Running Recovery Disk Help

*********************Please note that I was able to fix this problem by following the instructions on HP's website here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechS…ectID=c01183874 ************************************

Please help me as I am trying to help my mother fix her laptop. She initially found a trojan (troj-bnk.win32.keylogger.gen) on her computer and after she tried rebooting the computer it wouldn't reboot fully…only rebooted to black screen. So she stuck in the first rescue cd (she has two cds) and selected option 2. The computer restarted to the state of the 1st cd and never asked for the 2nd cd.

I need to know how to run the 2nd rescue cd. She has files on the computer that she doesn't have permission to access now since the user account she had operated the computer under is no longer active since the installation of the 1st rescue cd, so I'm hoping after we install the 2nd cd she will be able to access all of her programs, fonts, documents, and other files. If you need any information, please ask and I will provide.

Thank you so much for your help. My mom does genealogy and has so much time and effort put into it and is very sad that she can't access none of her saved photos and other research she has accumulated through the years so any help will be greatly appreciated. I don't like seeing her cry so please help me help her.

Her computer info: HP Compact NC6400 Manager's Edition, XP Pro Service Pack 2

By the way, her computer is showing that she 11GB free space left on a 70GB drive so I'm assuming all of her files are still there somewhere.

Reason for edit: Make the HP URL a link

Hi SillYKat,

The first thing to do in this situation is to rescue all your Mother's important data to Disk or external USB Hard Drive and worry about the restore disk problem later. Any Malware on the PC might have had something to do with the the Factory restore failure.

Without stressing the point too much about the importance of making regular data backups, any Malware infection might also be amongst the Data you recover from the PC and would have to be checked for infection before reintroducing it onto the factory restore. Once the important Data is recovered, create a thread in the Malware section of this forum for Malware advice and provide a link to this thread you started here.

Please follow the instruction for XP file recovery using Puppy Linux here.


If you have any problems that you need help with, please let us know.

Cheers,
Lee

Hi Lee and thanks for helping me. I have a question about your suggestion. You said… "The first thing to do in this situation is to rescue all your Mother's important data to Disk or external USB Hard Drive" How can we rescue her important data to disk or USB drive if we can't access them? You see, her rescue cds were created in 2009 (when she first bought her laptop). Plus, she was operating under a different user account ever since she created the rescue cds back in 2009. She had one user acct named "Administrator" which she never used, and another user acct named "Her Name Acct" which had administrator privileges. She used the "Her Name Acct" to do everything on the computer. After she put that rescue disk in she no longer had the "Her Name Acct" anymore, it completely disappeared. The only user acct she has now is "Administrator". She is able to do somethings on the computer now, but she can't access certain folders that were created under the "Her Name Acct" because she doesn't have permission. So I guess the question is, how can we back up all of the important files on her computer when she doesn't have permission to access them? Thanks again for your help!

Hi, just to step in for a moment before Lee gets back to you….. One of the reasons why Lee recommended you use a Linux Puppy live disc to recover the important data to removable media is that Linux is not too bothered by Windows account names or permissions (Linux works in a slightly different (some might say very different) way to Windows. So just follow the directions for Linux Puppy in the link that Lee provided and all should go smoothly. Just 4 particular areas are worth taking extra special care over: 1 When you download the Puppy .iso file you must burn it to CD as an Image…. making a copy just won't work. 2 You may have to set the laptop's BIOS to boot first from CD/DVD 3 When using Puppy to copy stuff over to removable USB drive……. only copy one folder at a time( otherwise Puppy will get "indigestion" 4 When booting into Puppy, make sure that your USB External hard drive is plugged in, before you boot up.( then it will be easy for Puppy to "see" it Regards paws

Lee, I assume Puppy Linux will allow me to copy her files whether or not we have permissions to access them (even the ones under other user accounts) to the USB drive or external harddrive? If this is correct then please disregard my first reply. Thanks, Kat

Hi Paws, Thanks so much for the pointers on using Puppy Linux. After I read the link Lee posted for Puppy Linux, I began to put 2 and 2 together and assumed that this would bypass windows user account permissions and allow us to backup the files. Thanks again for your response.

Hi,

and assumed that this would bypass windows user account permissions and allow us to backup the files

Yes absolutely right..this is what it should do.

Regards
paws

i might be completely wrong here again..

i have no idea what option 2 is using those rescue discs, but i'm thinking if she's already done the restore the only files linux puppy will see are the same ones seen in windows and not the old ones, because all the pointers for the old data have been removed, or however those things work, having a slow day so can't really remember exactly how drives work finding the data that is on them, so i'm thinking she might need to use a file finder like photorec in linux, i'd keep using puppy linux tho until the files are recovered to stop any/to much data being written to the drive and maybe overwriting the needed data files.



and i am..

