hey,
i have a friends computer that I’m fixing. Im trying to just get all of her personal files out and use the Factory-Installed recovery but everytime I try to extract files it comes to a file (about 2 minutes in) that it can’t read.  In Doc’s and Set’s its one in Program Files its another. No matter what i do every file has something that causes the copying to fail midway.

BG Info: When i try to load using just that hard drive, the screen goes to nothing but a black screen with a blinking “_” on top. It will stay like that unless its turned off.  I have tried to copy it in KNOPPIX, SUSE Live-Eval 9.1, GENTOO, and Windows 2000 from my desktop hard drive…
I ran the Hitachi Hard drive checker and it reports everything is ok.

Do you think this is a virus or worm imbedded into the MBR? IF so how would I recover that? I need to be able to get files off of it because some are important.
Thanks for any help.

have you try check disk?
maybe, cross my fingers, drive is acting funny???

P.S. just got back from a party.. wasted .... flat.. can barrely type
sorry…...

thats kind a shame, been here a year, only got a 100 posts….
no offense fellas, been reading all ya posts though….

Have you run chkdsk on the drive yet from the Win2k box? The Hitachi software AFAIR only checks the physical drive, not the format. It sounds like a file system problem. If you fix problems on the file system and it doesn’t boot when you move it back to the original box, boot the box with an XP or Win2k disk, go into the recovery console and run “fixboot c:” and “fixmbr”.

Thanks Drachen, as soon as I get my W2K cd back im gonna try that. 

Another thing I never mentioned was that the computer will, completely out-of-the-blue, restart at some point when I enter Windows. Sometimes I can get as far as starting to rearrange icons on the desktop and beginning a disk defragmentation and other stuff but at some point I didn’t seem to do anything when I ran a Live Linux so could that also be pointing to the corrupt filesystem?
AND, i already got the files off and ran its Recovery software (HP) but it didnt help… most of the Recovery files were coming up as “unable to load” while the ‘destructive’ recovery was taking place. Should I get my friend to order the DVD from HP? She never made one since she had no clue what that was for.

[quote author=“OnMyWayUp”]Another thing I never mentioned was that the computer will, completely out-of-the-blue, restart at some point when I enter Windows.

Wait, I thought you said it didn’t boot. If it does boot sometimes, it’s not a boot record problem. When the computer reboots, do you see a blue screen with a bunch of numbers on it just before it reboots? Based on this, I’d try to boot the PC in safe mode and try to run a chkdsk from there. Open a command prompt and type in “chkdsk c: /f”. Say yes when it asks if you want to check when you reboot.

If you are actually getting blue screen erros before the reboots, it might also be a good idea to stop automatic restarts when you get a blue screen. Right-click on My Computer, select Properties and then the Advanced tab. Click on the Settings button in Startup and Recovery and uncheck “Automatically restart”. Googling the error name and number is often very helpful. You’ll need to reboot for this to take effect.

No, it doesnt bootup anymore. It did it twice but each time it randomly rebooted, showed the “HP Bios” Screen, and did the blinking “_” in the top-left corner. So i tried to re-recover the OS and it failed half-way from too many lost packets.
But after those two times, it wouldnt boot up again at all.  I unplugged the computer, let the light on the power supply shutoff, plugged it back in, and turned it on.  It showed the Bios screen and after went straight to the blinking “_”. (it was crying… )