Pinning down an elusive system failure

IceBurner · July 2010

Edit: Latest update is that the boot drive mysteriously works and no program has detected a darn thing wrong - no bad sectors, no virus, no malware, registry is as okay as it gets with a lot of software installed. I've backed up important files, but would still like to figure out what happened. Full details in my latest post.

Old Original Post Follows:

Desktop PC went down at complete random. Was fine, shut down. Came back 15 min later, registry corrupted.
Managed to rebuild the registry, manually, from the command prompt in recovery console. Got the system back.
Suspected my OS HDD of failing due to CHKDSK finding and fixing errors on boot drive.
Got a spare HDD now, but before I could back up, it's happened again.
This time, the XP Recovery console hangs after selecting my Windows installation. No chance to rebuild the registry.

Now why might the Recovery Console hang there? If the partition were a loss, then XP wouldn't be able to boot up to MUP.SYS before choking on a bad registry.

Customized the hell out of that install and it would be extraordinarily annoying to have to do it again. I'd really like to recovery the partition's data.

Ideas?

Specs:
Win XP SP3 (latest updates as of last week)
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E8400
Mainboard: Gigabyte EP35-DS3R
RAM: 2x Mushkin 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400
Video: EVGA GeForce 8800GT
HDD0: WD800JB
HDD1: WD1001-FALS
HDD2: WD7501-AALS

General_Win · July 2010

If only Windows is dead there are ways you can get the customizations out of the old install. Most of them anyways.

Is the hard drive dead or dying? You might want to just start a new install and if you can recover things from your old drive, all the better.

So lets assume you've reimaged and logged in as IceBurner. Restart your computer and log in as administrator. Slave your old drive by either installing it internally or using an external enclosure or what have you.

Navigate to the following folder on your old drive: d:\documents and settings\iceburner.
Copy everything there to the new c:\docs and settings\iceburner.

Login as iceburner and you should see most of your old settings.

theclam · July 2010

You can do all the same registry repairs (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 I assume) if you boot off of a Linux disc.

Definitely backup to your new drive ASAP once you get it running again.

IceBurner · July 2010

Pardon for the lack of response, I'd gone slightly mad during troubleshooting.

After MUCH misadventure, my original boot drive is booting. I've taken the time to back up select important stuff from the drive. I don't know at what point I fixed anything, but I wound up using the Ultimate Windows Boot CD and its suite of tools to analyze the most likely suspects ... without any clear cause emerging.

- Malware scan: Negative
- Virus Scan: Negative
- HDD Checks: No bad sectors
- Registry: Not corrupt

Any suggestion as to how to continue trying find out what's wrong?

While we're at it, I'd never really considered backing up my OS drive before. I've always considered it a disposable installation, with my data being far more valuable. Regrettably, I don't have the free time I used to and this has turned out to be extraordinarily painful. I've tried cloning the old boot partition twice, but oddly enough, the copies have never worked. What's considered a good backup/restore method for an OS drive these days?

Penny Arcade

Quick Links

Pinning down an elusive system failure

Posts