Arexack's hideout attacked by brigands!

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:28 am

Bloody spyware, I don't see how they can get any "useful" information other than, as they say In Avenue Q, the internet is for porn!

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:52 pm

didn't make a recvery disc, lost my admin password

Neither of which needs to be a show stopper. Assuming that you are running a PC there are ways.

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 5:50 pm

Pease tell me how!

Yes it is a PC.

I was just about to re-install XP from scratch.

this is what has happened:
I ran hitman-pro, which is a scripted compilation of various anti-spyware agents. It stalled while installing webspy or whatever program, which I noticed when I got up at 3am to turn the thing off.
It was not responding to any input, so I just switched the Power.
Next morning, my GF decided to look something up and logged in under her account. (no admin rights)
At which point some windows popped up declaring some files (from games) damaged or whatever (I was still chewing on my pillow) .
I told her to click those windows away and turned over.
After the last of these errormessages, the system froze up and eventually I got up very grumpilly and twatted the powerswitch again.
After this I tried to restart the computer aiming to log in as myself and remove the offending software.
The computer keeps rebooting before the account screen pops up though.
Trying safe-mode gets the same rebooting result.

I tried restoring the system, but the admin password it wants is not the one I wrote on my wall. (several weeks ago I had to format and reinstall everything several times over).

Anticipating your advice with trepidation.
A_H

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 9:50 pm

You are stuck in a Reboot Loop and it's a nasty Windows Problem.

Google for "reboot loop" to see what I mean.

1. Have a look at these:

http://www.duxcw.com/dcforum/DCForumID7/711.html
http://www.cooltechzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=743

2. Since Safe mode doesn't work here is one way to get most of your stuff back:

No guarantees, but I've done this with Windows 2000.

Install XP again, making sure that you do not format or delete anything. When asked which directory to install to, DO NOT ACCEPT c:\winnt. Choose a new directory name like winntnew. Complete the install.

Reboot, you will be asked to choose which OS to boot. Both will be Windows XP. Probably the top one is the new one.

OK, now you have a working OS with access to your files. You will need to reinstall all the apps but at least you have the data. Or you can try to fix the old one.

If all goes well I'll tell you how to get rid of the OS you no longer want. Can't do this from home as I don't have a working Windows installation. (Changed my motherboard. Both Linuxes booted with no problem bur Win2K won't and I can't be fagged to waste the time on it.)

Good luck!

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 11:15 pm

Just a thought Arexack, if you can get hold of or buy a USB external HD case and put your HD in it, you could access your data files using another computer.

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 1:07 am

Totally off-topic, but congrats on breaking 1400 posts, TGHC! The exalted heights of 2465 posts beckon....

Captain Hesperus

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 5:22 am

if you can get hold of or buy a USB external HD case

Actually you don't even need a complete case. There are USB adapters for ATA drives which only cost about 10 euros. I don't know if there are any for SATA drives.

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 9:42 am

or even cheaper, fit your HD into another computer, you'll have to play around with the master and slave thingy, which I thought I understood untill I was told you can have two masters, so now I just ask my brother!

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:29 pm

Thanks for the hints D.

I'll try to install to a new directory.
(I was planning to reinstall in the same dir)

Last time, I have proclamed C to be OS only territory.
So almost all apps and data is on my raid-SATA configuration. Unfortunately, this means I need the BIOS for the config. IIRC this should be independent of windows though.

Luckilly I copied all the installation files to a DVD last time around, so reinstalling will be annoying at most. (hopefully some, such as my firewall, will have options to keep settings.)

Creating a second OS should enable me to copy any files that have accrued in the documents folders over time.
(lots of pics grabbed from the net etc)

edit: reinstall achieved.
+free access to C and old install of winXP
-Doesn't see RAID. Maybe I needed to re-install the raiddrivers too.
Got no time now to fix it, have to travel to Rotterdam.
Cheerz.

GothStag · Post by **GothStag** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 2:59 pm

davcefai wrote:
This morning I was looking at the prices of Hard Discs. Prices are nowadays very low.

A 20GB ATA drive plus a USB adapter is going to cost less than €75.

Peace of mind

I'm currently using a maxtor 120GB USB back up drive that cost nearly £60 / €81. Back up takes no time at all first time and it backs up any file changes only on each back up after that.

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 4:39 am

If you use Linux have a look at BackupPC. It's tedious to set up but works magnificently. It also backs up network clients.

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Mon Nov 05, 2007 8:22 am

Like nearly everything PC prices have dropped and memory has grown, my daughter has just bought one of these for £57.48 from Scan, it's very good too.

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:20 pm

Did it again:

windows diskmanagement prompted me to activate and convert a HDD...and I unquestioningly did.
Now my stripe array is again fucked.
maybe it's salvagable with testdisk.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 3:16 pm

davcefai wrote:
This morning I was looking at the prices of Hard Discs. Prices are nowadays very low.

A 20GB ATA drive plus a USB adapter is going to cost less than €75.

Peace of mind

not to nitpick... but did you mean 200GB ?

20 GB is sort of low these days...

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 4:56 pm

Back to my problem:

A fresh install works, but all heck broke loose when I tried to install with the raid drivers.
By deactivating (or otherwise disbling) my raid configuration, all copies of WinXP can start up, but won't recognise the disfunctional disks.

OK I can reallocate the drive partitions of my stripe array using testdisk and write a new (temporary)table.
This needs a reboot to take effect.
With an active and 'healthy' raid, both my original and the fresh copy of XP with Raid drivers will end up in a reboot loop.
The install without raid drivers will boot normally, but will see the raid as seperate drives (of which one is unallocated).

The fact that the fresh+drivers install has the same problem suggests to me that something on the raid is causing the loop, not any recently installed registry keys or on-startup scripts.

In short: Crap.
RAID sounds fast, effective and safe, but only multiplies the things that can go wrong with your system. As soon as I can get acces to the data on those disks, I'll back everything up and then seperate and reformat the raid.

---
test disk sees my stripes as :
the old logical partitions + equally sized extended partitions.
---
gonna try to find out more...