Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Chalenge on September 06, 2012, 05:54:11 AM
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I have been engaged in doing online work with engineers outside of the U.S. using a meeting software that requires a Java installation. I turn Java off (disable) when Im not using the meeting software. Midday Monday my primary boot partition for that system became sluggish and unresponsive so I rebooted at which point the boot partition disappeared (blue screen: unmountable_boot_volume). I booted another OS so I could examine the drive in detail and the entire drive (according to Disk Management) was marked as a RAW volume. The files were still intact but there was no way to access them and if I had believed the Windows tool I would have thought the entire disk had been eliminated. Windows repair failed. Windows DVD repair failed not that I wanted to run chkdsk anyway. Mini Tool Partition Recovery saw the files but could not restore boot capability. Its big brother Partition Wizard had the same failure.
I keep the partition backed up with True Image but in this particular instance there was a 540 GB folder with recent changes that I needed to recover. What I did in order to recover the partition was to backup the drive using True Image and then restore it to another hard drive (3 hours). I then used SpinRite to do a deep level restore of the original disk and it fixed the problem (46 hours) but I do not trust the drive now so it is headed to the Home Theater system for daily recordings until it fails permanently.
With the recent Java scare I thought that might be the problem at first but now I think this is just a Windows glitch that happens infrequently. I wonder how many people encounter this problem and reformat?
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I have been engaged in doing online work with engineers outside of the U.S. using a meeting software that requires a Java installation. I turn Java off (disable) when Im not using the meeting software. Midday Monday my primary boot partition for that system became sluggish and unresponsive so I rebooted at which point the boot partition disappeared (blue screen: unmountable_boot_volume). I booted another OS so I could examine the drive in detail and the entire drive (according to Disk Management) was marked as a RAW volume. The files were still intact but there was no way to access them and if I had believed the Windows tool I would have thought the entire disk had been eliminated. Windows repair failed. Windows DVD repair failed not that I wanted to run chkdsk anyway. Mini Tool Partition Recovery saw the files but could not restore boot capability. Its big brother Partition Wizard had the same failure.
I keep the partition backed up with True Image but in this particular instance there was a 540 GB folder with recent changes that I needed to recover. What I did in order to recover the partition was to backup the drive using True Image and then restore it to another hard drive (3 hours). I then used SpinRite to do a deep level restore of the original disk and it fixed the problem (46 hours) but I do not trust the drive now so it is headed to the Home Theater system for daily recordings until it fails permanently.
With the recent Java scare I thought that might be the problem at first but now I think this is just a Windows glitch that happens infrequently. I wonder how many people encounter this problem and reformat?
There has been a few nasty infections around that corrupt the hdd as a parting gift. Maybe you hit one of those? Are you using Gotomeeting by any chance? :)
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There is a malware program, making the rounds, which does exactly what you described Chalenge. Basically it eliminates the MBR and the copy of the MBR, and wipes the root filesystem record, but not before it sends out all the personal information it can find on your drive.
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Well I hope that isnt it Skuzzy! Considering all the safety precautions I go through if I got hit then I think literally anyone could.
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Well I hope that isnt it Skuzzy! Considering all the safety precautions I go through if I got hit then I think literally anyone could.
With windows infections are just a matter of time, not if they'll happen. Especially if you share the computer with kids/family.
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Well I hope that isnt it Skuzzy! Considering all the safety precautions I go through if I got hit then I think literally anyone could.
I hope that is not it either, but I thought you should know, just in case. It just seems a bit timely as this one just got into the wild earlier this week.
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According to the answer I got at Microsoft it is a problem that stems from using non-MS disk utilities. I know for a fact that if I put chkdsk onto the task it would have thrashed the hard drive and lost data so that little bit of advice is useless!
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According to the answer I got at Microsoft it is a problem that stems from using non-MS disk utilities. I know for a fact that if I put chkdsk onto the task it would have thrashed the hard drive and lost data so that little bit of advice is useless!
Of course they are going to say that, after all, no one can make software as good as Microsoft can.
In this particular case, I doubt chkdsk would have done anything at all. Without the root inode block or any of the copies of that block, chkdsk is pretty much clueless. That is assuming the malware bugger got you.
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I ran GMER and a few rootkit scanners on it and they came up with nothing. I think its probably just poorly written software (meaning Windows). Even Thurott says that as time goes by the system will eventually become more and more unstable which is why the Repair option is available in the first place. SpinRite got it working but I dont trust the drive anymore even if it was the OS that caused this issue. It is the first Sata 3 I ever bought and I think its time it was put to use recording television.
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I ran GMER and a few rootkit scanners on it and they came up with nothing. I think its probably just poorly written software (meaning Windows). Even Thurott says that as time goes by the system will eventually become more and more unstable which is why the Repair option is available in the first place. SpinRite got it working but I dont trust the drive anymore even if it was the OS that caused this issue. It is the first Sata 3 I ever bought and I think its time it was put to use recording television.
