jaclaz

Strangely ON Topic : jaclaz

That's good. You are very welcome to disagree, either slightly or largely. What you cannot do is to misrepresent the scope and the by now recognized usefulness of the present thread and more generally indirectly depict the few people (like yours truly ) that in these years have contributed to allow thousands of people to recover their data as a bunch of reckless loons senselessly advising people to apply this cure to *any* illness . The fact that a number of people do not take the time to READ ATTENTIVELY the provided resources and fail to consider attentively whether attempting this fix is a good or bad choice is another thing and is unfortunately outside the possibilities of a technical forum, (can't cure stupid ), if I had 5 bucks for each user that failed to READ and attempted a PCB swap: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/152693-st9160411as-cant-initialize-because-of-io-device-error#entry973111 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/150215-dont-even-think-of-swapping-pcbs-on-720011/ I would be, if not a rich man, much more well off. Example, in layman's terms: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/page-169#entry1004448 And, JFYl, a Seagate which was dropped will very likely, BEFORE showing a BSY, click a number of times (ten or eleven or twelve, cannot remember exactly) and then spin down (and same often happens for a failed head). jaclaz

No. If you cannot write correctly 7200.11 it is inconceivable that you can replicate the procedure accurately enough. Seriously , yes , it is possible that your disk is affected by the BSY problem, but maybe you will need some assistance from a friend or relative more familiar with English, in order to read and properly understand the READ-ME-FIRST: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143880-seagate-barracuda-720011-read-me-first/ and the recommended guide: http://www.mapleleafmountain.com/seagatebrick.html It is important to make sure that the symptoms are those of either the BSY or LBA0 known issue and to understand fully and replicate EXACTLY the procedure. Or maybe you can try asking for help here: http://www.insomnia.gr/topic/316249-πρόβλημα-με-seagate-barracuda-st3500320as/ jaclaz

, but do not drink over the normal limit . jaclaz P.S.: @bigmuscle If I were you I would make another site where people can actually purchase a "license to whine about the software", something like 3 € per whining ticket and 9 € to buy a set of 5 whining tickets, you seemingly would get richer through that. For NO apparent reason :

Don't worry about the acronyms, it is just my "personal war" agaisnt their use (and abuse), though F.T.B. for Fire Control Technician is an interesting twist: http://www.acronymfinder.com/Fire-Control-Technician-Ballistic-(US-DoD)-(FTB).html as anywhere else that would make FCT Sure , I understand what you were trying to do, but that's one of the occasions when an image is worth a thousand words : jaclaz

Good , then it is a possible bug that - once brought to the attention of JFX - is likely to be easily reproducible and solvable. jaclaz

Care to explain? Do you mean that bootsect.exe /NT52 does not produce a PBR/VBR invoking NTLDR? jaclaz P.S.: In any case one can download the bootice from it's own homesite: http://bbs.ipauly.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2

No. The example does not apply. The steering wheel has worked for more than 100 years as a way to control direction of a wheeled vehicle, BUT the actual first cars did have a "control stick". The control stick has worked for more than, what, 75 years as a way to control helicopters (but also excavators and other ground vehicles). BOTH solutions have proved over the years to be very good at what they are supposed to do. There are no particular issues, costs aside, to make cars with control sticks (provided that one can manage to get the right sensibility and feedback), as the control stick is a known good alternative to both the steering wheels and the various pedals, though of course it would take some time to get people used to it. It could be an evolution in the way cars are controlled. A good argument in favour of using joysticks in cars is increased safety for the driver in case of accident (article about some old research on the matter): http://www.saabsunited.com/2009/11/the-saab-9000-drive-by-wire-joystick-project.html and quite fresh news, drive-by-wire (while still using at the moment a steering wheel) is becoming reality: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/05/al_drivebywire/ BUT here we are substituting a "known to be working" and very accurate/precise set of "commands" (keyboard and mouse) with something that is: slower less accurate ergonomically worse in most situations (with the exception of tiny, hand-held devices, like phones and tablets, where you are NOT supposed to do "real work")It would be more like making new cars replacing hydraulic disc brakes: http://visual.merriam-webster.com/images/transport-machinery/road-transport/brakes/disc-brake_1.jpg with wheelchair brakes: http://visual.merriam-webster.com/images/society/health/wheelchair.jpg jaclaz

