Won't boot - no Windows directory

[Haole Boy]

Aloha. I've got a strange one here. Customer brought in a ASUS laptop with a "won't boot" description. When you turn on the power, the ASUS logo comes up, and that's it. Nothing else happens. I do see the hard drive light blink briefly and then no additional signs of activity.

I pulled the hard drive to make a backup, and ddrescue copied the whole drive with no errors. When looking at the drive to do a Fab's backup, I noticed that there is no Windows directory! Could this be why it hangs at the Asus logo? From previous experience I've always gotten some sort of message about no boot drive found and not just a hang at the logo.

Also, since there is no Windows directory, I can't run Fab's. I would like to be able to do this as I believe the only way to get this machine running again is to do a fresh Windows 10 install. And it's much easier to restore the customer's data once it's backed up by Fab's. Does anyone know if Windows install will detect the user's data and preserve it during install when there is no existing Windows directory?

Mahalo in advance for your assistance.

Harry Z

 

[Diggs]

I didn't realize FABs needs the Windows directory. I thought it just worked with the user directories. Hmm...

 

[NviGate Systems]

Fabs should still run but in manual mode. It's been a while but I recall you had to input manually the location of the users folders etc. I recall doing a few backups like that, it however is not automated as I believe you need registry pointers to tell Fabs where everything is.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Did you chkdsk?

 

[Joep]

Did you chkdsk?

Is this purely a question or meant as suggestion?

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Is this purely a question or meant as suggestion?

question

 

[Haole Boy]

Fabs should still run but in manual mode. It's been a while but I recall you had to input manually the location of the users folders etc. I recall doing a few backups like that, it however is not automated as I believe you need registry pointers to tell Fabs where everything is.

Do you mean in command line mode? I ran the command line generator and then tried the command it produced. AB did some VSS stuff on the local C: drive, but the drive I want to back up is the I: drive. I've put a question on Fab's AB forum asking for assistance on this.

Did you chkdsk?

I've heard a few horror stories about chkdsk totally ruining the file structures on a hard drive, so I want to get Fab's to work, and then I will try a chkdsk

My best guess is it was doing a major update with the "Don't turn off" message etc and they turned it off / battery went flat.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, except the date on the Windows.old folder is from a couple years ago, and there's not much in it. So, I'm not sure about this scenario.

Also, I have verified that the damaged hard drive is the reason for the boot hang. I finally figured out how to get into BIOS to turn on legacy boot mode, and am able to boot a PD disk.

Mahalo to all who replied, I will update when I hear back from Fab.

Harry Z

 

[Larry Sabo]

I've heard a few horror stories about chkdsk totally ruining the file structures on a hard drive, so I want to get Fab's to work, and then I will try a chkdsk

... and they are justified. I would suggest never running chkdsk on a drive unless you have made a drive image, from which you can then do a raw recovery after chkdsk "fixes" (deletes) orphaned files.

 

[NviGate Systems]

... and they are justified. I would suggest never running chkdsk on a drive unless you have made a drive image, from which you can then do a raw recovery after chkdsk "fixes" (deletes) orphaned files.

And that image should ideally be sector by sector image. Been through this before.

 

[Larry Sabo]

And that image should ideally be sector by sector image.

...or you risk ending up recovering someone else's data from the target drive. How embarrassing!

 

[fabs]

First of all, a sector by sector copy is highly recommended. Then, work on the copy using Fab's in interactive GUI mode (in other words, normal). If it cannot locate user profiles because Windows registry cannot be found, it will prompt for user profiles folder, usually, it's X:\Users where X is the hooked drive. Then perform backup the best you can as there are items like public stuff that may not be found because of the lack of machine software and system registry hives. User stuff should be fine if their registry hives are loadable. Otherwise, it will work in some kind of fail safe mode, grabbing files but nothing from registry (outlook accounts for example...).

 

[lcoughey]

I think we are all agree on the sector-by-sector backup of the drive. From there, I'd take a look the file system with R-Studio, as it usually loads a file tree from a damage MFT where other programs get stuck. At the very least, use it to confirm that their files are recoverable and readable.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I've heard a few horror stories about chkdsk totally ruining the file structures on a hard drive, so I want to get Fab's to work, and then I will try a chkdsk

oh thought you already did a full backup

 

[Markverhyden]

I've had this happen a few times over the years. Get an image as mentioned then work on that for data recovery.

There's no rebuilding the drive in this situation even if you can find the Windoze dir. At least that I'd bother with. Way to many things that could go wrong. And I'll always replace the drive even if it tests good. Seem to remember one of the first times I saw this I just did a nuke and pave and it came back a few months later.

 

[Haole Boy]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Much appreciated!

Did you chkdsk?

First of all, a sector by sector copy is highly recommended. Then, work on the copy using Fab's in interactive GUI mode (in other words, normal). If it cannot locate user profiles because Windows registry cannot be found, it will prompt for user profiles folder, usually, it's X:\Users where X is the hooked drive. Then perform backup the best you can as there are items like public stuff that may not be found because of the lack of machine software and system registry hives. User stuff should be fine if their registry hives are loadable. Otherwise, it will work in some kind of fail safe mode, grabbing files but nothing from registry (outlook accounts for example...).

I didn't realize FABs needs the Windows directory. I thought it just worked with the user directories. Hmm...

So, the problem I had with Fab's was due (I think) to the convoluted environment I was trying to run it in. Win 7 VM on Linux Host, and the customer's hard drive connected to Linux machine via an eSATA docking station. Once I put the hard drive back into the laptop and booted with Gandalf's latest WinPE, I was able to run Fab's. Did not give an error on the primary user, but did give a warning about missing registry info for the Public data. It copied about 90GB of data, so I think I"m in pretty good shape.

I did run chkdsk after making a second backup under WinPE. Surprisingly, no errors found / nothing fixed.

Again, mahalo for all the assistance!

Harry Z