Power surge messes up vista.

[ikester7579]

At church yesterday we had a power surge. All the computers came back up except one. This one has windows vista on it. It boots to the screen where you have the bar that continues to run across the screen but it never makes it to the log in screen. If you leave it on long enough (about 20 minutes) it blue screens and restarts.

I have programs that run on boot up to fix it but they basically say they cannot. But all scans say the hard drive is fine which leaves me to believe that vista took a dump. I took the hard drive out and hook it up to a different pc and ran different tests on it and the drive itself checks out. Put it back in and it still won't boot. None of the options in the F8 screen fix anything and safe mode won't even load. Gets about half way and blue screens and restarts. And I have used every option on that F8 screen and nothing. I even booted the vista repair from cd and that just came up with errors when I tried to use any option.

I have a system mechanic repair disk that recognizes the system but says there is nothing wrong. None of the other programs even recognize what system is there. I have run a full error scan that said there was no problems detected. So basically I have:

1) Ran bootup programs to try and fix it.
2) Ran programs to fix boot files.
3) Ran error scans.
4) Tested the hard drive.
5) Ran every option on the F8 screen.
6) Ran vista repair from both the drive and cd neither worked.
7) Tried a recovery scanning program which did nothing.
8) Restore does not work.

Did I miss doing anything? Is there anything else I can do?

Here's my take on fixing it if there is nothing else I can do. Upgrade to windows 7 so that the programs and information can be saved. But before I do that pull all the files off it to have a back up. Opinions?

[Beckrl]

At church yesterday we had a power surge. All the computers came back up except one. This one has windows vista on it. It boots to the screen where you have the bar that continues to run across the screen but it never makes it to the log in screen. If you leave it on long enough (about 20 minutes) it blue screens and restarts.

I have programs that run on boot up to fix it but they basically say they cannot. But all scans say the hard drive is fine which leaves me to believe that vista took a dump. I took the hard drive out and hook it up to a different pc and ran different tests on it and the drive itself checks out. Put it back in and it still won't boot. None of the options in the F8 screen fix anything and safe mode won't even load. Gets about half way and blue screens and restarts. And I have used every option on that F8 screen and nothing. I even booted the vista repair from cd and that just came up with errors when I tried to use any option.

I have a system mechanic repair disk that recognizes the system but says there is nothing wrong. None of the other programs even recognize what system is there. I have run a full error scan that said there was no problems detected. So basically I have:

1) Ran bootup programs to try and fix it.
2) Ran programs to fix boot files.
3) Ran error scans.
4) Tested the hard drive.
5) Ran every option on the F8 screen.
6) Ran vista repair from both the drive and cd neither worked.
7) Tried a recovery scanning program which did nothing.
8) Restore does not work.

Did I miss doing anything? Is there anything else I can do?

Here's my take on fixing it if there is nothing else I can do. Upgrade to windows 7 so that the programs and information can be saved. But before I do that pull all the files off it to have a back up. Opinions?

It sounds if it's a corrupt system file. What exactly is the error messages? It's seem if you have tried about everything. So I would try to install another vista os onto the same partition without formatting. In that way you should be able to load windows in normal mode and recover data. Then when you have recovered your data then do a format and install.

[ikester7579]

It sounds if it's a corrupt system file. What exactly is the error messages? It's seem if you have tried about everything. So I would try to install another vista os onto the same partition without formatting. In that way you should be able to load windows in normal mode and recover data. Then when you have recovered your data then do a format and install.

That would be nice except this computer came with zero os CDs and the repair is basically a restore to factory condition which is not accessible.

[Reynolds357]

At church yesterday we had a power surge. All the computers came back up except one. This one has windows vista on it. It boots to the screen where you have the bar that continues to run across the screen but it never makes it to the log in screen. If you leave it on long enough (about 20 minutes) it blue screens and restarts.

