Post by thread:[TECH] Dell/Symantec "System Restore partition."

Sigh. Computer go blooie :-( It's a dell with one of those nice "restore" partitions on it that will restore it to the original state... So does anyone happen to know whether "original state" means "reformat the disk into the original single partition", or just "restore the contents of the primary windows partition as it exists now" ? (My disk has a considerably more complex partition setup than it did originally.) Thanks Bill W

:: So does anyone happen to know whether "original state" means :: "reformat :: the disk into the original single partition" Bill, The bad news is back to how it was when it first leapt into your eager hands! One partition - whatever service pack and drivers there were at time of manufacturer. Assuming your hard drive is still spinning and it's being recognised by the computer, I would suggest finding someone who has some imaging software and make a complete disk image to an external drive - from there you'd be able to restore the other partitions back. Of course if you have programs that require registry entries then you are posibly stuffed so to speak. What exactly is wrong - have you tried running chckdsk /r which will hunt down unhappy sectors, recover if possible and then mark as bad? The two imaging systems I use are Acronis True Image and O&O Disk Image. Acronsi do have a trial that you can download and a Linux rescue CD that you can burn. If your Dell is a Media Centre type, then there is some special mumbo jumbo that has to be performed as Dell use a non standard MBR and boot sector. I beta test TI so can help you if you ran into any problems. Colin -- cdb, spam_OUTcolinTakeThisOuTbtech-online.co.uk on 13/03/2009 Web presence: http://www.btech-online.co.uk Hosted by: http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7988359

On Mar 12, 2009, at 10:37 PM, cdb wrote: > What exactly is wrong - have you tried running chckdsk /r which will > hunt down unhappy sectors, recover if possible and then mark as bad? BSoD on boot: c000021a "windows logon process system process terminated unexpectedly." It's been relatively flakey for a while, and I'm after the quickest fix. Maybe I'll try copying over a different winlogon.exe from another computer. BillW

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 12:52 AM, William Chops Westfield <.....westfwKILLspam@spam@mac.com> wrote: > It's been relatively flakey for a while, and I'm after the quickest fix. > Maybe I'll try copying over a different winlogon.exe from another > computer. NO! Don't do that! You'll just screw it up even more! Sigh... This bloody moderation is pissing me off. Which idiot put me on it I'll never know...

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:52:04 -0700, Chops\ wrote: :: c000021a Are you able to boot into SAFE mode? According to Microsoft this error can be caused by a failed service pack install or a 3rd party program is causing problems. Amusing to see that MS ask you to boot into the system to run Dr Watson. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156669/en-us This one may be of more use to you. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/922410/en-us Colin -- cdb, colinKILLspambtech-online.co.uk on 13/03/2009 Web presence: http://www.btech-online.co.uk Hosted by: http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7988359

On Mar 12, 2009, at 11:05 PM, cdb wrote: > :: c000021a > > Are you able to boot into SAFE mode? No. > According to Microsoft this error can be caused by a failed service > pack install or a 3rd party program is causing problems. > Amusing to see that MS ask you to boot into the system to run Dr > Watson. > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/156669/en-us Yes, amusing. That seems to date to W2003/WNT timeframe, though. > This one may be of more use to you. > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/922410/en-us And that one dates to 2006ish and says "or wait for the next service pack that will contain the fix"; my system is/was pretty up-to-date. A lot of the references I'm finding via the web seem to be of similar age... I'm suspecting Malware, actually. I'm ready to start over with a fresh install, but I would like to only wipe out the existing windows partition rather than the whole disk (that's why I partitioned the disk in the first place!) Sigh. Thus the lack of details in the original message. I was only looking for the answer to that one question. BillW

Do you have access to a XP install CD with the same type of install OEM file as the DEll - Pro, Home etc? If so you would be able to perfrom a system repair and all you'll lose are your service packs and updates. Colin -- cdb, EraseMEcolinspam_OUTTakeThisOuTbtech-online.co.uk on 13/03/2009 Web presence: http://www.btech-online.co.uk Hosted by: http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7988359

On Mar 12, 2009, at 11:32 PM, cdb wrote: > Do you have access to a XP install CD with the same type of install > OEM file as the DEll - Pro, Home etc? > > If so you would be able to perfrom a system repair Yeah; I've got some sort of XP Install disk; I can try the "repair" option. Not sure how it will work, given that the install disk is so much older than the system on the PC. So I'm looking at the linux system rescue CD, and while it has "partimage" for saving and restoring full partitions to image files, it doesn't seem to have any capability of browsing the resulting partition to restore individual files/etc. Clonezilla (recently mentioned) seems similar... is there anything better? BillW

:: Yeah; I've got some sort of XP Install disk; I can try the "repair" :: option. OK - if using this make sure it is the same type of install so if you have XPpro that this CD is an XPpro version. If it is older than the build you already have it will refuse to repair. To perform a repair, insert the CD and reboot PC and select boot from CD. You will be presented with two choices INSTALL and REPAIR. choose INSTALL otherwise you'll get the recovery console not what you want at all. After chunking around the installer should report that it has found a current installation. It will offer to INSTALL or REPAIR. choose REPAIR this time. All your Windows system files will now be deleted and re-installed - registry will be repaired. Once this has finished reboot and then you'll need your product key handy - make sure this is the Dell one otherwise it may demand to be activated. I still suggest making an image incase all goes pear shaped. I still suggest popping over to the Acronis website and downlood the trial version of TI 2009 - make a rescue CD, then make sure you can boot form this. One of Acronis' achillies heels is that they use an older version of Linux kernel so it doesn't always cope with new hardware in a pretty way. Assuming you can boot with the CD and it can see all your drives including the external or spare internal - the rest is self explanatory. Bear in mind your partitions will be numbered differently in Linux, so hopefully you have given all your partitions meaningful labels. Colin -- cdb, colinspam_OUTbtech-online.co.uk on 13/03/2009 Web presence: http://www.btech-online.co.uk Hosted by: http://www.1and1.co.uk/?k_id=7988359

