Dear Forum;
I need your help in recovering my old eMachine T5048,
it came around 2006/7 with Xindows XP MCE preinstalled.
Before its HDD crashed I have made a copy of its recovery
partition, but this morning 2 files from my copy of recovery
on SanDisk ('You.qe' and 'gjp3e.bsq') got moved to some
kind of quarantine area and I don't know where they got
moved from - what was their source folders.
eMachines.com is very good in helping recover their PCs
by saying:
<QUOTE>
Per Microsoft regulations, requests ... are no longer supported.
</QUOTE>
Many thanks in advance.
You didn't mention what Anti-Virus program you are running?
If your Anti-Virus program has quarantined a file, it is probably is infected.
You can open up your Anti-Virus, go to History or Chest and restore the file from Quarantine, the Anti-Virus software will place it back where it once was.
Other then that, you can do a System Restore to a time before this happened.
In the Future You should make a Clone of your whole HDD includding the Recovery Partition. Just copying the Recovery Partition will not allow you to restore it if the HDD fails. If you have a clone of the whole HDD, even if the C: drive is corrupted, once you restore the clone to a new drive, you can run the Recovery Partition to restore the computer to Factory Defaults.
Since XP is no longer supported, Microsoft or any other computer company is not going to help you. But we will!
that wasn't a program; it was a script I wrote to find all files created
during certain time period and move'm to some specific location. When
I ran the script, the SD card with my copy of recovery partition just happened to be attached to PC via card reader BUT that reader does
NOT acknowledge write protection lock on SD card. When I noticed
those 2 files in what I call 'quarantine area' I knew smth.went wrong,
but my script shows only the logical drive letter of file original location.
If your Anti-Virus program has quarantined a file, it is probably
is infected.
this is kinda frustrating news for me . I did manage to restore
Windows to a new HD on several laptops using just a copy of their
original (hidden) restore partition. But if you're saying it can not be
done, I may just give up the whole idea :banghead:.
Since XP is no longer supported, Microsoft or any other
computer company is not going to help you. But we will!
If you were successful previously with just cloning the recovery partition, then don't let me stop you. Most people cannot clone just the recovery partition, but if you have found a way, more power to you. Let us know how it works.
hmmm... Ain't sure that would be a clear - in all its meanings - thing to do. But if you're saying it may contribute to someone's gain in PC knoweledge, and if TSF is willing to cover my ***ets in case if one of those who made me do it decides to press... you know what I mean.
Yes, it is doable with just a very basic understanding of how Windows-based PC works.
Also, after the successful recovery I think those 2 files I've been asking about in my OP are not part of the setup at all which makes me think the recovery partition has been altered: why the OEM didn't protect that partition is a question to those who wrote the two long statements I had to agree to during installation (didn't have time to read'em).
The way it should work, as far as I know, is that you should clone the whole HDD, recovery partition and all. Then boot off of the new HDD and run the recovery partition to restore Windows.
If you just clone the Recovery Partition, you will not have the option to boot from it on the new HDD, but I may be wrong about that.
The way it should work, as far as I know, is that you should clone the whole HDD, recovery partition and all. Then boot off of the new HDD and run the recovery partition to restore Windows.
Well, first of all, I take your reply as an answer to my concern(s) and I need to admit that I do not understand what you mean by cloning the whole HDD: the idea of restoring XP to a new disk isn't mine. Windows is a self-destroying system; people who asked me to do this restoration had all their data backed up and all they needed after disk crash was to have XP running (they were well aware that their personal settings of XP GUI are irreversibly gone). As I said earlier, all I have is a copy of original recovery partition (which is not true because I also have a copy of original MBR) and a blank HD different from the original; my goal is to reinstall XP from that partition onto original box (with very good mobo from Intel, b.t.w.). My steps: (1) copy MBR and partition to HD; MBR has only 1 partition entry. (2) boot off of that partition – OEM recovery process starts and pops a message:
System Restore – No Partition Found !User partition not found. User partition will be created and the original factory-shipped files will be recovered to user partition. Do you want to continue?OK
It looks like those who think soft need help with creating a partition. (3) create partition by adding another entry to MBR – this entry in fact is the 1st entry of MBR because I’m using the original layout where the recovery partition is the 2nd entry. Reboot. The process starts, formats the newly added partition (without asking what type I want) and starts a lengthy copying of files, after which it wants to reboot the system – does this mean the DOS part of XP setup completed? – let us see: click OK and hope to see the long forgotten XP logo… After reboot the recovery process starts again but now it’s asking you if you want just the full factory restore or restore with all user files backed up first. Evidently, the soft thinkers can not remember that the new partition has just been formatted and can not possibly have any user files in it. So I select the default choice: full recovery with no backup. Guess what? user partition gets formatted again (silently) and while files are being copied I have time to make a trip to my fridge where it occurs to me that if they don’t know how to create a partition, :facepalm: they – most likely – don’t know how to modify it. So I wait until all files are copied and the recovery process asks to reboot. At this point I take a look at the MBR and sure enough both partition entries are marked as bootable. (4) clear the boot bit of recovery partition entry and reboot. MS XP logo appears on the screen – we’re almost there: XP unpacks, reboots, installs drivers, restarts, installation of bloatware starts:
When it gets to (18/62), the process seems to freeze (I have seen many complains on inet about this happening with different applications referenced); in fact, the application setup is just asking for user input but the soft thinkers have put their main window above all other desktop windows, (5) switch to the application setup by pressing Alt+Tab and satisfy its request(s) (this step may be required several times to repeat). Done.
If you have a Recovery Partition on the old Hard Disk Drive, it should be a separate partition from the C: drive partition and be called something like Recovery. It may be a Hidden partition without a drive letter not accessible in Windows, but DOS or a Boot disc should see it. What I mean by cloning the Whole HDD, is, you clone both the Recovery Partition if you have such a thing.and the C: drive which includes the MBR,
When Restored to a new HDD, It should be able to boot to Windows, unless the C: drive was corrupted, At that point, you would access the Recovery partition by pressing whatever key it requires depending on make and model#, many models it is the F11 key, at that point, it will restore the C: drive to Factory Defaults from the Recovery Partition overwriting Windows and the users files.
Being that this computers has XP, it may not have this recovery partition. If you do not have this, then Your best bet is to get a Windows XP CD, and do a clean install of Windows.
first of all, C: is not a drive, it is a logical disk created by OS. There's absolutely no need to have a copy of it because it contains Windows installed on it and some bloatware with no user data (who in his sober mind would keep data on a system disk?). When Windows becomes unusable, you re-install it off of either recovery media (if available) or installation media which costs money. The advantage of using recovery is simple to grasp: is has all the drivers needed for the box, but you pay for this advantage by having bloatware installed by default. If you are illegally recovering to a different hardware you'll have to edit setup files on recoverey partition in order to avoid wrong drivers to be installed; the same way you can skip installation of unwanted applications.
what software did you use to clone the drive (partition). why can you not use the same software to restore it? that is the way cloning and restoring works.
sounds to me you may have corrupted the clone of your recovery partition when you started inserting your own scripts.
What makes you say so? the restoration process I have described above did not include any alterations to the partition.
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