Client happy, but I still dont know exactly what the problem was lol.

[djg9205]

So I have a few questions regarding a computer I worked on not long ago regarding file recovery and UBCD4Win.

Recently, I had a client bring me a laptop which he claimed would start up, go through the windows splash screen, flash the BSoD for a second, then auto restart (same happened in safe mode). Sure enough, it did exactly that and I was able to catch some of the error on the blue screen and I saw part of a memory header before it went away (0x000blablabla) so i figure it has to be hard drive or RAM and since UBCD4Win loaded successfully, and it runs off of ram, it had to be the hard drive.

UBCD4Win starts up and displays that Local Disk C: has "-1MB" on it. Wonderful. I tried the Handy Recovery tool that's on the Desktop of UBCD4Win and that told me that the disk had 0MB of data on it. Non-recoverable. So I'm experimenting through the other utilities and finally used PC Inspector File Recovery...I tell it to scan disk C and sure enough 35 minutes later there are all of the files on his entire hard drive.

Which brings up my first question. What the hell did this program do? Somehow repair the MBR of the hard drive? Would a corrupted MBR cause it to display -1 or 0MB of data? What was wrong with the drive?

Next I used that program to save the few folders of tax information this guy wanted of the computer, but UBCD4Win refused to recognize a USB flash drive...so I connected it to the LAN via ethernet and the computer refused to recognize that any connection had been made. Finally looking through the UBCD4Win menus again I found an option that said something like "Force USB Install." After that the USB drive worked just fine.

Why did I have to do this? Does UBCD4Win only load drivers for USB Flash Drives on request and not just on boot?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. It's not a huge deal, and the in the end the client was happy and I got paid, I'm just curious as to what was actually wrong and why UBCD4Win was doing what it was doing.

 

[Fixedathome.com]

UBCD4WIN usually shows -1mb if the drive is corrupted. Very common if it is an unmountable boot volume error. I usually run chkdsk /r /f for that error and it will more often than not it will make the drive readable again.

With regards to not being able to read the bluescreen error message before it restarts some versions of Windows have a Disable Automatic Restart on Error option in the F8 menu. If not then you can do it my editing the registry as described here.

 

[Crgky127]

IIRC if the USB drive was plugged in before you booted into UBCD4Win it will look for it when it looks at the internal drives, but after the fact, you have to force install.

 

[afisher]

crgky is correct, if they are plugged in at the time of booting ubcd4win they'll appear installed, otherwise a force is needed.

 

[djg9205]

Thanks for the insight into the USB issue. I appreciate it.

I usually run chkdsk /r /f for that error and it will more often than not it will make the drive readable again.

Ah, ok, running chkdsk from the Windows repair CD DOS prompt, right?

 

[Fixedathome.com]

Thanks for the insight into the USB issue. I appreciate it.



Ah, ok, running chkdsk from the Windows repair CD DOS prompt, right?

Well I usually run it from a command prompt in UBCD4WIN but you could also run it from the Windows Recovery Console or any other boot disk that gives you a command prompt and has chkdsk included..