ET? FTB? https://www.ftb.ca.gov/ Check the actual academic degrees and certifications people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates got, they did *somehow* manage to start a business or two even without them. Mind you I am not saying that it is not good to have certifications and degrees (quite the contrary), I am saying that they are an often overestimated part of what concurs to people's capability and will to "do a good job", they are very good things to have , but not enough by themselves. jaclaz

No. "Certified" means "I have been trained and I managed to get judged capable of doing what I was trained for". (nothing more, nothing less). From this to extrapolate that "I know what I am doing" and "you can trust me to do a good job" there is an abyss. Just go to some more official MS forum and check what MVP's and the like tell poor, innocent people. A few examples: intelligent+honest+properly trained or knowledgeable enough+passes certification=Certified AND knowing what I am doing AND you can trust me to do a good job stupid+dishonest+properly trained or knowledgeable enough+passes certification=Certified AND knowing what I am doing BUT NOT necessarily you can trust me to do a good job Intelligent+honest+properly trained or knowledgeable enough= knowing what I am doing AND you can trust me to do a good job BUT NOT certified stupid+honest+passes certification=Certified BUT NOT knowing what I am doing AND NOT necessarily you can trust me to do a good job etc.. jaclaz

Signed! jaclaz

In your opinion. Now, with all due respect, in my own opinion, I'm good for at least the next 10 years: yesterday I've activated my 6th XP Pro SP3 x86 machine (two of which are also bootable into 98SE). MS will stop supporting XP next April... well, it can do that, all right. Myself, I couldn't care less whether it actually does it, or backs off in the last moment. I don't know. I really don't think that running an unsuported OS sounds safe. And I'll say it again. I think comparing the running of Windows XP with Windows 9x/ME unsupported is foolish. 9x/ME's kernel is way simpler than Windows NT's, which still exists in Vista, 7 and 8. So an attacker of those systems can get to XP as well. So you shouldn't use 9x/ME's security through obscurity as a precedent for how things my go with XP. I sense a lot of folks think that Microsoft is out to screw with people on Windows Updates. Somehow they believe Microsoft is undermining the system. I really don't think Microsoft is out to mess with it's own products. JFYI I run a few machines with "outdated" (and out of support) OS since years: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158823-why-you-should-avoid-buying-windows-8/?p=1019348 Now, is it "smart"? To some extents it is, the stupid machines use the stupid OS they run to do stupid things (like all the things PC's do), in exactly the SAME stupid way they stupidly did that when the respective OS's were mainstream, and they do that in what would be considered an insanely low-powered (as BOTH processing power AND mains power consumption goes). But of course those machines are not intended to stupidly do the new stupid things like (say) Silverlight or HTML5 sites expect, so it is not a good idea for people wanting to have "recent" software on these "oldish" OS's. Some "statistics" (number of BSOD's/issues did not change since this was posted): http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155290-windows-8-deeper-impressions/page-56#entry1022946 Now, try guessing on which of those 4 machines I once got a virus? Yes, it was the XP one, and it happened (obviously) when the OS was fully supported, in 2009, and due to "local" compromising (infected USB stick). Now, please, try stating that comparing running unsupported XP to running unsupported NT 4.00/Win2K is foolish, go ahead, make my day. jaclaz

And your point is? It is clearly stated in several places, including the READ-ME-FIRST how the instructions and the assistance provided here is ONLY related to two definite errors, the "LBA0" and the "BSY" caused by a single, definite issue in firmware (log counter). It is NEVER suggested to apply the "fix" if the symptoms are not correspondent to the above. BUT a number of people, that had nothing to lose, went ahead and applied the same "fix" to slightly different symptoms, and some of them had their disks revived. <- this plainly means that the "fix" works also for some disks affected by different issues. Quick explanation: A. disk bricked B. data on it not worth between US$ 500 and US$ 1,000 (typical figures that professionals are going to charge for recovering the data) or C. having not the financial possibility to spend said amount of money. A+B=0 (nothing to lose) A+C=0 (nothing to lose) Noone in it's right mind, whenever the data is actually worth that kind of money, will even think to risk to lose the data forever, but all the rest can well fork from a handful of bucks and attempt (if the symptoms are the correspondent ones or even if they are not) to apply the provided routines. They won't be anyway in a "worse" situation, and they won't anyway spend hundreds of dollars on the stupid thingy, they had lost their data before the failed attempt and they will have them lost after it. jaclaz

