Heavily corrupted Windows 7 install - running out of repair options

Cyber Akuma

Cyber Akuma

Gawd
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
659
I have an old laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit whose harddrive got randomly corrupted sectors. It was so bad that most backup software kept failing to perform a backup, even though it could read it (though it seemed specific areas of the drive were damaged, rather than the entire drive or just randomly failing).

Anyway, after weeks I recovered about 95-98% of the data and rebuilt drive and it's partitions on a new drive using another PC. Unfortunately, many of the damaged files were system files, including a great deal of System32.

Now, I am well aware the system would not be bootable in this state, I tried using a Windows Home Premium 64 install disk to run the recovery applications, but none of them are working.

Startup Recovery (not that I was expecting it to) was unable to fix it.

I tried booting into the command prompt and running "SFC /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=E:\ /OFFWINDIR=E:\Windows" (E being the partition on the HDD the recovery console mounts it as) but after a few minutes I get the message "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service".

Anything I attempted to Google expects you to be on the Windows desktop itself, not running off of the boot/install disk, to fix this or other issues.

I am running out of ideas. I know I can reinstall Windows using the "upgrade" option (possibly) but as I said, it's an old laptop, so I am trying hard to avoid having to just re-install Windows, and thus risk the chance of it basically reinstalling as a clean slate and me having to hunt down several-year-old drivers, remember how it was configured and reinstall/reconfigure everything.... and I don't remember where I put the CD key for it as I bought Windows 7 for this thing the day it came out.

Any ideas?
 
Unfortunately, I think you're SOL. When drives start to go bad, they tend to go downhill fast. There might be some tricks to get the drive into a readable state, like possibly putting it in the freezer overnight or things like that, but your chances of fully recovering it are slim.
 
Tsumi said:
Unfortunately, I think you're SOL. When drives start to go bad, they tend to go downhill fast. There might be some tricks to get the drive into a readable state, like possibly putting it in the freezer overnight or things like that, but your chances of fully recovering it are slim.
Click to expand...

JerryMaxwell said:
Have you tried any data recovery tools: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-linux-rescue-tools-for-recovering-linux-windows-or-mac-machines/

All isn't lost, if recovering the OS isn't that important, just copy the files that you need from the usual places.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I am not still using the damaged drive. I already attempted to back up as much data as I could off of the damaged drive and rebuilt the partition setup on a new drive, and did manage to get nearly everything off of it. Unfortunately, since the majority of the lost data was windows system files, I now need to repair the Windows install on the new drive.

Quartz-1 said:
Did you try using a Windows 7 SP1 install disk?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is a Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 x64 disk.
 
Can't you just reinstall Windows and copy the files you need? You seriously could of had it all done by now.
 
Yes reinstall is by far the easyest thing to do unless you have software installed that you no longer have the install media for or lost keys for.

Frequent backups are the thing that would have bailed you out of this mess.
 
When I had a virus infect the desktop.ini on my desktop, I ended up having to copy and paste the system32 folder from my laptop to my desktop. But since you don't know what files may be damaged, it's going to be very hard trying to repair that installation, possibly impossible.
 
I know I can re-install Windows, but I want that to be a worst-case scenario since this is an old Laptop and I would have a hard time hunting down all the drivers as well as remembering how all of my software was configured on it. A big reason I am going through all this trouble is because I need to check how I had set it up.
 
Hunting down drivers won't be that hard. Most will be available through Windows update, and everything else would simply be going through the manufacturer's website.

You are looking at a worse-case scenario as your only scenario. Even when I was able to restore my computer to working order, there were all sorts of bugs present, that I eventually reformatted it anyways. Your system is even further broken than mine was (removing the desktop.ini caused my system to BSOD on boot, that's about it).
 
I suggest you start hunting down the drivers now. Sounds like your question asked over on Neowin got pretty much similar answers as here. Good luck!
 
And since you're probably heading down the path of a reinstall, take some advice. Set up a backup strategy - you should never be held hostage by your OS or a single hard drive failure. At worst it should be "well crap, I need to reinstall - no biggie, I'll have it all put back together by tomorrow" It should be an inconvenience, nothing more. Also, if you do have weird drivers that are hard to find - you know - back them up. Put your cd keys into a file and back that up (encrypt it if you so desire). What you're going through mentally is commonplace, but there's really no excuse for it. Learn from your experiences and get better at it ;)

My strategy involves placing critical files on a mirrored raid array, that gets backed up to a separate offsite disk on a weekly basis. I also keep around various images (especially handy to have a "clean install" image to speed up what you're about to do). Storage is dirt cheap these days, get some and do yourself a favor and set up a backup strategy.
 
Sorry that I keep going in circles about this, but I am trying to see what options I have since I care more about the system's configuration than getting it working perfectly.

How much would I lose if I did an upgrade install to basically overwrite the current damaged install of Windows 7? Would I still lose my drivers? Installed programs? Files within My Documents and/or User folder? The settings in the programs?

Checking my Firefox session, what scripts I had configured, ways I had configured my software etc. is the main reason I tried to bring this thing back to life in the first place. Reformatting it and installing Windows fresh is counter productive to what I am trying to do.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Sorry that I keep going in circles about this, but I am trying to see what options I have since I care more about the system's configuration than getting it working perfectly.

How much would I lose if I did an upgrade install to basically overwrite the current damaged install of Windows 7? Would I still lose my drivers? Installed programs? Files within My Documents and/or User folder? The settings in the programs?

Checking my Firefox session, what scripts I had configured, ways I had configured my software etc. is the main reason I tried to bring this thing back to life in the first place. Reformatting it and installing Windows fresh is counter productive to what I am trying to do.
Click to expand...

Much better to back up everything and go scorched earth, aka: "format" the drive and start from scratch. Browser profiles can easily be restored from the backup upon a reinstall.
Rrying to "repair" it is sounding increasingly like you could have already done a from scratch reinstall and been back in operation already. (aka: you're investing more time than it's worth in the "fix" now)
 
I like the Aliens quote: "Nuke it from orbit, that's the only way to be sure". :D
 
The freezer trick might help copy some files off before it returns to room temp.
 
Cyber Akuma said:
I know I can re-install Windows, but I want that to be a worst-case scenario since this is an old Laptop and I would have a hard time hunting down all the drivers as well as remembering how all of my software was configured on it. A big reason I am going through all this trouble is because I need to check how I had set it up.
Click to expand...

This IS the worst case scenario.

You are going to spend more time trying in vain to get it fixed. Just reinstall and be done with it.

chances are win7 already has all the drivers. or you can look for them at the manufacturers page.

BTW what brand/model is it?
 
Attempt a reinstall over the top of the existing OS installation, using the exact same path etc. typically this method is a nice way of repairing the OS, retaining the existing configuration and all installed software etc. Assuming the existing installation is at least partially working - i.e. it attempts to boot, this should work.
I'd suggest backing it up first though as a precaution.
Assuming the reinstall over the top gets you back into a working state, you then just need to reapply any OS service packs and hot-fixes and you're done.
There's no need to do anything crazy like formatting your disk and losing everything - that truly is a last resort.

This should give you the gist of things:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

If you get super stuck - fire me a message as a one off.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top