Windows 8 help

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok. Sorry for the delay. Long day haven't really had time to get back to this till now.

1. Drive passes short and extended tests of gsmart control without errors. So I feel the drive is ok.

2. Tried various options using the Windows 8 PE shown in the forums, even booted from a Windows 8.1 disk, not sure how to mount as read only at least from Windows, still learning linux also honestly. Right now the drive is slaved to another PC via a sata hard drive dock. In Disk Management, you can see the drive, all reports as healthy, but it shows the OS partition as a RAW partition on the file system.

3. Ran the commands, googled and found some examples and ran them.
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

However, I get a message stating that there are 0 Windows Installations(This was when booted from a Windows 8 dvd)

4. Naturally if I need to just reinstall, I will inform them

5. Found these steps to attempt to put the drive in read only mode in Windows


"Switch off "automount" by running mountvol.exe /N
Connect disk to Windows (do not mount the disk)
Run diskpart
Enter list volume
Enter select volume X (where X is the correct volume number from the previous command)
Enter att vol set readonly
Enter detail vol and ensure the read-only bit is set

Now you can mount the volume and it will be read-only."

Ran the detail volume command at the end and it does show that the read only flag is ticked for this drive.

Would this work better from a Linux environment?

6. As far as steps to unlock the drive, what I could find was to actually run the commands above. There were also guides about using diskpart to attempt to mark the volume as active, so far no luck there.

Bios already at original or at least mostly original settings(meaning that fast boot, secure boot, etc is enabled)

Maybe I'm missing something blatantly obvious?

Also, with the drive slaved to a Windows 8.1 system, I did go into the Bitlocker encryption part of control panel, and it reports that bitlocker encryption is turned off. So I suspect it's as you all have said, that windows 8 just does a hibernate mode and it's basically locked the drive in that state. Just not sure how to get it out.

I must admit, I like parted magic pretty well, and I carried a MacBook for 2.5 years for a previous tech job, but we never had to use terminal. Until now I've not had a big reason to use terminal. Anyone know any good guides?

Wish I knew exactly what happened but I know the user stated something about Norton had either found something or wanted to udpate.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Spoke to the guy and he didn't have any important files on that system so he said blue it away. Anything anyone would have done differently than what I did too attempt to recover data or any tools that would have helped here?

 

[Markverhyden]

Well if the EU does not care about data it's academic. Nuke and pave.

As I mentioned earlier you can install R-Studio r-tools to scan the drive in demo mode.

On the W8.1 encryption thing. It is automatic if certain thresholds are met. And I would bet that a retail machine of this age does not meet them. Of course he may have manually done it himself and not realized it.

From this article 10/2013

1. Support for the Secure Boot feature, which implies both UEFI support and 64-bit Windows.
2. A Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The feature requires TPM 2.0, and most current devices use TPM 1.2.
3. Hardware and firmware support for Windows’ Connected Standby feature. Connected Standby allows a sleeping system to wake up periodically and refresh certain data, like e-mail messages or calendar events. Your smartphone already does the same sort of thing. Note that Connected Standby is similar in concept to Intel’s Smart Connect Technology, but Smart Connect support does not imply Connected Standby support.
4. Connected Standby comes with its own set of hardware requirements, including a solid-state boot volume, NDIS 6.30 support for all network interfaces, and memory soldered to the motherboard. The system must also rely on passive cooling when in Connected Standby mode, even if it normally uses a fan.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Might get r studio to play around with. Was not encrypted, checked it slaved to a Windows 8.1 machine and bitlocker encryption was not in.

I really can't stand troubleshooting Windows 8. I'm glad Windows 9 is coming out. Good riddance to Windows 8. Spent 10 minutes trying to get that computer to boot up from disc, everytime you turn it off, it wants to do automatic repair on the disk. Oh, and since I put the drive in read only mode, I could not format it from Windows setup. And diskpart could not remove the readonly flag. Forget Windows 8. Going to boot up in parted magic and zero write that drive. Just ticked off now. We will see who wins this round!

On the other hand, at least I learned a few things lol.