MBR/Corrupt drive nightmare!

Goof

Goof

Goof

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18 Oct 2002
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'lo all,

Was hoping someone could help me out of a very tight spot, my main system with months worth of work has just gone down due to a fault in non-paged area BSOD. On rebooting it started to load XP but said the system/config was corrupt.

It tried fixboot which didn't work. Tried fixmbr which didn't work and now rendered the drive inaccessible. Tried chkdsk which said there was an unrecoverable problem. I then tried a repair install but, because of the mbr issue, it said there was a problem with the partition and wouldn't install. Tried hooking up as a slave on another system but shows it as unformatted.

I've spent all day reading/trying to fix. I think it's recoverable because it was trying to load XP before I stupidly fixmbr'd it :(

There's a program called MBRwork that seems like it has a good chance of working but I'm worried about doing any further damage - the idea behind mbrwork is it zero's the MBR then re-writes and 'standard' MBR. I would just like to know will zeroing the MBR effect the data?

Or if anyone has any other ideas...
 
I wouldn't do anything more until I had my data backed up. Download a Linux Live distro like Knoppix and use it to boot your system with then try and copy over any data you need to a USB pen or external HDD. If you have no joy then you could try a repair install but there's a chance you could still loose your data. It's always another option however.
 
Sounds like you've made it much worse than it originally was. If I think the HD is duff I'd run the manufacturers disk fitness test first. Then, I'd probably look for a partition recovery program. Once you've got a drive letter back to work on you can run chkdsk on it from the recovery console. And again, once you've got a working filesystem you can get back to fixing the original problem - sounds like a corrupt registry hive. You can use system recovery via safemode to restore a working copy or copy it manually from the system recovery store via winPE.
 
Thanks for the replies - still a few things to try then.

From what I've read I'm still hoping it's recoverable because most things seem to indicate the MBR isn't tied to the data as such - the only real problem is the MBR's screwed up.

Phil - I've no experience with Linux, would it be easy enough to backup from it?
 
I would insert the Windows XP CD and perform a repair install. This should get you back into Windows, and allow you to acess your data. As already mentioned, I would preferably backup your Data with a WinPE disc it at all possible.

Once you get back into Windows, perform a full scandisk (including a surface scan). I've heard good reviews of Spinrite that will fix faulty discs. This comes at a cost but is supposed to work wonders on hard disks.
 
Thanks Ruskie, as mentioned though, I tried a repair install but it wouldn't do it as the partition's messed up. Though it sounds like zeroing/rewriting the MBR has a good chance of working, I'm tempted to try the other methods first!
 
Thanks Phil - I'd tried messing around with linux on a bootdisc a couple of years back and was struggling to even perform basic functions. I seem to recall I couldn't even figure out how to open the hdd! though thinking about it now it might have been because the version was loaded from a virtual disc.
 
Yeah it can be a little daunting at first but once you find out how to use it for data recovery, you won't need much else (unless the drive is physically borked).
 
Good, Apologies for skimming your post and suggesting what you've have already tried ;)

You could try getting hold of a copy of BartPE disc which is a Windows boot disc. A lot of the dubious distros also have additional disk tools.

Before you do anything, I would using a bit by bit disk duplication tool to copy the data to another disk. This will prevent you screwing up the original disk and loosing the data forever.
 
As above, back everything up NOW before making it worse.

I used a tool called GetDataBack recently and in the past many times and it's been great at recovering files. Only downside is it can take ages, but it should be worth it for your data.

Once you're satisfied all the data is off, use something to wipe the drive like DBAN and just do a full format on it afterwards, assuming it's not faulty. A test with the manufacturers hard disk test wouldn't go amiss I suppose.
 
Thanks all - downloaded the manufacturers tools and quick scans are showing the drive as healthy. It's showing as slave on the other system but as not formatted - whacked getdataback on and it's all still there (phew!) so fingers crossed I can get it all off.

Thanks again for all the help :D
 
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