She has files on the computer that she doesn't have permission to access now

so the files can still be seen just not accessed, puppy linux will fix that no probs.

Hi SillYKat,

Paws is correct and adding those important points about using Puppy is valuable info. Thanks Paws

Just 4 particular areas are worth taking extra special care over:
1 When you download the Puppy .iso file you must burn it to CD as an Image…. making a copy just won't work.
2 You may have to set the laptop's BIOS to boot first from CD/DVD
3 When using Puppy to copy stuff over to removable USB drive……. only copy one folder at a time( otherwise Puppy will get "indigestion"
4 When booting into Puppy, make sure that your USB External hard drive is plugged in, before you boot up.( then it will be easy for Puppy to "see" it

I'll just add that Puppy does not load into the HDD, it loads into the PC's RAM (memory modules). It can do this because it is so small at about 120MB total. When loaded, It is an actual Operating System running from RAM and independently from the Hard Drive, but with full access to the Hard Drive's folders (regardless of permissions, user accounts or names) and can copy them from wherever they are.

When Puppy is up and running from RAM, XP is not running at all (has not been booted to), so XP can do absolutely nothing. It is helpless and can't make any active decisions, it's folders laid bare and ready for plunder by Puppy

I hope this makes Puppy's usefulness and role a lot clearer SillYKat.

Terry wrote:

i have no idea what option 2 is using those rescue discs

Me neither. However, due to the possibility of Malware on the PC, the important thing is for minimal action on the Hard Drive (XP not running at all) until all important Data is recovered.

Cheers,
Lee

PS EDIT: As a Recovery disk has been run, the Bios should already be set to boot from (Puppy) CD as first boot.

Thanks Lee for further "enlightening" me on how Puppy operates; I think it's very cool. I made the Puppy Linux bootable cd and will go to my mother's in a couple of hours to begin the procedure. I will definitely follow up with you to let you know if it is a success or if I encounter any issues. We truly appreciate the help you all have provided us; Thank you ALL SO MUCH!!! Thanks Terry, too. Your post was funny. Lol

Okay, I believe we may have a problem. I am in Puppy Linux on my mom's computer. I do not see a user folder for "Her Name Acct" under /mnt/sda1/Documents and Settings. The only folders there are: Administrator, All Users, Default User, LocalService, and NetworkService. Any advice on how I may be able to locate the files created on the "Her Name Acct" or do you suppose they are completely wiped out from her inserting the rescue disk in the computer?

I'm a little confused by "Administrator, All Users, Default User". Do you mean three separate folders? Any account, including "Her Name Acct" should be under "All Users". Double click "all Users" and tell me what folders are in there please. I'm working in W7 at the moment and I am going to boot into XP and then add to this post as I want to check something out in XP. Open the highlighted "All Users" folder as show in this XP image I opened from a "Guest account" . [attachment removed] Cheers, Lee

Lee, I think I solved our problem!!! Before I tell you I will answer your question pertaining to the folders under "All Users": "Desktop", "Favorites", "Shared Documents", and "Start Menu" are the folders listed. Okay, so I found a folder on the C: Drive titled "My Backup – 19-04-11 1847". I opened this folder and inside were more folders ("Documents and Settings", "I386", "Program Files", "SwSetup", "Windows", and a text file named "video"). So I clicked on the "Documents and Settings" folder were, low and behold, there was my mother's user account folder!!! The only problem was that I could not open it because it kept saying "access denied, you do not have permission to access the folder", or something to that effect. Plus, when I checked the properties for her user account folder it showed that the folder was empty. After checking out HP's website, I found an article for changing user account permissions for folders through Safe Mode. I followed the article's instructions and rebooted the computer in normal mode, went to my mom's user account folder under the "Documents and Settings" folder in the "My Backup – 19-04-11 1847" folder. There inside was all of her files that she was looking for and we had access to them. If you have any questions or anymore input, please let me know. Thanks!

Hi SillYKat, Thank you for printing your solution to this problem. It may help others in a similar predicament. Now that you have recovered these important Data folders,( to a USB hard drive I hope), is to start a thread in the Melware section of this forum to check out for Malware (supply this link please) and especially if you have the PC up and running again in XP. The people there are absolute Malware experts, so don't rely on any type of Melware scan software that might say you are clear. You very well might not be. Please let them decide that. Also, please advise your Mother to regularly back up all important data. It can be a tragic scenario to lose it. If you need any advice on how to do that, get back to me Cheers, Lee

Thanks Lee for your help. I posted in the Malware forum at:

http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?sh…t=0#entry726498

Btw, I did back up all of her important files and programs to a WD80G EXHD. I will show her how to perform the backups regularly this weekend. Thanks for your help; I may need your help with setting up the backups to one of the partitions on the external harddrive. Will let you know if I can't figure it out.

Tomorrow I will try to post the link to HP's article so others can use it and access it easily. Good night.