes little surprises.
I've been pretty lucky, to have some sort of backup
for most of my mistakes. Some, I blew entirely. Like
adding a fourth Linux OS to a three-Linux-OS hard drive,
and having the drive erased. I figured if I could install
three OSes, how could a fourth possibly decimate it ? But,
it did. And I had no backup.

It's highly likely the source disk cannot be
repaired by Startup Repair (Win7). Startup Repair will
try up to three times, to repair the boot drive. The third
pass will run CHKDSK in full scan mode (takes hours not
minutes). When you fired up the hibernated OS,
the open file state may not be matching the actual
state of the file system. I don't know what you
did to that drive while it was hibernated. I'm
afraid to ask. Damage can result. Damage that CHKDSK
might resolve by removing files, files that are needed
to make things work.

The clone is missing files, right ? And you already
mentioned they were in some place sensitive. It wasn't
some user data that didn't copy. It was some system stuff.
What state is the clone in ? Who knows ?

If I'm experimenting with "proving a new backup method works",
what do you think I do ? I make a backup with a software
that I know it works. The first backup program I needed to
test, I chose "dd" or disk dump, as the "safety backup method".
The dd program has been around for 30 years, and is as dumb as dirt.
And dd hasn't let me down yet. That's a sector by sector
copy of a disk drive, doesn't care what file systems are
present, doesn't care if they need CHKDSK or not, it
just copies all the sectors on the disk. That's the
method I trust as my "first" backup program. It's a
dangerous program, just like xxcopy /clone pointed
at the wrong drive can destroy it. You must be
absolutely sure of the command syntax before
running a tool like that.

*******

At the moment, I'm thinking we'll see you in eight
hours from now, after you finish that new clean install
of the damaged OS. You can try repairing it if you want,
but I don't have a very warm feeling about this at the
moment. I smell "train wreck"...

Paul

En el artículo , Paul
escribió:

If Win7 won't boot, you can't repair install it.

What's wrong with pressing f8 during boot and choosing "Repair my
computer" ?

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) systemd: the Linux version of Windows 10
(")_(")

Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artículo , Paul
escribió:

If Win7 won't boot, you can't repair install it.

What's wrong with pressing f8 during boot and choosing "Repair my
computer" ?


If you know a partition has been destroyed (won't mount,
CHKDSK errors out), then using the boot repair in
the OS is unlikely to work.

The range of catastrophes it's good at is limited.

It also depends on what you know about what you've done.

When I had a C: partition with a complete meltdown,
the leadup event was attempting to examine the
contents of C:\System Volume Information from
Linux. And even though all I was doing was reading
shadow files in there, the partition was completely
destroyed. CHKDSK wouldn't work. I tried the boot
repair, all three cycles, and it didn't work. Since
I knew I'd been naughty, these were not exactly unexpected
results. The puzzling part for me, is I could understand
that sort of damage happening if I wrote to the partition,
but all I was doing was reading files in there. And the
shadow files appear to be "do not touch" material. The
shadow files checksum to exactly zero, and that's what
I was checking at the time.

To fix that, I had to restore from backup.

I think I have used the Boot Repair once and it
actually worked. Now that more is known about
BCDEdit, you can handle some of these things
yourself. Or at least review the symptoms more
carefully, so you can discover what you broke.

******

Repair Install is a different animal. That's where you
reinstall the OS, preserving programs, settings and
user data. On WinXP, you can do that by booting the installer
CD. So even if some important files are missing, you
can put it back on its feet again. You have to
do Service Packs and Windows Update over again.

On Windows 7, you can only install the OS that way,
if the OS is running. Then you run Setup.exe off the
Win7 installer DVD, to kick off the Repair Install.
If the OS is not running, you cannot repair it. This
severely limits the utility of Repair Install. You have
to be damn lucky, to be able to use it. If you boot
the Win7 DVD, all it will do is a Clean Install (nuke
and pave).

Paul

In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:27:05
-0400, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
I have managed to foul up the clone of my C: parttition, and somehow
fouled up the C: partition itself.

