** Recovery Help Needed ASAP Please **

[celeritas]

I posted the following in Operating Systems yesterday evening, but got no replies yet. Unfortunately, the data is somewhat "mission critical" and time sensitive, so I'd really appreciate it if someone would please suggest an alternative to wiping the drive or spending $200+ that I don't have. Thanks in advance.

I have a Win2kPro/NTFS Dell Latitude LS laptop that crashed the other day. I reset it, and it hung at the B&W status bar screen. I've tried Last Known Good Config, VGA mode, repair process/reinstall via 4 boot floppies & CD. Using the boot floppies, I chose repair, but it bombed out with a "unable to write file" message (or something to that effect). After starting up again, I couldn't choose repair because something (the previous repair process) corrupted some OS files. I got the "can't find NTOSKRNL.EXE" error.

I restarted again and chose reinstall/delete previous Windows installation. That died with a "corrupted file error." The Win2K boot CD didn't even let me get as far as selecting repair/install; after loading up it came up with another unable to write/corrupted file error. I've tried other Win2k boot CDs with the same results. I created an emergency repair disk on another Win2k Pro/NTFS machine, but when I boot up the laptop with it I get the NTOSKRNL error again. The data on the HD is vital; I can't simply wipe it and start over.

The laptop HD has no power supply and a very small (~1&quot female 40 pin connector. I couldn't find any converter -> 3.5", so I could mount in a desktop for recovery.

Here's my question: Does anyone know of a NTFS boot disk (and related recovery tools) that works in Win2k -- other than the spendy software offered by Winternals? If not, I guess I'll have to decide how much the data is really worth...

Maybe I'm cheap, but it's hard to believe that there isn't a freeware NTFS/2K driver out there somewhere -- or at least an alternative to winternals, anyhow...

TIA

(2nd post):
I just downloaded/ran NTFSDOS Pro trial, and since I can see all of my old folders/files, I hope that means there isn't physical damage to the disk -- and that I should be able to recover my files. $200 for the retail version -- $300 if I want to be able to salvage files across the network (Remote Recover)... *OUCH*

Any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[Slikkster]

You should still be able to copy data with the read-only ntfsdos pro, correct? It just won't let you WRITE data, like editing files, etc. But if you make a Dos boot disk and run ntfsdos pro, you should be able to mount the ntfs drives and then use the copy command and grab the files you need.

If ntfsdos PRO doesn't work for ya, I'd try the regular ntfsdos (non-pro) version with a bootdisk. It uses it's own ntfs driver vs. the Windows 2000 ntfs driver that ntfsdos PRO uses:

Ntfsdos (non-pro) freeware

 

[celeritas]

Thanks for the input. I thought by "read-only" winternals meant that you could see the data on the source drive, but couldn't write it to another drive. Otherwise, everyone would just use the trial version; they could just salvage the data to another drive (w/o changing it at the source), wipe the source disk, and copy the data back later.

 

[celeritas]

Update: Problem solved. After chasing my tail for a few days, trying Sysinternals/Winternals, etc. software, checking into HDD adapters, external enclosures, PCMCIA cards, and hunting down driver after driver, I finally reached the end of my rope and decided to take a chance on Partition Magic 6.

I created PM rescue/boot disks on a PC, boot up the laptop with/ran them, shrunk the 6GB drive down to 4.5GB (about 3.5GB was already in use), created a 1.5GB partition in the free space (beginning of drive), and installed Win2k+NTFS in it. When Windows came back up my data was waiting happily for me on D:. I didn't waste any time backing up the data across the network. WHEW! I'm one lucky camper.

BTW, after I re-read info on NTFSDOS Pro, NTFS98 Pro, ERD Commander, et al I found out you were right. They'll let you "read" the data off the drive (copy it to another); however, since I had 3.5GB of data to salvage and no secondary local disk to dump it to, that only left me with Remote Recover. RR had promise, but the trial version limits how much data you can copy -- and I could never find a compatible NDIS2 driver, anyhow.