barnai

No m8 I still have this single PC at hand, and cant reinstall Windows on it . I think that things should be fine from that stage, but actually it would be fine to try and make the whole install (especially to check the second part). Does Maebe (who posted above) have an "installable" PC ?

Getting back to get over with this topic (after quite a long time, I know, but I had a rather serious problem with a piece of hardware). @ilko_t I tried to get the iso method to work as well, and it appears that as for the other method, the only way is to map fd0 to hd0. Thus the txtsetup.sif in the iso is modified with: BootDevice="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)" And same for SetupSourceDevice. With those, the annoying "biosinfo.inf" error disappears, and the installation goes on. Once again, after the driver loading phase, I got a BSOD 0x7B, and got rid of it by using the modified ntdetect.com. End of the tunnel ?

I finally recovered the first partition file to file, handling fragmented files as I could . I reformatted the partition, but as NTFS now, since it is easier to recover, from what I read here and there. Is there a way to close threads ? I believe this one can be .

I think there is something I should not have done: I made my 30GB image of the external HD before writing the partial partition info recovered by TestDisk. So we were working on that "unrecovered" image (sorry I should have told you, we may have gained some time ). Now I tried to make the image again, the ext HD being already partially recovered, and I got something more interesting: after overwriting with the bytes coming from the MBRbatch image, the actual directory structure at the root of the lost partition is found. The folder names are correct. There are some files with strange names though (most with only one letter), whereas there were no file at the root, on the original partition. Now when I try to enter any folder I get the message Ive told you before: No file found, the filesystem seems damaged. I tried the Repair FAT function as well, but it didnt allow to recover anything more. And the result was the same when overwriting only 95 sectors at the beginning of the image. So from this point do you think we can do more at high level ? And should I write with TestDisk the info recovered through the overwriting methods (even though there are only folder names) ?

It helped a bit, since TestDisk now finds a partition, but it then gives a list of filenames which are only a bunch of undecipherable characters, and when I enter the ones that are meant to be directories, I find nothing but a message telling me that files are corrupted or something like that. I verified the beginning of the resulting img file with Tiny Hexer and there is actually some sort of limit after the first 63 sectors, and same after the 32 following. So that was OK. To copy the 15,448 sectors of the new image to that of the formatted disk, I used Tiny Hexer again: I opened the sectors for both images in the editor, copied the content of the first one and pasted into the second one. I dont know if that was regular but it was the easiest for me. If its not good I suppose I could do it with one of the tools in MBRbatch.

No BSOD with the modified NTDETECT.COM ! :thumbup Ive got to the choice between install, recovery console and cancel. I cant do the complete install on this comp since its my only one for now, but I think were there. I suppose youd prefer to have the whole install tested. Isnt it possible to find somebody else with an "installable" pc ? To answer ur question, I mapped the stick with map (fd0) (hd0).

@jaclaz: Ive made some room on my internal HD and finally made an image of the first 30 GB of the disk with dd for Windows. Ive recovered with TestDisk the partitions following the first one. They seem OK. Now I tried to get the MBR through the different methods u gave. But since I am not familiar with those, I am not sure of the result. Anyway I attached them for both methods (PTView and HDHacker). If its not what u expected please give me some more info about using those tools. @bonestonne: Well thank you for the info but I am aware of the current prices of storage . I am just not ready for the moment to spend such money unless it is necessary, and now I think it wont be . P.S. Oops I had forgotten to attach the files MBR_recovered.html MBR_recovered.zip

jaclaz is right (but that may be the real truism in the whole story ), zip options with other tools (I tried RMPREPUSB and Bootice) wont work. They actually dont allow a proper mapping as HD (a disk error is returned when trying afterwards to make root (hd0,0)). To get around all the series of missing files errors I tried to use the previous version of WinSetupFromUSB (0.2.3), since it puts windows files into a folder $WIN_NT$.~BT on the stick. And it worked, since the install goes on now until the end of the loading phase (when it prints out all the info about drivers and devices at the bottom of the screen). But right then I get a BSOD with STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7CAF524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000). Any clue ?