As you may have read, when I used XXCopy to copy recent changes in my C:
partition to my clone, I had 7500 files and directories that copied but
1300 that didn't.

Paul pointed out that it might be permissions, so...

Thanks in advance from a desperate guy.

Do you have a full backup of the source drive made
with Macrium, Acronis, or Easeus ? Because that's

No, that's the clone that I screwed up.

the best alternative at this point. Restore from
backup. Restore from a tool *designed* to make backups.
Not some cobbled-together script you wrote.

You can certainly try CHKDSK on the source partition.
You would do it from another computer.

You *never* *ever* **** around with Hibernated disks.

I guess I was absent the day they covered that.

What were you thinking ? The session captured in

I was only copying from it.

the Hiberfil.sys has *open* files. The NTFS journal

I excluded hiberfil from the copy .

represents the state of those open files, keeping

****************
What is the name of the NTFS journal file? Maybe it's telling the clone
that files are open when they never were, and when I didn't copy the
hiberfil that iiuc goes with the journal
****************

track of everything that is in danger, and throwing
away changes if need be.

If you're going to play with computer disks, you
do a *full shutdown* before your next experiment.
There is *absolutely no point* in freezing
a computer in a hibernated state, then carting it off
somewhere and messing with it. CHKDSK hell awaits you...

*******

Your clone wasn't perfect. Odds are poor it will start.
But, ya gotta try anyway. It's all you've got.

AFAICT I already tried. It doesn't start either

*******

A Windows 7 Repair Install, requires a running OS, followed
by executing setup.exe off the installer DVD.

I forgot to say again that this is Vista, not 7, so it probably has even
less repair and restart abilities than 7 does. The Vista ng has been
overrun. Strangely, the hordes wait until groups are quiet.

WinXP on the other hand, you can boot the CD and do a
Repair Install. WinXP is an *infinitely nicer* OS because
of this capability. Needing to have a running OS to
be able to repair it, makes repairing virtually useless.
If Win7 won't boot, you can't repair install it.

Wow.

And this is why we run full backups with Macrium, Acronis,
or Easeus. To be prepared for lifes little surprises.
I've been pretty lucky, to have some sort of backup
for most of my mistakes. Some, I blew entirely. Like
adding a fourth Linux OS to a three-Linux-OS hard drive,
and having the drive erased. I figured if I could install
three OSes, how could a fourth possibly decimate it ? But,
it did. And I had no backup.

So you know how I feel.

It's highly likely the source disk cannot be
repaired by Startup Repair (Win7). Startup Repair will
try up to three times, to repair the boot drive. The third
pass will run CHKDSK in full scan mode (takes hours not
minutes). When you fired up the hibernated OS,
the open file state may not be matching the actual
state of the file system. I don't know what you
did to that drive while it was hibernated. I'm
afraid to ask. Damage can result. Damage that CHKDSK
might resolve by removing files, files that are needed
to make things work.

The clone is missing files, right ? And you already
mentioned they were in some place sensitive. It wasn't
some user data that didn't copy. It was some system stuff.
What state is the clone in ? Who knows ?

The same state as the original according to that file manager, which
reports the same, impossible numbers for both parttions. The size is
1/1000th of the real size and the empty space is a million times too
big.


If I'm experimenting with "proving a new backup method works",
what do you think I do ? I make a backup with a software
that I know it works. The first backup program I needed to
test, I chose "dd" or disk dump, as the "safety backup method".
The dd program has been around for 30 years, and is as dumb as dirt.
And dd hasn't let me down yet. That's a sector by sector
copy of a disk drive, doesn't care what file systems are
present, doesn't care if they need CHKDSK or not, it
just copies all the sectors on the disk. That's the
method I trust as my "first" backup program. It's a
dangerous program, just like xxcopy /clone pointed
at the wrong drive can destroy it. You must be
absolutely sure of the command syntax before
running a tool like that.

*******

At the moment, I'm thinking we'll see you in eight
hours from now, after you finish that new clean install
of the damaged OS. You can try repairing it if you want,
but I don't have a very warm feeling about this at the
moment. I smell "train wreck"...

Paul

micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:27:05
-0400, Paul wrote:

What state is the clone in ? Who knows ?

