62 replies to this topic

[whatsanike]

Many thanks especially to Wonko the Sane without whose help I might still be in a quandary.

[whatsanike]

Yes it happened that a forced shutdown occurred when all the hundred videos were triggered by the Enter command. I actually have a feeling that the disk itself is not failing, as the TestDisk also checked it and found no problems prior to replacing the MFT with the backup of it. There are more likely explanations for the problem.
Windows Vista is actually an unstable beta version of Windows, which is why it was soon by Microsoft replaced with the more stable Windows 7, plus MS stopping support last April for any Vista implementation which hath not SP2, altho they are charging a lot for your rectifying their mistakes if you want to get Win 7.
As to the suggestion that I try to migrate Win 7 and run it on 2 machines, that would not only be illegal, but MS company would detect it when I went online and not give me any updates or let me run its nifty apps.
In defense of Vista, any OS will fail if you mess it up. I really resent being jacked up by Microsoft to buy a new version of its OS for big bux, and it is not the first time Vista on my machine had to be repaired by me. Before this it was the Windows updates that were crashing it. In its defense, Microsoft did offer email support, but the solutions did not work and I found it more convenient to roll back to a restore point, than to continue to correspond with the technician. It is not my job nor am I paid to beta test Windows Vista.

[sambul61]

Win 7 Enterprise was originally offered as a free 90-day trial (officially extendable then with 5 rearms totaling 600 days - no hacks ) in Sep. 2009. It was formally said "for IT Pro", but available in practice to anyone with Win Live ID (relax, MS wouldn't offer it like this, if they didn't want everyone to test their soft). Once you install it, you can update Win with service fixes regularly via Windows Update.

Later that particular package download was extended till Dec. 31, 2010 - i.e. it was available for almost 1.5 year. This is old news bud - it seems like you're running almost late for it (catch up with Michael Pietroforte bot next time), yet may be able to test Win 8 next year.

[Wonko the Sane]

If a forced shutdown happened while large chunks of data were transferred, the problem has a nice explanation (without suspecting any malfunctioning of the HD).

JFYI:
http://www.msfn.org/...xp/page__st__12




Wonko

[sambul61]

Doesn't one have to be an "engineer" to understand that explanation?

[Wonko the Sane]

Doesn't one have to be an "engineer" to understand that explanation?

Not really.

We can use a layman's comparison allright.

Imagine a large funnel hovering over (suspended by some ropes attached to the ceiling) a (very large) bottle (perfectly centered of the bottle opening but not inserted into it).
The bottle is resting on a three legged table (but is nonetheless attached to a "loose" rope also fixed to the ceiling, long enough that the bottle cannot reach the ground).
Fill the funnel by pouring from another largish container some liquid faster than what can escape the funnel end.
At this time Eric Cantona enters the room, and you ask him to kick one of the table legs, HARD.

Would you blame the bottle for the spilling that would result?


Wonko

[whatsanike]

Well, now a few days later I am back behind square one. I got the machine to boot into vista a couple of times and used it. then it started to act funny, i.e., it didn't want to boot After that, the vista gateway, inc. boot CD would boot into a DOS prompt but not repair the startup. I got it to boot into Vista one time again, don't remember how. I got into Vista and ran the Vista repair from the OEM disk that keeps the files and folders, which terminated after a couple of hours with error that the reinstall had failed. Inexplicably the repair disk won't even boot it any more. The only message is that nls files are missing or corrupt. So now I can't boot into DOS or anything. Using the PMagic CD I can see with TestDisk that the NTFS boot sectors match, and the old trick of restoring the MFT does not solve anything, back at the ranch. So back at the ranch I put in the Gateway OEM Vista repair disk, and it "loads" the windows files, then runs the green slider, but never gives me the Choose Language screen, only a dead cursor in the middle of the screen, and the HD keeps running 1/2 second on, 1/2 second off and never lets the welcome screen appear, only the blue screen with a cursor in the middle. I think I will go to Best Buy and get a new SATA drive and cable, try to install Vista from the Gateway disk. Most of my Docs are now on a Terabyte USB drive so I don't think I lost much data ("knock on wood"). I am beginning to hate Microsoft, Lord help me, and Jesus please forgive me and have mercy.

[whatsanike]

I unplugged everything except keyboard and mouse, i.e., ethernet cable and stereo. Waited awhile and after 5 mins got the welcome screen from restore disk. tried to run chkdsk. It runs but doesn't seem to finish, but I do get the X:\Sources> back again. Why I don't think it finishes is that it only admits to processing 61478 of 1480067 index entries. Then it corrects errors in index $130. Now this is the index it always stopped at every time I ran chkdsk. This does not look promising as it did the same thing a little earlier and still won't boot. I read somewhere online that it might work to copy and paste the .nls files from another Vista installation into C:\windows using like knoppix and a USB stick.

[whatsanike]

So about the nls online would be http://www.howtofixc...air-224503.html

[whatsanike]

More play-by-play.

Instead of using the USB, I decided to use Windows.old/Windows/System32/*.nls So using Knoppix did overwrite all nls files in C:\Windows\System32 and now the error is that winload.exe is missing or corrupt or something, so rebooting again with knoppix and going to overwrite it also.

[whatsanike]

Right now can't get knoppix to read the folders too good so trying booting from Gateway CD.

[whatsanike]

So I got the velkom screen. Finally and going to try a clean install since it isn't finding my OS listed for repair. Will keep every one posted about this entire deadly bore.

[whatsanike]

Lord help me. It's asking me for drivers to do the install and I ain't got no drivers.

