Anyone good with OS repair?

[Venix]

You do know you can burn your OS disk?

What OS are you running?

I borrowed one from a friend and I was able to "repair" the OS to the point that the PC thinks it has one, but I still get the black screen with cursor only. I have no system restore points or iso's (as I assume now that this was a virus and deleted them).

I basically have unlimited access to the repair tool, which cannot repair anything, nor does it find any issues, and the command prompt.

Is there a way to do a reinstall and my info will go into an "old drive"?

[jayjohnson600]

Faster/easier/low cost:
Check with craigslist for inexpensive Dell OS/recovery disks, for your application. Patch your OS from there, if you are able.

Slower/more-difficult/no-cost:
Create a Linux partition, and mount your old partition to it.
From there you can recover and backup your important data files, and you can patch your old partition through the mount point.

[jayjohnson600]

Get to the command prompt and see what BCD file(s) exist in the C:\boot directory.
Seems like the recovery wasn't able to save the file there.
See if you can create a file in the directory.

Check to see if there are any files and paths to your Desktop folder. Might be empty now.

Lastly, check your program files directories to see if your software is still in there.
Go ahead and move your important data to another partition or device, etc.

[ram57ta]

There is a reason why I keep ALL of my personal files (pics, music, videos, scanned paperwork and docs, and any other personal info that I want to keep) on a separate USB hard drive and all of my computers only have the necessary OS software and applications on them...if I have a virus/malware/drive failure or the OS becomes corrupt I simply wipe or replace the drive and reinstall the OS and apps. I used to keep a burned image of the drive on a DVD but after Vista the OS got so big that it took too many discs for that to be reasonable.

[Venix]

Get to the command prompt and see what BCD file(s) exist in the C:\boot directory.
Seems like the recovery wasn't able to save the file there.
See if you can create a file in the directory.

Check to see if there are any files and paths to your Desktop folder. Might be empty now.

Lastly, check your program files directories to see if your software is still in there.
Go ahead and move your important data to another partition or device, etc.

I am not sure what route to take in order to look in that directory. I can see through the drivers tool search that all of my files are in place and accessible (other than the fact that no programs can run to open them).

[Ratt]

You do know you can burn your OS disk?

What OS are you running?

How is he supposed to burn the disk if he can't get into the OS to start the burn process...?

OP: Everything you are trying to do is going to be exponentially more difficult with a raid array as opposed to a single disk If your partition tables/BCD are/is gone, then it's easier just to reformat. Recovering the data is possible, but difficult. Ask TxRedneck, he's had to go through it, lol.

[Unicorn Jeff]

How is he supposed to burn the disk if he can't get into the OS to start the burn process...?

OP: Everything you are trying to do is going to be exponentially more difficult with a raid array as opposed to a single disk If your partition tables/BCD are/is gone, then it's easier just to reformat. Recovering the data is possible, but difficult. Ask TxRedneck, he's had to go through it, lol.

He could have laptop to burn to... was just throwing shit out there.

[Ratt]

He could have laptop to burn to... was just throwing shit out there.

Burn to from where? The OS recovery disc ISOs from most manufacturers are on a recovery partition that is preconfigured from the factory. If he has a raid setup, and one of the drives stops working, that partition is not going to be accessible. Plus, even if it was a one drive setup, you can't just pull that information off the hard drive, put it on another computer, and burn it that way.

OP, any Dell OS recovery disc (given it's for the same exact operating system you already have) from Dell will work for you. You don't need the exact ones that came from your computer

[IHaveAMustang]

Does your RAID controller have a built in interface upon start up (i.e., Dell PERC by hitting Ctrl + M)

If you can look at the health status of your RAID array that might lend some insight to what is going on.

Alternatively, I'd get an image of the drive before doing any other work. Kind of a stop gap in case you do irreversible damage to the array or the file structure.

I have Ghost CE 11.5 (Disk to Disk or Disk to Image) and Dell 32 Bit OEM Win 7 Pro CD's if you need one.

[Venix]

Does your RAID controller have a built in interface upon start up (i.e., Dell PERC by hitting Ctrl + M)

If you can look at the health status of your RAID array that might lend some insight to what is going on.

Alternatively, I'd get an image of the drive before doing any other work. Kind of a stop gap in case you do irreversible damage to the array or the file structure.

I have Ghost CE 11.5 (Disk to Disk or Disk to Image) and Dell 32 Bit OEM Win 7 Pro CD's if you need one.

I have acquired a recovery disk. While it cannot fix the computer due to no restore points, I am happy to have gotten somewhere.

How do you image the drives (being raid)? I have never done that before.

Also, I will see if I can open that raid menu!

Edit:
Got into the RAID menu, and there are 5 options. Create New Raid, Delete Raid, Undo Raid, Recovery Volume, and Exit.

The options in the Recovery Volume are: Enable Access and Disable access. It is currently Enabled it seems.

[Venix]

Well I am starting to pull data off of the machine now. I was hoping not to have to go this route, but I do not know enough about this to fix it myself. I hooked up a USB external HDD, went into the repair tool, selected "load drivers" and it pulled up the info on the pc. So I am just doing an old school copy/paste to my external drive. I am sure I could move files both ways if I needed too, but I would not know which files to build and put into the system.

[Tx Redneck]

If it were mine, I'd snag an ssd and use it for os+progs, then use the 500gig drives for data.

[Venix]

If it were mine, I'd snag an ssd and use it for os+progs, then use the 500gig drives for data.

I wish I could fit 3 drives in the machine, heh. Laptop is pretty packed in there.

[Tx Redneck]

So get an ssd and use one drive internally and the other in an enclosure.

[Venix]

I bought two new drives in order to potentially fix whatever the issue was at a later date. I got a 240gb ssd and a 1tb HDD. I am now going through the long process of finding drivers for everything.

So far, even with the newest nvidia drivers, my colors do not quite look right. The blues in facebook, for example, are way to light. Even after color adjustments they seem off.