Huh? Put your worst hdd to record the most valuable data you have?????? :O
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Ha! Television is the last thing I worry about.
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Ha! Television is the last thing I worry about.
The copyright holders opinion seems to differ ;) If bits were gold you couldn't store more valuable data there.
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Since the partition was still there and nothing wrote over the information, why not just recover the information with recovery software?
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Thats what SpinRite is. I have since done a refresh install just to be sure.
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Can't you do a FDISK /MBR to load a generic mbr and then access the drive in windows?
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I wonder how many software companies create malware to keep thier products selling?
Reformatting,backups,safe browsing are the only way.
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I wonder how many software companies create malware to keep thier products selling?
Reformatting,backups,safe browsing are the only way.
Nope, using non-Microsoft operating systems are the only way.
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Nope, using non-Microsoft operating systems are the only way.
but if there's a problem then you are on your own.
semp
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but if there's a problem then you are on your own.
semp
How come? You have literally millions of users and several websites to ask help through. Most problems can be solved with a quick Google search.
When was the last time you got any help from Microsoft by the way? The only "help" I've ever got from there was the annoying product activation which you skip using other OSes :)
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I actually have never been able to figure out why I can't install ubuntu. have tried several times and yet can't find a reason. tried Google no help either.
windows i don't really have a problem.
semp
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I actually have never been able to figure out why I can't install ubuntu. have tried several times and yet can't find a reason. tried Google no help either.
windows i don't really have a problem.
semp
Where does your install stop? What kind of problem are you having?
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How come? You have literally millions of users and several websites to ask help through. Most problems can be solved with a quick Google search.
When was the last time you got any help from Microsoft by the way? The only "help" I've ever got from there was the annoying product activation which you skip using other OSes :)
Or a patch. I got tired of MS telling me that I have used up all of my licenses from a legit purchase. Just wait till it is unsupported...they dont have to make a virus just software that wont run on it anymore. A dirty game they play.
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I find Rkill a nice tool for killing malware
"RKill is a program that was developed at BleepingComputer.com that attempts to terminate known malware processes so that your normal security software can then run and clean your computer of infections. When RKill runs it will kill malware processes and then removes incorrect executable associations and fixes policies that stop us from using certain tools. When finished it will display a log file that shows the processes that were terminated while the program was running.
As RKill only terminates a program's running process, and does not delete any files, after running it you should not reboot your computer as any malware processes that are configured to start automatically will just be started again. Instead, after running RKill you should immediately scan your computer using some sort of anti-malware or anti-virus program so that the infections can be properly removed."
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Where does your install stop? What kind of problem are you having?
i get an error at the end I posted it before but was never able to get an answer. somebody else was able to just reboot and it installed mine never went away.
semp
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i get an error at the end I posted it before but was never able to get an answer. somebody else was able to just reboot and it installed mine never went away.
semp
If it was some driver problem it may be fixed already. Download the latest install disc of Xubuntu and give it a try, since then there have been multiple kernel updates. That's also the nice thing about linux - you can always download the latest installation package for free. With windows you're stuck with the ancient media you bought sometime.
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will give it another try tonight.
semp
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I actually have never been able to figure out why I can't install ubuntu. have tried several times and yet can't find a reason.
Might just be your hardware. Try first with a live-cd. If you can get it running, the installation should work too. If not, try with different settings. There are some fail-safe options available even on the live-cd. If you still can't get it running from cd, try another distro. Some chipsets don't work well with Ubuntu which is Debian based, but might work perfectly with Fedora based ones, or openSUSE, or... Take a look on this DistroWatch (http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major) site to get a glimpse of available main distributions, with a handy pros-and-cons reviewing. - I just tried to install Lubuntu (Light version of Ubuntu) on an old Windows 2k laptop with only 256 Mb RAM. The installation froze although the resourses should've been sufficient.
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Might just be your hardware. Try first with a live-cd. If you can get it running, the installation would work too. If not, try with different settings. There are some fail-safe options available even on the live-cd. If you still can't get it running from cd, try another distro. Some chipsets don't work well with Ubuntu which is Debian based, but might work perfectly with Fedora based ones, or openSUSE, or... Take a look on this DistroWatch (http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major) site to get a glimpse of available main distributions, with a handy pros-and-cons reviewing. - I just tried to install Lubuntu (Light version of Ubuntu) on an old Windows 2k laptop with only 256 Mb RAM. The installation froze although the resourses should've been sufficient.
One reason for failing installs has been the dvds. If you burn the dvd at max speed it may end up having errors and this will cause problems during install. I always burn my linux install dvds at less than max speed just to be safe.