I have programs that run on boot up to fix it but they basically say they cannot. But all scans say the hard drive is fine which leaves me to believe that vista took a dump. I took the hard drive out and hook it up to a different pc and ran different tests on it and the drive itself checks out. Put it back in and it still won't boot. None of the options in the F8 screen fix anything and safe mode won't even load. Gets about half way and blue screens and restarts. And I have used every option on that F8 screen and nothing. I even booted the vista repair from cd and that just came up with errors when I tried to use any option.

I have a system mechanic repair disk that recognizes the system but says there is nothing wrong. None of the other programs even recognize what system is there. I have run a full error scan that said there was no problems detected. So basically I have:

1) Ran bootup programs to try and fix it.
2) Ran programs to fix boot files.
3) Ran error scans.
4) Tested the hard drive.
5) Ran every option on the F8 screen.
6) Ran vista repair from both the drive and cd neither worked.
7) Tried a recovery scanning program which did nothing.
8) Restore does not work.

Did I miss doing anything? Is there anything else I can do?

Here's my take on fixing it if there is nothing else I can do. Upgrade to windows 7 so that the programs and information can be saved. But before I do that pull all the files off it to have a back up. Opinions?

If it were me, I would take it and have the info recovered from the hard drive before I did anything.
Power surge & then screwed up computer is almost always a hardware issue.

[ikester7579]

I have one more thing to work out before I try and upgrade. The pc has a 300 gb drive that's split in half between two partitions. The one that not the system plus the repair part is accessible. The one that is the system is not accessible even though all the programs (I have 3) say nothing is wrong with the partition. I'm not up on all the different ways a partition can be done but I think it's just how it's set up and here's why. It seems to be some how hidden even though it shows up in my computer.

If I go into my computer, when I have it connected to another computer, I cannot get in. In fact if I try it says: Drive has to be formatted before it can be used. Now if I use one of the programs I have to fix drives I can see it and look in it but that's all. What I am trying to do is just get the files I need off that partition and save them to an external drive. But because I cannot do the regular copy and paste from my computer I'm not sure how to do this since I cannot get in that partition.

So I guess you could say there is actually3 partitions.

1) The system repair partition.
2) The system partition (which I cannot not copy from).
3) A partition that's named data that I can copy from.

I have already saved 148 gigs of info from the data partition. I just need to figure out how to do it on the system partition that I cannot get into from the my computer screen.

The programs I have won't let me copy anything to an external drive. The only option they give is clone the whole drive to another internal drive. Problem is I don't have a internal drive big enough.

It's probably just a program I need to download to do what I need. One that will allow me to "access" that system partition and "copy paste" the files I need to save.

[Beckrl]

I have often used windows xp recovery console to manually recover the systems files, but I'm not sure that would work being that the systems OS is vista.

The program you can use is Ubuntu Live CD. Ubuntu on this CD is a standalone OS with the ability to backup file from a unbootable windows platform. Here's a link to making your Ubuntu Live CD.

[ikester7579]

I just found out what's wrong. I went into my disk manager in windows 7 and it recognizes that partition as a RAW partition. But all the fix programs I use recognized it as NTFS. So what do I do to fix this?

[ikester7579]

I have often used windows xp recovery console to manually recover the systems files, but I'm not sure that would work being that the systems OS is vista.

The program you can use is Ubuntu Live CD. Ubuntu on this CD is a standalone OS with the ability to backup file from a unbootable windows platform. Here's a link to making your Ubuntu Live CD.

Thanks for this. I downloaded it and am running it off the CD only. In fact while I am saving files with it I am responding to you. It recognizes external hard drives so I am able to save files to that. This OS is really fast on this pc. I also like that it uses firefox. I am fixing to see if it will play music while I am doing all this.

[tim_from_pa]

I have a simple solution. Dump the Microsoft Windows. As a matter of fact, dump anything Jack-shoot like Microsoft and get virus-free and attitude-free OS like Linux. I can't understand why anyone would want to pay hundreds of dollars for Microsoft, and then pay even MORE for virus protection, attitudes, blue screens of death, lock-ups and slow performance when they can have for FREE a linux OS that does not get or have any of that. Boggles my mind.