[whatsanike]

So I refreshed the partition and it stopped asking for drivers and no is expanding files (it claims). If this works I'll be surprised. Have a good night!

[sambul61]

I wonder if you read this post? The trial is still available, and once installed will last almost 2 years (while Win 8 will be released before it ends). It will NOT affect any other PCs you may have.

I think Wonko quite accurately described your (or mine, i.e. our) problem. There seems to be no viable solution for it.

[Wonko the Sane]

There seems to be no viable solution for it.

Sure there are solutions for it.

The most easy being the one already suggested:

• recover DATA
• re-install Vista

But there is not one reason in the world why - by properly using TESTDISK and CHKDSK and if needed replacing a bunch of possibly corrupted files taking them from install source, the machine could not be restored to a functional state.


What whatsanike did was not however try to do things with order, method and reason, but rather throw anything that came into his mind at that hard disk, doing probably more harm with some "random" attempts that was the actual original damage to the filesystem.

Just for the record, the most senseless thing to do was to run the attrib command on ALL files because CHKDSK protested it couldnt fix something because of "read only mode":
http://reboot.pro/13473/page__st__17
in this case what CHKDSK is trying to tell you is that you ran it WITHOUT the /F parameter and that without it it cannot correct some errors.
The "fix" for that error message is to run CHKDSK /F and NOT to run attrib on the whole lot of files.

Until you are not double sure that you have a seemingly error free filesystem, attempting booting from it is "looking for troubles".

And in any case, when disasters like this happen, first salvage all data you can, remember that *something*, though worse than *everything* is MUCH better than *nothing*.


Wonko

[whatsanike]

So based on that just previous post, i likely corrupted some files running chkdsk after attrib -r *.* /s /d
Anyway now windows seems to be missing some files necessary to reinstall so it aborted the repair, and now the message on boot is BOOTMGR...MISSING...

[Wonko the Sane]

So based on that just previous post, i likely corrupted some files running chkdsk after attrib -r *.* /s /d

Not really, but attrib does change "flags" at filesystem level (actual bytes on disk).
If the filesystem is corrupted and pointers to WHERE the flag to be written is are "wrong", it is likely that the "new flag" is written in the "wrong place", likely corrupting "another" file or filesystyem structure.
It is more likely that running attrib can have done more damage.
And for all we know a number of files are set to a particular state, like System or Hidden, for a Reason and I wouldn't exclude that Vista expects some files to actually be system or hidden or both.

Anyway now windows seems to be missing some files necessary to reinstall so it aborted the repair, and now the message on boot is BOOTMGR...MISSING...

Which brings you back to:

• save DATA
• re-format
• re-install

Curing (as opposed to beating) a dead horse is a much more politically correct activity , but it still has very little practical results, unfortunately.



Wonko

[whatsanike]

X:\Sources>
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup

ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old

bootrec /rebuildbcd

"Total identified Windows installations: 0"

Now I want to try replacing the backup partition contents by copying all the files in it from another Vista installation. If I do that maybe the re-install from the CD will work?

[sambul61]

Curing (as opposed to beating) a dead horse is a much more politically correct activity , but it still has very little practical results, unfortunately. :

How about beating an incurable horseman?

[ceehoppy]

Maybe whatsanike ENJOYS beating his head against the wall.
IF you have saved what data you could,
& IF you have the original Vista recovery disks for your pc,
then WHY wouldn't you reformat & reinstall the os?

When you install the os, it sets up all drivers for hardware- mobo, drives, video, etc. Unless your "another Vista installation" is from a pc with the EXACT same hardware, it won't work. OEM (original equipment manufacturer) recovery disks or partitions will only work with the original pc - they only load "stock" drivers. So a disk (or partition) for a dell inspiron model "xxx" will restore a dell inspiron model "xxx", NOT a gateway, (or even a dell "YYY")

If Wonko "advises" you to start over, do it. (you posted here for advice, listen to the man - he knows more about this than you or I)

[whatsanike]

I'm the kind of weird guy who never says "die". So after beating my head against the wall, I have finally managed to disbelieve the error messages from microsoft that were mostly lies anyway, and the most recent one I received from the Gateway disk was that no installation of Windows was found, which I decided to believe. So having in the previous peregrinations, once managed to reinstall and boot windows. I renamed the C:\Windows to "Window1" and Windows.old (appearing in the guise of C:\$Windows.~BT) from the Dos prompt courtesy the Gateway boot disk, I renamed to Windows. Then the !@#$%^&* Windows installer found that sucker and has now reinstalled Windows for the 2nd time in 2 weeks.
An odd thing did happen when I tilted my computer to plug in the ethernet cable to the cable router. It lost electric power and then forced me to create a new user account on reboot. I did not find any loose connection. But now, at least for now, I have the OS up and ruining.

[whatsanike]

And ohyeah. Before I hit on the brainstorm of re-renaming windows.old to windows, I did try to get a copy of the restore partition, thinking that was what the CD wanted, which now I don't think so. But emachines and Gateways have something called PC Angel that will not let you copy the restore partition. I spent a very productive hour this morning surfing to sites that said about ways to disable it, like even regedit stuff, none of which worked, probably because the PC angel people have read those old pages and improved the product.

[whatsanike]

And how's this for weird? Windows 7 on my laptop "There are problems on your computer that have not been reported to Microsoft".

[Wonko the Sane]

And how's this for weird? Windows 7 on my laptop "There are problems on your computer that have not been reported to Microsoft".

That is good, it is meant to protect your privacy.
You don't want all the peeps at Microsoft know that you are doing random things to their OS, don't you?






Wonko