[danielholmes85]

Hi All,

I made some hasty changes to my windows registry while trying to uninstall some programs - i searched for all occurances of mysql and started deleting keys i thought were related to the installation. Then I ran CCleaner on the registry removing all suggested items. Then when i tried resarting my PC, windows wouldn't boot. The machine restarts abruptly just before the windows loading screen would usually come up. My configuration consists of:

• RAID 0 configured: 2x WD 160GB 7200RPM 8MB SATA 150 RAID HDD
• Hard Drives have 2 partitions; 40GB (System drive) and approx 165GB (I think, cant remember)
• Windows XP Pro SP2

Things I've tried and results:

• Can't boot in safe mode, safe mode using command prompt, or last good configuration - All result in the same restarting behaviour
• Entering Windows Recovery Console, it doesn't detect any windows installations and from that prompt, the hard drives aren't present (as found by using MAP command) - CD Drives, floppy and external USB drive are found though
• Via ubuntu and knoppix boot disks i can see the drives using fsck -l (In an attempt to copy the files to an external hard drive through linux) but can't mount them -

  mount: unknown filesystem type 'nvidia_raid_member'

  Exact fsck output was: (/dev/sdc: 400.0GB is my ext HDD)
  

  Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
  Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
  Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
  Warning: invalid flag 0x587c of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)
  
  Disk /dev/sda: 164.6GB, 164696555520 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 29923 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
  
  Device     Boot   Start     End      Blocks  Id  System
  /dev/sda1     *       1    5099    40957686   7  HPFS/NTFS
  /dev/sda2          5100   40045   280703745   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
  /dev/sda5     ?  264324  264300  2147296183  1b  Hidden W95 FAT32
  
  Disk /dev/sda: 164.6GB, 164696555520 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 29923 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
  
  Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
  
  Disk /dev/sdc: 400.0GB, 400088457216 bytes
  255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
  
  Device     Boot   Start     End      Blocks  Id  System
  /dev/sdc1     *       1   48641   390708801   7  HPFS/NTFS

• Using dev-mapper and dmraid - ls /dev/mapper shows only an entry labelled control - my drives aren't appearing there as they should.
• Using sudo dmraid -an two entries come up:
  

  RAID set "nvidia_cdjjceeb" is not active
  RAID set "nvidia_cdjjceeb" is not active

  (cdjjceeb wasn't the exact string of characters, the PC isn't in front of me atm and i cant rememember exactly)

Does anyone have any advice about fixing this or know what the problem may be? looks to me like i deleted something in the registry that allowed windows to work with my drives, and im too inexperienced with linux to extract the files.

Any help or advice would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Fren Banklin]

Well, me I'd install XP on a cheap drive and boot to it, with the old drive installed as slave and get the critical data off first.

Then, boot up the XP disk, and run a Repair Install on the original HD. I've done the exact same thing, back before I learned to respect the registry, and I wouldn't even try to bring back an install that has the registry so pooched that it won't boot to Safe Mode.

 

[danielholmes85]

Re: Windows not booting - registry changed now RAID HDDs not recognised

Thanks for your response Fren.

I considered this option, but i didn't think it would work because of the RAID 0 setup (please correct me if I'm wrong). From http://www.quetek.com/RAID_recovery.htm:

In a RAID 0 (or striped volume) data is striped across all disks in a rotating pattern. A RAID 0 with two 20-GB disks will function as a single 40-GB logical disk. There is no redundancy. If any disk fails, data is lost and cannot be recovered.

I take that to mean if I only had one of the drives (connected as the slave) that the data wouldn't be readable. I set up the RAID on the advice of a friend when building the machine even though it was a bit over my experience level... Any other ideas?

 

[Fren Banklin]

That's correct. If one drive of a striped RAID fails, the data is gone forever.

 

[ExMachina]

I've had a striped drive fail before and lost the entire dataset, I remember seeing various tools you could use to repair a striped set as long as you can still access the drive.
If the drive is still physically sound try doing as Fren suggests, boot the system from a 3rd drive and see what you can do with an array repair tool.
I guess it depends on how important the data is to you.

 

[danielholmes85]

Thanks for the advice guys. I've dropped the disk off to a data recovery pro - decided it was getting a bit out of my league. He seems optimistic that he'll be able to get something off it.