- Oct 2, 2003
- 3,692
- 1
- 76
My sister's laptop stopped working properly yesterday.
It boots up, gives me an option to start windows normally, or run a windows repair.
I've tried both, just an infinite reboot loop. It's windows Vista.
I need to get pictures of my niece and nephew off of it.
I ran an ubuntu linux live cd. It won't let me mount the hard drive. Gives me an error saying that the drive is not responding.
I then booted up and ran the diagnostics tool in the BIOS. It reports "Replace hard drive"
I booted up Himen's ultimate boot cd. This is where it gets interesting..
(it's full of all kinds of diagnostic/recovery/repair tools)
I tried a couple different file managers on the cd. One of them was able to read the hard drive. It didn't support reading my usb flash drive so I couldn't copy files.
I then ran a couple diagnostics tools on it. A couple couldn't even read from the drive. Just gave me an error. But one of them reported that the partition tables are focked. Said boot sector is fine.
I then located a non-destructive file recovery program on the boot cd. It ran and gave me a list of recoverable files. Practically everything but the 'my pictures' folder. Figures. All the files types where messed up though. I selected all of the folders it listed as recoverable. (pain in the ass.. it freezes for about 3 minutes every time something is checked) It gives me an option to copy the files to my usb flash drive. Right before I got to this point it froze up for about 20 minutes. It was late, so I just gave up.
So, some programs can read the drive just fine it seems. It appears that the partition tables are just messed up.
Does anybody have any suggestions or advice before I jump back into this again? Any suggested recovery programs?
I appreciate it.
edit: I don't have any external enclosures to put the drive in.
It boots up, gives me an option to start windows normally, or run a windows repair.
I've tried both, just an infinite reboot loop. It's windows Vista.
I need to get pictures of my niece and nephew off of it.
I ran an ubuntu linux live cd. It won't let me mount the hard drive. Gives me an error saying that the drive is not responding.
I then booted up and ran the diagnostics tool in the BIOS. It reports "Replace hard drive"
I booted up Himen's ultimate boot cd. This is where it gets interesting..
(it's full of all kinds of diagnostic/recovery/repair tools)
I tried a couple different file managers on the cd. One of them was able to read the hard drive. It didn't support reading my usb flash drive so I couldn't copy files.
I then ran a couple diagnostics tools on it. A couple couldn't even read from the drive. Just gave me an error. But one of them reported that the partition tables are focked. Said boot sector is fine.
I then located a non-destructive file recovery program on the boot cd. It ran and gave me a list of recoverable files. Practically everything but the 'my pictures' folder. Figures. All the files types where messed up though. I selected all of the folders it listed as recoverable. (pain in the ass.. it freezes for about 3 minutes every time something is checked) It gives me an option to copy the files to my usb flash drive. Right before I got to this point it froze up for about 20 minutes. It was late, so I just gave up.
So, some programs can read the drive just fine it seems. It appears that the partition tables are just messed up.
Does anybody have any suggestions or advice before I jump back into this again? Any suggested recovery programs?
I appreciate it.
edit: I don't have any external enclosures to put the drive in.
Facebook
Twitter