To be fair , the original answer seems to me if not appropriate, corresponding to the question: To me any sounds a lot like BOTH a Dell and a HP .... jaclaz

That is a "complication" . So, there is probably an underlying "physical" error(s) on the disk that caused the filesystem corruption. Time to go back to Linux and try imaging again using ddrescue. It is important that you run ddrescue with a LOG, see the manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html The program will attempt to read even normally not readable areas, but first thing it will save all the "plainly readable", logging which areas were not read, and try them "later" (or at next run). jaclaz

A small confirmation . Compare the "How to play" here: http://us.battroborg.com/#content/en/howto.html with this original Commercial: You might notice how very little relevance is given to the need for syncing nor any warning is present about possible interferences. jaclaz

Which graphic card do you have? Blackwingcat's site is here: http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/ You will need to search on it for your graphic card, example: http://en.lmgtfy.com/?q=ATI+Radeon+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.livedoor.jp%2Fblackwingcat%2F (LMGTFY used only for visual explanation ) jaclaz

There are different ways to get access to the Recovery partition, see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128727-cant-access-repair-my-pc-option-via-f8-startup/ HP traditionally used a "special" MBR (which a good 2/3 to 3/4 of self-appointed "advanced users" traditionally botched by reinstalling some OS ): http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/131620-hp-notebook-the-recovery-partition-could-not-be-found/ but it is entirely possible that they have later added it to (say) BIOS, basically when you press F11 the original MBR CODE is re-written (and that would explain why your GRUB was gone), or is it possible that they dropped the approach completely and what the F11 press does is simply to make the Recovery partition the Active one, cannot say or that they are using (though using the F11 key) the built-in recovery provisions of Vista, the WinRE Sure you can reuse (as I already hinted earlier) the Netrunner repair utility, what you have to understand is that it is possible that it can work or not. What I mean is that you have three two choices now: 1. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->Linux 2. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->BOOTMGR->\boot\BCD this latter (in the \boot\BCD) duplicates as: 2.1 ->WINLOAD.EXE->Vista 2.2 ->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->XP When you exited the recovery partition "fiddling" you were presented with the: 1. MBR->PBR->BOOTMGR->\boot\BCD which later duplicates as 2.1 ->WINLOAD.EXE->Vista 2.2 ->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->XP The Netrunner repair utility found then an existing "main" bootmanager (which was the BOOTMGR) and added it to the GRUB together with it's own booting provision. If you prefer, the Netrunner repair utility found the system in the same exact situation as when you installed Netrunner the first time. But after you will have reinstalled the XP, the NTLDR will be the pre-existing, "main" bootmanager that the Netrunner utility will find, which is a different situation: 1. MBR->PBR->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->XP Whether it will anyway "keep" the already existing entries in the grub.cfg or not cannot say, but if it doesn't and simply reinstates it's own provision and "previous main" bootmanager the result may be a dual boot between Linux and XP (with no provision to boot Vista). 1. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->Linux 2. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->XP Of course you can also "repair" this latter situation by later "fixing" the Vista install (which will "Import" in the \boot\BCD the NTLDR/XP provision and make again BOOTMGR the "main" bootmanager). In theory your setup is "wrong" because you have an "intermediate passage", once you have decided that your "main" bootmanager is GRUB2, you could use it as such, i.e. have it with three choices in the same single screen as it would be more "clean" and "direct": 1. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->Linux 2. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->BOOTMGR->\boot\BCD->WINLOAD.EXE->Vista 3. MBR->GRUB->grub.cfg->NTLDR->BOOT.INI->NTDETECT.COM->XP jaclaz

If I may, the issue you just pointed out (ordinal vs. name) is only one of the causes of the so called "DLL hell", but it cannot be underestimated how a large part of it is to be attributed to sloth and "unneeded complexity" (and in some cases plain stupidity) on behalf of the actual programmers. Some reference: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/4896/The-DLL-Hell-Problems-and-Solutions Please note how this has been removed: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811694.aspx but we can have it through the WayBack Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20100305054645/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811694.aspx Part of it is due to "abuse of DLL's" however. What I mean is, if you have to make 2+2 you normally have a mental table for it and you know that it makes up 4. You do not search for an algorithm capable of doing addition on integers, real, fractional, and imaginary numbers with precision up to 2^31 and 25 decimal places. What a number of programmers abuse is the use of such external, often overcomplicated (because they are meant for some non-trivial scope) code when there is in the programming language already the provisions to make a smaller, simpler, more suitable and faster algorithm. The use of some "programming studios" is another culprit, when examining a program for dependencies (let's say with Dependency Walker) you will find how there are often completely unneeded dependencies to functions that also exist in another .dll which is actually needed or dependencies created "automagically" by the CASE tool that have no real meaning/use. What is IMHO absurd is that the good MS guys (who have had "full control" on them since the very beginning) in all these years did not manage to keep at least the so-called "known" DLL's and the small bunch of VCC redistributables under control and their way out (supposed "solution" in their perverted minds) is the total folly that Windows Side-by-Side (WinSxS) "assemblies" represents (including their crazy folder/file names). jaclaz

