This time I really thought that I wouldn't be able to dodge the bullet...
A couple of weeks ago, I received an infamous "blue screen of death" on my work notebook. Inconvenient, but not tragic, right? Just power cycle, endure the interminable wait while whendoze spins up, and get back to work...
Well, not exactly. Upon restart, I received the dreaded "operating system not found" message. Apparently, some thing had crunched my hard drive. Neither repeated power cyclings, prayers, nor threats would coax the OS to reappear.
Fortunately (?) this was not my first experience with this phenomenon. I whipped out my trusty Winderz tookay bootable CD, booted to the recovery console, and ran chkdsk /R. After it completed, I rebooted to the hard drive, and I was back in business.
Well, last night at around 11:00 PM - with an unsaved document that I had worked on for about three hours (yes, I know - serves me right) - guess what? Yep, another BSOD. Yep, no OS...
Okay, I know the drill right? Apparently, not totally...
This time, after starting chkdsk and it chugging for just a few moments, it reports back to me "unrecoverable disk error."
YIKES!
Sure, I have a backup, but, it is a couple of weeks old. And, I have a butt load of work to get done!
"Okay... take a deep breath" I tell myself. Hmm, hard drive error... don't I have a copy of SpinRite around here somewhere? Yes, I do! Thank goodness! Er... wait a minute... SpinRite only works on FAT partitions, and this notebook has NTFS partitions. Alas...
"Okay, maybe it is just the master boot record (MBR) that got fried... isn't there a way to just write a new MBR?" Why yes! Actually, there are at least two... FDISK.EXE /MBR or to run FIXMBR from the Windows Recovery Console.
As an aside, for a wonderful in-depth discussion of MBRs, partition tables, boot sectors, etc., check out NTFS.com
I choose the latter, then hold my breath as I reboot. Will it boot?
Why yes, it will! Joyous day!
Well, maybe not...
Yes, the machine does now find the OS, and starts the boot process, but wundurz gets stuck before it fully comes up.
But, I am willing to throw in the towel? Heck no! So, off I go a-Googling...
At this point, you may be wondering what the title of this entry has to do with the entry... be patient, I'm almost there...
I do a search for "ntfs recovery" and find some freeware/shareware/demo tools that look promising, but... they all are Windows programs! So, in order to use the program, you have to have Windows running! Talk about a catch-22!
Then, I find the first half of the solution... GetDataBack from Runtime Software. It too is a Windows program, but... it has a "plug-in" module for an innovative program called PE Builder from Bart. This wonderful little program
"helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.
It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time"
After downloading the two programs, unpacking them, running PE Builder, and burning the resulting image to a CD, I was ready to rock and roll. This process was quite straight forward - especially considering it was 2:00 AM by now, and I was already sleep deprived from the beginning of the week (another story for another time).
Well, the BartPE CD booted as advertised providing me with a graphical operating environment and a menu with GetDataBack. GetDataBack took about half an hour to slog through the mangled bits on my hard drive, and amazingly, appeared to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, right?
So, I cross my fingers, exit from BartPE, pull the CD from the drive, and hold my breath while the system reboots.
Oh Joyous Day!
The system, after a fair amount of struggle, manages to boot up fully!
Well, needless to say, I am overjoyed. Exhausted, but overjoyed.
So, after getting a few hours of sleep, I did a full backup of all 24GB, and then promptly called support and requested a loaner. The great guys at support have assured me that my loaner will arrive on my doorstep tomorrow morning, allowing me to transfer my critical applications and files to the loaner so that I can send the notebook off for a hard drive transplant.
Ain't life grand?
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Posted by David at February 20, 2004 06:47 PM | Categorized under: A day in the life