The same state as the original according to that file manager, which
reports the same, impossible numbers for both parttions. The size is
1/1000th of the real size and the empty space is a million times too
big.

This doesn't sound very good.

Let's say you came to my house. What would I do ?

1) Concentrate on the source disk first.

2) Use "dd", not macrium, to back up the source disk.
[ That's one spare disk used up. ]

3) Find an Undelete program and run it over the disk.
Compare file count to a virgin Vista install. If that
doesn't work, use "dd" to restore.

4) Run Recuva and/or Photorec over the restored source
disk, and store on another drive.
[ That's two spare disks used up. ]

As long as you don't "write in place", there is
no need to restore the source disk again, because
this step would be writing to an external disk.

5) Run CHKDSK (which is a "write in place" utility)
on the partition. See what it reports. There is really
no reason for intact files to show up. This is more for
fun, to see what error messages it coughs up, and
what you can figure out from the entails. You can
restore the disk from backup after that, if you want
to run another attempt at recovery.

And since you can see the partition, there is no point
looking for a partition recovery utility. There was a
free one that worked for NTFS, and one poster years ago
managed to bolt things back together.

I think steps (2) and (3) are your best bet. If there
haven't been a lot of writes to the source disk since
the file disappeared, and simple deletion has been done,
all that does is set a flag byte in the $MFT. The file
isn't really deleted, which is why flipping the byte back
can sometimes recover a file. But it requires you stop
writing to the disk, the instant an accident happens.

An Undelete utility can tell the recovery quality of
the file, by checking for "LBA overlap" between the
$MFT info for the just-recovered file, versus where
all the other files on the disk are stored. If some
other file overlaps (because you did some writes to
the disk after the accident), then the recovered file is
now "garbage".

I don't have any Undelete programs here ? Why ?
It's the way the "Undelete Industry" works.
This is an example.

http://download.cnet.com/R-Undelete/...-10075690.html

The trick is, everyone claims "My program is FREE". You get
it, it tells you "I can recover 102,678 files for you". But,
it then says "go to www.scumbag.com and buy a license key".
And "that'll be $39.95 please". The programs aren't really
free. They are free to run an initial scan. But you cannot
really estimate what sort of mess will be recovered when
you buy the license. Maybe you get 102,678 whole files
or 55,000 whole files and the rest as fragments.

At least one tool I saw, rates the files according to its
belief in the "quality of restore". It might rate 55,000
files as "excellent" and the rest as "poor". Which is
helpful at setting your expectation level.

So while I say (2) and (3) are your best bet, you're
playing "$39.95 roulette" at the same time. Which is
a game for rich people. I think Bill Gates has
played Undelete Roulette a few times, because he
can afford it.

When you enter "Undelete for Windows" in your search
engine, you will not lack for candidates to test. Because
anyone who is anyone, loves being given $39.95. Who wouldn't ?
You will probably need to find an article like
"12 Undelete programs compared", to even begin to guess
which one to use.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:27:05
-0400, Paul wrote:


I don't have any Undelete programs here ? Why ?
It's the way the "Undelete Industry" works.
This is an example.

http://download.cnet.com/R-Undelete/...-10075690.html

The trick is, everyone claims "My program is FREE". You get
it, it tells you "I can recover 102,678 files for you". But,
it then says "go to www.scumbag.com and buy a license key".
And "that'll be $39.95 please". The programs aren't really
free. They are free to run an initial scan. But you cannot
really estimate what sort of mess will be recovered when
you buy the license. Maybe you get 102,678 whole files
or 55,000 whole files and the rest as fragments.

At least one tool I saw, rates the files according to its
belief in the "quality of restore". It might rate 55,000
files as "excellent" and the rest as "poor". Which is
helpful at setting your expectation level.

So while I say (2) and (3) are your best bet, you're
playing "$39.95 roulette" at the same time. Which is
a game for rich people. I think Bill Gates has
played Undelete Roulette a few times, because he
can afford it.

