Battlezone Forums

Okay, emergency situation here.

Vista has just fubared itself, and after a completely normal shutdown it fails to start at all. The first few times i tried to load up after it said it was going to check the disc for consistency, it did just that, but failed to get past that stage. The next few boots i skipped that stage a few times t5o try and get past it. Oncew of twice i got to the login screen but keyboard and mouse had no control, or rather i could move the mouse but not click on anything, thus not get into the system. Then once again it shutdown unexpectadly.

Ive tried again recently, and when checking the discs it gets a huge error, and sticks again. Now all I get when i try to start is a very very brief blue screen and immediatte shutdown. Windows recovery wont work either, apparently the program fails to start. So im completely effed.

Apart from using my recovery disc that wipes my drives and re-installs windows (which ive JUST done recently :@), anyone have any ideas? I need to get some of that data off the drives, havent backed up for a couple of weeks... going to loose a lot of BZ2 stuff i probably wont be assed to do again!

You could always load up a Linux LiveCD such as ubuntu, and try to access your hard drive that way. If the HDD hasnt yet fully crapped out on you, you can copy some of your data to a thumb drive, burn it to a CD (if your CD burning drive is not being used by the LiveCD), or use Synaptic Package Manager to install Filezilla (an FTP client) and then upload some of your important files to a web site.

If you've got a spare HD, you can put an OS on that and install the broken one as a slave.

Currently, im installing SystemRestoreCD to a USB stick, although im not sure my laptop can boot from USB.

If not ill burn Ubuntu to a disc and see if i can browse the disk partitions and recover my data, any programs ill have to re-install i guess. Damn irritating start to the day! Ubuntu should recognise my external harddrive am i right?

Right im not running ubuntu from a disc in the drive, but when i try to click on my internal harddrive, i get an 'unable to mount vista' (vista is the name of the harddrive)

So I guess my laptop didnt shut down properly, its telling me to boot to windows but thats totally impossible right now. There has to be a way to get this data... I dont have a windows install disc and my laptop doesnt support boot from USB, so booting from my external is not an option.

This sounds like the disk is damaged, the best thing you can do to recover the data is to put the HD into another PC and see if you can use a recovery program. Try Mini Tool Power Data Recovery, even if the disk drive doesn't show up in My Computer, that program should still help. If that doesn't work, see what a store can do. But this could also just be a boot problem, try putting in the install disk of the OS and select install and somewhere in the install menus you should find a repair tool on that disk.

Also go the your bios and check you boot order, make sure there is empty drive that comes before a not empty one, the one that should be on top is your CD/DVD drive.

I'm not an expert on this, but it might help. Good luck.

it looks to me like nfts.sys has been corrupted, as the blue screen error i get when i try to boot is:

0x000000024

unfortunately microsofts help service is f*cking useless. im currently in the 'Edit Boot Options' screen which i got to by pressing f10 during startup, tried running chkdsc c: /f to no avail

TheJamsh wrote:it looks to me like nfts.sys has been corrupted, as the blue screen error i get when i try to boot is:

0x000000024

unfortunately microsofts help service is f*cking useless. im currently in the 'Edit Boot Options' screen which i got to by pressing f10 during startup, tried running chkdsc c: /f to no avail

The command is actually

chkdsk /f c:

As it's a laptop hard drive you will have trouble just throwing it into any old PC. You can purchase a hard drive enclosure for the '2.5 laptop hard drive or you can purchase a universal USB connector that will let you hook any hard drive up through a computer's USB port from a computer store ('computer store' meaning store that primarily sells computer and computer parts, as opposed to your general consumer electronics stores).

Also, sometimes when an NTFS formatted drive refuses to mount under linux you can run the terminal command "sudo ntfsfix <DEVICE_ID>" to clear the 'dirty' flag from the hard drive and get it to mount. The device ID is usually something like /dev/sda1 -- you would have to open a partition editor like gparted to find out what the device ID of the problem hard drive is.

If all else fails, find a good repair shop.

I do have another PC, which im using right now, but as its a ltptop harddrive ill have to purchase some sort of mounting bay so i can access it, which i really dont want to do

thanks for the command, ill try again. Im currently in ubuntu again trying to force mount the drives, but it says 'nfts' is an unrecognised file system or something

The file system type is actually called 'NTFS', it means like Windows NT File System, or something to that effect.

TJ, if you have an external HDD that is powered by USB only, There is a good chance you could put your laptop drive into the external drive and plug it into your other computer. Do that!

I done it before but make sure your external drive interface uses SATA since todays laptops use SATA now.

Good luck, Commander.

-APOCALYPSE- wrote:TJ, if you have an external HDD that is powered by USB only, There is a good chance you could put your laptop drive into the external drive and plug it into your other computer. Do that!

I done it before but make sure your external drive interface uses SATA since todays laptops use SATA now.

Good luck, Commander.

I've seen plenty of new laptops with IDE connectors

In fact, the odds are that your laptop hard drive, if SATA, will use standard SATA connections - power and data seperately. If they're together, there may still be connections for both.

I wont risk destroying my external HDD as well, that has a buttload of work on it too thankfully, its a sealed unit anyway so accessing it would not only void warranty but also damage it.

Im going to the shop now to grab a couple of cables, and attempt to connect it to the motherboard of my family desktop PC. They have the same OS etc so hopefully ill be able to browse the HDD, get what I need out of it, then format it. I dont think its going to work though, because even Ubuntu can't access the drive, even with force-mounting using the ubuntu terminal.

FTR, what brand is the laptop HDD?