Re: Windows XP Recovery Console - Accessing non-system drives
- From: John John <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2007 09:28:57 -0300
Greg Wilkerson wrote:
Hello all,
I have an interesting problem I'm hoping someone here can help me out
with.
My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to
Windows, only to bios.
I have started the recovery console and can sucessfully access the
system drive. Running fixmbr returns a messages that the master boot
record is invalid. Answering yes to the prompt to attempt to fix it
returns a message that the mbr was fixed. But, subsequent fixmbr runs
return the same invalid mbr message. I have verified the device and
that is correct.
Chkdsk returns a message about unrecoverable errors.
Fixboot indicates that the boot record has been sucessfully repaired.
None of these efforts have corrected the problem (any other
suggestions are welcome).
I would like to copy the contents of my "corrupt" system drive to
another drive, then rebuild the system drive and put the files I can't
re-install back on the system drive after I get the rebuild done.
The problem I'm having is I get "Access is denied" messages when
trying to create directories on the non-system drive. As a matter of
fact, I can't even run a "dir" command on the non-system drives from
the recovery console. I'm not sure how to get around or remedy this.
I am logged on as administrator in the recovery console (I can
successfully pass the admin/pwd challenge).
To me, what I'm trying to do seems like really basic stuff (copy files
from one drive to another), but this access issue is bugging me.
Just of reference, the only way I can see the data on the corrupt
system drive is via recovery console. I have full rights to the
corrupt system drive via the recovery console. I can sucessfully
create and delete directories and delete files.
All of these errors are the apparent result from a power failure at my
house (a very quick blip).
Any help would be appreciated.
The directory access with the Recovery Console is restricted. From the Recovery Console you can access these folders:
- The root folder of any drive
- The %SystemRoot% folder and the subfolders of the Windows installation
you are currently logged on to
- The Cmdcons folder
- Removable media drives such as CD-ROM drives
The dir command will, or should fail on other directories, that is a security feature of the Recovery Console. That security feature can be changed by way of Group Policy settings when you are booted to the working Windows installation, it cannot be changed after the fact, if you cannot gain normal access to the Windows installation you cannot change the restriction.
The Recovery Console is not really meant to and has never been meant to be used for file recovery, it is primarily designed to be used as a tool to repair Windows. While you can use special techniques to copy files to or from the allowed folders it is a rather primitive way of copying files. File recovery should be done from your data backups, of course you don't have backups or else you wouldn't be here asking those questions...
To recover your files use a Live CD, like a Bart's PE disk, a Linux live CD or an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. You can also mount the disk to another Windows2000/XP installation and attempt to recover your files that way. If you mount the disk to another Windows installation you may have to grant yourself necessary permissions to the files or Take Ownership of the files in order to be able to gain access to them.
If the above methods are not feasible you can do a Repair Install or a Parallel Install of Windows to attempt to recover your files. These two methods would be the least preferred methods, only to be done if you have no choice.
You didn't really indicate why the computer continuously reboots, you simply said: " My system is in a continuous reboot mode. I never makes it to Windows, only to bios". I can tell you with almost 99.99% certainty that the boot process makes it to Windows, it isn't stuck in a reboot loop at the BIOS, I have not really ever heard of a computer being in a reboot loop during the POST or before the handover of the boot process to the partition boot loader. If things fail during that phase of the boot process the computer usually just halts without rebooting. There are a few things that can done to try to identify the cause of the reboot loop. Did you try the available F8 boot options? Did you disable the "Automatically Reboot..." at the F8 screen? By way of remote registry edits there are also some entries in the registry that can be verified to see if the problem can be corrected.
John
.
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