Sector 63 is seemingly fine (that text you see is the "normal" - though "French" - set of error messages that may be displayed when attempting to boot), nothing "weird" . The data in it confirms the $MFT starting at LCN 786432 and the "sectors before (63) and the disk geometry (255/63), and cluster size is 8 sectors (all "normal" values). The "new" info is that the $MFTMirr is at LCN 122095000 (in case of need). The $MFTMirr is (should be) an Exact copy of the first few records (4 of them) of the $MFT. If you extract 8 sectors starting on LCN 786432 (i.e. 786432*8+63=LBA 6291519) and 8 sectors starting from LCN 122095000 (i.e. 122095000*8+63=LBA 976760063) the resulting files should be identical. Since both the MBR and the PBR are OK, once verified that $MFT and $MFTMirr are identical, everything leads to a filesystem (NTFS) specific error. Testdisk has a provision to compare the $MFT with the $MFTMirr allowing the user to overwrite the $MFT with the $MFTMirr if they are different. This kind of errors (normally) can be fixed from Windows by running the CHKDSK utility, in any case DMDE can normally recover the files. Once you have the image made, the fixing procedure to attempt is (assuming that the partition gets drive letter F: in windows, change it to suit your situation), open a command prompt and in it type: [ENTER] it will print some data and end saying something like "cannot proceed in Read ONly mode as no /F parameter was specified" Redo as: [ENTER] this time you will likely have a number of error reports and correspondent "fixes". Once it has finished, redo as: [ENTER] this last run is likely to last a lot more time and report a bigger number of errors and fixes. If the above is what happens, run a last time the simple: and this time the run should end with something like "Windows has checked the file system and found no problems". Of course it is possible (though rare) that CHKDSK cannot repair a NTFS filesystem, in which case the only way to recover the files is to use specific tools (like the mentioned DMDE, which often can rebuild a "faked" filesystem to get the files or PHOTOREC or other "file oriented" file recovery tools), but let's first see if CHKDSK succeeds. jaclaz

I was addressing the comment by Ponch about the apparently low resolution of the screenshot (of the 2k) you posted, pointing out how most probably to fit in 124 Mb that build used a "standard" VGA video driver. jaclaz

39/124=0,31451612903225806451612903225806 1/3=0,33333333333333333333333333333333 jaclaz

Sure , but even your 39 Mb are about one third of the whole system footprint . Faq/Fga : Q. Are the Nvidia drivers (and connected programs/tools) an insanely huge mass of bloat? A. Yes. jaclaz

A "current" Nvidia driver (for XP): http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/57493/en-us GeForce 307.83 Driver Version: 307.83 WHQL Release Date: 2013.2.26 Operating System: Windows XP Language: English (US) File Size: 155.00 MB jaclaz

@Ponch Considering that the mentioned 2K install takes MUCH LESS SPACE than a current (say) nVidia set of drivers need today I guess you have to put things into perspective. A "plain" (no tweaks/removals) install of 2K is (was) around 650 Mb. A "plain" (no tweals/removal) install of XP is (was) around 1.5 Gb. If someone will be so kind to explain to me some valid reasons about the correlation between making the stupid OS 2.5 x the size of the previous one and the (supposedly) added "features", I would be happy. Just for the record, I was able at the time to fit a "good enough" basic 2K OS in , but still with a "fair" 1024x768 resolution , into 86 Mb: http://reboot.pro/topic/5679-a-mini-build-of-win2k/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/41208-reducing-bartpe/?p=287518 in 124 Mb you can have a fairly "complete" OS. Still for the record, NT 4.00, needed around 115 Mb for a "full install" and it was easy by removing only a few help files to fit it on a ZIp 100 Mb disk. jaclaz