While experimenting with an USB formatting tool, fbinst, I mistakenly formatted an external HD that I use for backup (with important data on it). The HD contains several partitions of different types. Now the disk is not recognized by Windows, which proposes to format it when I try to access it through the explorer. The formatting command was: fbinst (hd1) format --fat16 --zip --force I was using a batch, which also executed commands to add grub4dos on the disk: fbinst (hd1) add grldr grub4dos-0.4.4\grldr fbinst (hd1) add-menu fb.cfg fb.txt And the disk partitionning was: Partition 1: FAT32 - 30 GB Partition 2: EXT3 - 30 GB Partition 3: FAT32 - 30 GB Partition 4: FAT32 - 10 GB ... With a few more FAT32 partitions. I used TestDisk to retrieve partition info, and it found back info on all partitions except the first one (even with a Deeper Search). So now, I suppose I'll have to use file-to-file tools to retrieve data on the first partition, as advised by jaclaz. The question I have now is: should I write the partial partition info I have now, before trying further recovery ? I fear the new partition info written by TestDisk might mask the previous one and thus prevent future attempts to read that latter in order to retrieve the first partition. I can not make an image of the external HD: my internal HD is smaller and I have no bigger storage at hand. If its not absolutely necessary, Id prefer avoid buying one .

The main difference is to use fbinst with the --zip option to format the stick.

OK we're thru with the ntdetect problem !... But I got back to the biosinfo.inf barrier: The INF file \$WIN_NT$.~BT\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded The error code is 18 I cant imagine why hes looking for a folder $WIN_NT$.~BT. Anyway I tried to create a folder $WIN_NT$.~BT and put biosinfo.inf into it. And ... YEAH the install went on !!! It stopped a little further though, saying something similar The file \$WIN_NT$.~BT\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded The error code is 14 So I took the ntkrnlmp.ex_ at the root and expanded it into the new folder. Quite expectedly, I got another stop about a file halaacpi.dll, and I suppose it could go on for a while. But I think it will not be hard to sort out, all the more that when I was googling about the biosinfo.inf problem, I found a lot of threads in forums where people were going through that series of missing file errors. In any case we've made a helluva progress here imo. I cant do anything more now, for obvious reasons (Happy Xmas btw ), but we're surely getting somewhere.

Yep it works with the mapping done like that. And the results are the same as before (included when u choose the windows entry in the boot.ini).

and press [TAB] ? The files at the root of the stick are listed. Yep it completes to (hd31,0), and as before, when TAB is pressed after "chainloader /", the files on the stick are listed. After the mapping I tried to find the tag file again ("find /fubar.tag"), still without success. And just for the sake of it, I tried doing "map (fd0) (hd31,0)" as well, but nothing changed. NOW replacing the mapping by map (fd0) (hd0,0) did the trick !... The find command returns "(hd0,0)" ! Yeah, as confusing as it might be, the files are listed all right when u do "ls /" or press TAB after a "/" as above. It doesnt work with "ls (fd0)/": as I said in my previous post, it returns Error 17: Can not mount the selected partition BUT after one of the mappings above, "ls (hd31,0)/" or "ls (hd0,0)/" works fine. You still following ?...

seems to me a "truism". No I dont think so. What I call the file root (I cant find something more appropriate) is the result of the command "root". It now happens to correspond to the root of the stick (= (fd0)), but before it did not. And that made grub go directly to commandline at boot, because it was unable to find menu.lst. So as I say the result of the command "root" is (fd0), with some details : (fd0): Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0x0E But concerning the tag file, when I create it and try ur command, I get: Error 15: File not found If u can figure it out...

I must be somewhat cursed with all those usb boot format tools I formatted the stick with fbinst (v1.5-2009-06-20), with the most simple command fbinst (hd1) format --fat16 --force then I loaded g4d (v0.4.4-2009-10-16) on it using the command fbinst (hd1) add grldr <path to grldr> put the menu onto it with a proper file fb.txt fbinst (hd1) add-menu fb.cfg fb.txt finally I put grldr and a simple menu.lst on the stick, tried to boot and ... nothing ! Not bootable. So, a bit randomly now I tried adding the --zip option (which I had only tried once before with RMPREPUSB and if I remember it didnt work) to the formatting command fbinst (hd1) format --fat16 --zip --force and ... the (magic) stick became bootable ! I am not sure to understand what Im talking about but I suppose the zip option enforced the floppy detection. And now grub actually finds the menu.lst, which is logic since when I go into commandline I find that the root of the stick is the current file root. fd0 still appears in the devices listed when u enter some command followed by "(" and press TAB. But when u try to get access to it, grub says it cant mount the partition ... Anyway I went on, assuming everything was perfectly normal and put the nt files on the stick. After booting I entered the commands u gave in ur second link, and there was no message returned except for the chainloading: Will boot NTLDR from drive 0x80, partition=0x0 (hidden sectors=0x3f00) Then when I booted and selected the windows entry, the error was something familiar: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file