Seriously, download (for free) Ubuntu Linux and then install it in place of your Microsoft "Windoze". I promise for now until eternity (or at least for as long as the computger lasts) you won't have a problem whatsoever, it is user friendly and you won't be visiting this forum with such questions any more. Guaranteed. For free! (Like Christ's free gift of salvation!) Now, as the Lord would say, "Go and do likewise" (and stop spending money on utter trash).

If you dismiss this otherwise, then one deserves what they get.

[ikester7579]

I have a simple solution. Dump the Microsoft Windows. As a matter of fact, dump anything Jack-shoot like Microsoft and get virus-free and attitude-free OS like Linux. I can't understand why anyone would want to pay hundreds of dollars for Microsoft, and then pay even MORE for virus protection, attitudes, blue screens of death, lock-ups and slow performance when they can have for FREE a linux OS that does not get or have any of that. Boggles my mind.

Seriously, download (for free) Ubuntu Linux and then install it in place of your Microsoft "Windoze". I promise for now until eternity (or at least for as long as the computger lasts) you won't have a problem whatsoever, it is user friendly and you won't be visiting this forum with such questions any more. Guaranteed. For free! (Like Christ's free gift of salvation!) Now, as the Lord would say, "Go and do likewise" (and stop spending money on utter trash).

If you dismiss this otherwise, then one deserves what they get.

Well the problem in this situation is that that the expensive programs they use to do graphics video editing etc... Don't work on that OS.

Now I have found a program that says it will restore the Raw drive NTFS without losing Data. Has anyone ever used EASEUS?
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

[Beckrl]

Well the problem in this situation is that that the expensive programs they use to do graphics video editing etc... Don't work on that OS.

Now I have found a program that says it will restore the Raw drive NTFS without losing Data. Has anyone ever used EASEUS?
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

No I've haven't heard nor very used that program, so let us know now it works out. I think that FDISK might have done the same.

[tim_from_pa]

Well the problem in this situation is that that the expensive programs they use to do graphics video editing etc... Don't work on that OS.

Now I have found a program that says it will restore the Raw drive NTFS without losing Data. Has anyone ever used EASEUS?
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

You can settle for dual-boot if there's some software that one likes over the others. But Linux has something similar in each case, so yes there's getting used to. Also with WINE you can run some MS programs in a simulation mode.

Yeah, if one invests thousands of dollars for software, I can see why it would be hard to give up the Microsoft, but rather tolerate its daily and painful shenanighans. I guess that will teach some people patience for Lent.

But from the stewardship end, once this computer dies (and that probably won't be much longer) consider getting Linux as it is free and a lot of software to do stuff on, with much less the headaches.

[John 8:32]

At church yesterday we had a power surge. All the computers came back up except one. This one has windows vista on it. It boots to the screen where you have the bar that continues to run across the screen but it never makes it to the log in screen. If you leave it on long enough (about 20 minutes) it blue screens and restarts.

I have programs that run on boot up to fix it but they basically say they cannot. But all scans say the hard drive is fine which leaves me to believe that vista took a dump. I took the hard drive out and hook it up to a different pc and ran different tests on it and the drive itself checks out. Put it back in and it still won't boot. None of the options in the F8 screen fix anything and safe mode won't even load. Gets about half way and blue screens and restarts. And I have used every option on that F8 screen and nothing. I even booted the vista repair from cd and that just came up with errors when I tried to use any option.

I have a system mechanic repair disk that recognizes the system but says there is nothing wrong. None of the other programs even recognize what system is there. I have run a full error scan that said there was no problems detected. So basically I have:

1) Ran bootup programs to try and fix it.
2) Ran programs to fix boot files.
3) Ran error scans.
4) Tested the hard drive.
5) Ran every option on the F8 screen.
6) Ran vista repair from both the drive and cd neither worked.
7) Tried a recovery scanning program which did nothing.
8) Restore does not work.

Did I miss doing anything? Is there anything else I can do?

Here's my take on fixing it if there is nothing else I can do. Upgrade to windows 7 so that the programs and information can be saved. But before I do that pull all the files off it to have a back up. Opinions?

I thought this was just typical of Vista.