William Chops Westfield wrote: {Quote hidden}> On Mar 12, 2009, at 11:32 PM, cdb wrote: > > >> Do you have access to a XP install CD with the same type of install >> OEM file as the DEll - Pro, Home etc? >> >> If so you would be able to perfrom a system repair >> > > Yeah; I've got some sort of XP Install disk; I can try the "repair" > option. > Not sure how it will work, given that the install disk is so much > older than > the system on the PC. > > So I'm looking at the linux system rescue CD, and while it has > "partimage" > for saving and restoring full partitions to image files, it doesn't > seem to > have any capability of browsing the resulting partition to restore > individual > files/etc. Clonezilla (recently mentioned) seems similar... is there > anything > better? > > BillW > > what your looking to do is to "mount" the partition, that will let you browse the files on it. worst case try opening a terminal then mkdir 1 mount /dev/sda1 1 mkdir 2 mount /dev/sda2 2 (etc) that will mount the partitions and you should then be able to browse them. As for the recovery partition, odds are it will restore the system to what came from the factory. Don't bother with repairing the system, its like repairing a car that's been flooded with salt water, sure it might start and run, but all kinds of crazy stuff is bound to happen the minute it leaves the auction house. Do it if you need to get data off or something like that, then do a clean install.

solarwind wrote: > This bloody moderation is pissing me off. Which idiot put me on it > I'll never know... Providing additional justification for being on moderation won't likely help you get off it any time soon. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.

William Chops Westfield wrote: > Sigh. Computer go blooie :-( > > It's a dell with one of those ... Isn't there a list or forum someplace where people actuall come to talk about this stuff? Am I the only one getting really fed up with *ix and other sysadmin stuff here? Yes, it's probably legal under the TECH tag, but I thought the spirit of that was general science and technology discussions, not a sys admin help desk. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.

On Thu, 2009-03-12 at 22:24 -0700, William Chops Westfield wrote: > Sigh. Computer go blooie :-( > > It's a dell with one of those nice "restore" partitions on it that > will restore it to the original state... > > So does anyone happen to know whether "original state" means "reformat > the disk into the original single partition", or just "restore the > contents of the primary windows partition as it exists now" ? (My > disk has a considerably more complex partition setup than it did > originally.) It will basically restore your machine to how it came out of the box. If that means one big windows partition, that's what it'll do. These days though I've noticed that some manufacturers actually either don't use the whole disk by default (my MSI Wind came with two partitions, one for windows, the other a data partition), or give you an option (latest Dell let me choose what size windows partition I wanted when I ordered). TTYL

Excuse-me, Olin, but what is your age? Olin Lathrop a écrit : {Quote hidden}> William Chops Westfield wrote: > >> Sigh. Computer go blooie :-( >> >> It's a dell with one of those ... >> > > Isn't there a list or forum someplace where people actuall come to talk > about this stuff? > > Am I the only one getting really fed up with *ix and other sysadmin stuff > here? Yes, it's probably legal under the TECH tag, but I thought the spirit > of that was general science and technology discussions, not a sys admin help > desk. > > > ******************************************************************** > Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products > (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. > -- Artem ZEZYULINSKIY

> I've got some sort of XP Install disk Just to follow up... 1) The Dell system restore (from hidden disk partition) didn't work. ctrl-F11 appeared to do nothing and booted (tried to boot) the main non-working WXP partition. 2) "Repair" didn't work. It did it's stuff, but the resulting system still got the same BSoD on reboot. 3) I was able to save all the partitions from the relevant drive using "system rescue CD" and "partimage" and a USB drive. The latest rescue image has come a long way since the first time I used one... 4) My "some sort of XP Install" appears to be a "real" windows install disk rather than a "system restore disk", so it worked fine and didn't overwrite anything other than the C: partition I aimed it at. 5) It didn't install the machine-specific drivers, though, and I couldn't find the relevant driver disk. But Dell has this nice feature on their web site where "your account" keeps track of all the systems you've bought, and has driver page that specifically tells you which drivers are relevant to the system AS YOU BOUGHT IT (and perhaps if you've told it of upgrades, it keeps track of that too.) So I was able to download everything I needed. 6) It had to download a bunch of stuff to upgrade to SP3, of course. The new "bare" partition was saved (via partimage) so maybe next time this'll be easier (I actually have ghost backups of the old partition, but I don't particularly trust them. Even if the computer hadn't gone belly- up, it was pretty overdue for a clean install.) 7) Now, I need to figure out which of the apps carefully installed on the separate "bin" partition are actually dependent on crap windows scattered over C:, and which will still work. Sigh. BillW

>5) It didn't install the machine-specific drivers, though, >and I couldn't find the relevant driver disk. But Dell has >this nice feature on their web site where "your account" >keeps track of all the systems you've bought, and has driver >page that specifically tells you which drivers are relevant >to the system AS YOU BOUGHT IT (and perhaps if you've told it >of upgrades, it keeps track of that too.) So I was able to >download everything I needed. Yes, that is one bit I like about the Dell support pages - use the build key from the bottom of the machine and 'it knows' what you need. I haven't specifically been through the loop of needing to deal with upgrades from them, but have been pretty impressed with the build key tracking.