Author Topic: fix windows on mounted hard drive? (Read 947 times)

Sparrowhawk · « **on:** March 09, 2012, 12:05:53 PM »

I have a dead Vista box ... killed three months ago by rootkit.0access

I revived it once by using a bunch of different anti-malware and anti-virus programs, but now I can't even boot into Vista. I have the drive mounted on an old XP box, but I don't know how to repair the Windows Vista files and file permissions to allow Vista to boot.

Would it be possible to get Windows Repair to work on the mounted drive? My only remaining option is to clone the drive, reinstall windows, and then copy the clone onto the reinstalled drive, making sure not to overwrite existing (and therefore Vista's own correctly installed) files.

If Windows Repair could allow me to avoid doing that, it would be really awesome.

Shane · « **Reply #1 on:** March 09, 2012, 06:54:57 PM »

Windows repair doesn't do that yet, right now a lot of the repairs focus on the currently installed OS.

What happens when you try to boot the vista? Can you even get into safe mode?

Also if you do a fresh reinstall make sure not to format, just install over it. Vista and 7 will move all the old files to windows.old and you can grab all the files after

Shane

Sparrowhawk · « **Reply #2 on:** March 10, 2012, 06:34:10 PM »

Awesome... I'll try that. I just have to drag the cpu back out of storage and pop the drive back in. I'll post the results.

Thanks, Shane!

Sparrowhawk · « **Reply #3 on:** March 12, 2012, 09:01:14 AM »

Assuming your windows is XP or Vista, and your bad sectors are on the "c:" drive,

go to Start - Run... and type "chkdsk c: /r" and, if you are told that the drive cannot be "locked" just agree to schedule the scan for the next restart. When you are ready, restart your computer.

Note: this does not "remove" bad sectors, it permanently tells your computer to look around them as if they did not exist. Any files that were located in those sectors will probably be lost, but if you are lucky, chkdsk will recover some of them.

Shane · « **Reply #4 on:** March 12, 2012, 01:17:22 PM »

deliaroven was another spam bot.

Banned and removed

Shane

Sparrowhawk · « **Reply #5 on:** March 12, 2012, 06:10:13 PM »

damn... I should have subjected her to the "are you a human" test before I responded. I feel so violated...

Shane · « **Reply #6 on:** March 12, 2012, 09:59:28 PM »

You can tell because they will always have a link either int he post or their signature pointing to another website that is crap

Shane