When you enter "Undelete for Windows" in your search
engine, you will not lack for candidates to test. Because
anyone who is anyone, loves being given $39.95. Who wouldn't ?
You will probably need to find an article like
"12 Undelete programs compared", to even begin to guess
which one to use.

Paul

PC Inspector. Free. http://www.pcinspector.de/?language=1 With my one
serious data loss it way outperformed two commercial programs.

Mike

SPD wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:27:05
-0400, Paul wrote:

I don't have any Undelete programs here ? Why ?
It's the way the "Undelete Industry" works.
This is an example.

http://download.cnet.com/R-Undelete/...-10075690.html

The trick is, everyone claims "My program is FREE". You get
it, it tells you "I can recover 102,678 files for you". But,
it then says "go to www.scumbag.com and buy a license key".
And "that'll be $39.95 please". The programs aren't really
free. They are free to run an initial scan. But you cannot
really estimate what sort of mess will be recovered when
you buy the license. Maybe you get 102,678 whole files
or 55,000 whole files and the rest as fragments.

At least one tool I saw, rates the files according to its
belief in the "quality of restore". It might rate 55,000
files as "excellent" and the rest as "poor". Which is
helpful at setting your expectation level.

So while I say (2) and (3) are your best bet, you're
playing "$39.95 roulette" at the same time. Which is
a game for rich people. I think Bill Gates has
played Undelete Roulette a few times, because he
can afford it.

When you enter "Undelete for Windows" in your search
engine, you will not lack for candidates to test. Because
anyone who is anyone, loves being given $39.95. Who wouldn't ?
You will probably need to find an article like
"12 Undelete programs compared", to even begin to guess
which one to use.

Paul

PC Inspector. Free. http://www.pcinspector.de/?language=1 With my one
serious data loss it way outperformed two commercial programs.

Mike

That looks suspiciously like driverescue. That's a free program
someone developed, then stopped and sold the source to
someone else.

http://www.4yougratis.it/software/_img/Drive-Rescue.jpg

http://www.pcinspector.de/images/Fil...y/manual_2.jpg

Fortunately, driverescue was archived, so the file
didn't get lost. The original site is long gone.

http://web.archive.org/web/200701010...rescue19d.html

Paul

In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 02:46:13 -0400, Paul
wrote:

SPD wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...
micky wrote:
In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:27:05
-0400, Paul wrote:

I don't have any Undelete programs here ? Why ?
It's the way the "Undelete Industry" works.
This is an example.

http://download.cnet.com/R-Undelete/...-10075690.html

The trick is, everyone claims "My program is FREE". You get
it, it tells you "I can recover 102,678 files for you". But,
it then says "go to www.scumbag.com and buy a license key".
And "that'll be $39.95 please". The programs aren't really
free. They are free to run an initial scan. But you cannot
really estimate what sort of mess will be recovered when
you buy the license. Maybe you get 102,678 whole files
or 55,000 whole files and the rest as fragments.

At least one tool I saw, rates the files according to its
belief in the "quality of restore". It might rate 55,000
files as "excellent" and the rest as "poor". Which is
helpful at setting your expectation level.

So while I say (2) and (3) are your best bet, you're
playing "$39.95 roulette" at the same time. Which is
a game for rich people. I think Bill Gates has
played Undelete Roulette a few times, because he
can afford it.

When you enter "Undelete for Windows" in your search
engine, you will not lack for candidates to test. Because
anyone who is anyone, loves being given $39.95. Who wouldn't ?
You will probably need to find an article like
"12 Undelete programs compared", to even begin to guess
which one to use.

Paul

PC Inspector. Free. http://www.pcinspector.de/?language=1 With my one
serious data loss it way outperformed two commercial programs.

I downloadded it. Thanks.


Mike

That looks suspiciously like driverescue. That's a free program
someone developed, then stopped and sold the source to
someone else.

http://www.4yougratis.it/software/_img/Drive-Rescue.jpg

http://www.pcinspector.de/images/Fil...y/manual_2.jpg

Fortunately, driverescue was archived, so the file
didn't get lost. The original site is long gone.

http://web.archive.org/web/200701010...rescue19d.html

Paul

I dl'd these things too. It will take a while to have results to
report.