Proper geek needed - 0x490 system file integrity in dual boot

paddyrg

Hiya,

This is one only for a seriously clued-up system engineer techie...

Vista/Mint dual boot. Vista is a bit suspect, possibly picked up a RK although current scanners say it's clean and it doesn't have major symptoms. Box boots through BIOS checks, into GRUB, but Vista fails to load (get the green catterpillar pseudo progress bar, but not beyond). System recovery runs through diagnostics of some sort, then fails to recover the OS, saying 0x490 System File Integrity verify and restore throws an error. It would be nice to get in there and recover the few files that aren't backed up (all the important stuff, and most of the unimportant stuff is backed up ok), but short of a flatten and rebuild, any ideas? Could that suspected possible RK have messed with the sys files to the point where recovery can't recover them outside of a windows session?

Trying to boot to mint from the same disc also seems to fail, hanging waiting for an external HDD that it seems to have an affinity for, and not responding to 'S to skip', whether or not the disc is connected via USB. This may be a red herring, I just don't know.

The unit is a 4yr old Packard Bell (some may say there's the first problem, but in fairness it has behaved for 4 yrs) quad-core with 3GB RAM, and one of those restore partitions as opposed to install discs separate. I have a bootable Harens Boot CD available although I can't find a Linux Live disc anywhere to hand. Any ideas, anyone?

Update - found live DVD for Mint, I can mount the hard drive and see all the "c:" root folders, etc, although going into them they appear empty, probably just an NTFS privs thing, will investigate, but the disc is clearly readable and moderately healthy one supposes?

olly300

paddyrg wrote: »

Update - found live DVD for Mint, I can mount the hard drive and see all the "c:" root folders, etc, although going into them they appear empty, probably just an NTFS privs thing, will investigate, but the disc is clearly readable and moderately healthy one supposes?

I wouldn't suppose anything if you can't see all the files on the Windows partition on C:/ from Linux.

I've not used Mint but have dual booted using SuSE, Fedora and Ubuntu and have always been able to see my Windows Partition from Linux OS I've used even in experimental Fedora distributions once I got them loaded.


I found when upgrading or reinstalling Fedora I got loads of MBR and Grub problems meaning that Fedora wouldn't load a windowing system and Windows wouldn't load at all. I use to subscribe to the Fedora mailing list (there should be one for Mint) and would find other people had the same problem and someone had always worked out a fix.

paddyrg

Cheers Olly300, I think you may be onto something with the MBR problems - box now ceremonially boots all the way to "Cannot find NTLDR", so I may have some painful recovery to do - it can't even find its own recovery partition :,-(

Bitrot is a pain, bitrot on your MBR is doubly so...

esuhl

I recently used the Paragon Partition Alignment tool on my netbook, which screwed up the boot process (not sure what - recreating the MBR, etc. and reinstalling the OS didn't help). Anyway, I booted from Hiren's Boot CD, and choose the option (I think it mentioned the PLoP Boot Manager) to boot from the hard drive, and this worked fine. Eventually I had to delete and re-create the partition, but I just thought it might help you get in to recover the files... maybe?

Update:
This page suggests that the problem could be caused by corrupt drivers. If you can get beyond the NTLDR issue, you may be able to boot into safe mode by pressing F8 immediately after selecting the boot image in GRUB. The person who posted in the previous link had an issue with USB devices - unplugging them all allowed him/her to get into the OS...

paddyrg

Thanks eshul, I'll have another crack at it tomorrow with Hirens...I have (usually misplaced) optomism, I hope the machine responds! I've been meaning to rebuild for a while now, this is nature's way of forcing my hand I guess....

Pete2_2

the MBR appears to be booting the GRUB, which in turn is booting and loading its menu config file, giving the options of which OS to boot
it sounds like either the boot locations in the menu file for the OS are wrong, or the boot files in the respective partitions for the OS are missing or corrupted.

Like olly300 said (i've not used Mint either), i use older versions of Puppy, Slax, Knoppix and others, but they all allow you to mount the drives and view the windows partition files and folders.
After all, that is the point of using a Linux Live CD as a rescue disk.

i would check that the Vista files and folders are intact first.

then maybe check the partitions using one of the progs on Hiren's

esuhl

Pete2 wrote: »

i use older versions of Puppy, Slax, Knoppix and others, but they all allow you to mount the drives and view the windows partition files and folders...

i would check that the Vista files and folders are intact first.

On my PC, I can mount the XP partition from Linux, but not the Windows 7 one (I assume this would apply to Vista partitions too).

I haven't really looked into this (and haven't installed ntfs-3g), but I assume that Vista/7 use an updated version of NTFS that is protected/locked in some way...

So... is it actually possible to mount Vista/7 NTFS partitions in Linux?

fwor

esuhl wrote: »

So... is it actually possible to mount Vista/7 NTFS partitions in Linux?

If you install "NTFS configuration tool" from the standard repositories, it should also add ntfs-3g automatically, and you should be able to mount any NTFS partition. Although some features were added to NTFS from Vista onwards, ntfs-3g should be able to cope with these changes.

candtalan

Recovery cds? http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/ (there is an xp repair and a windows 7 repair also) following the repair you will likely have to reinstate grub. Recent GNU/Linuxs' use grub2 which fully uses the boot sector, unlike grub. I found that some 'recovery ' software in dell and HP machines treads all over grub2 when it has no business being there (!) and messes up booting. To avoid this (in a certain machine), I had to actually remove the 'recovery' software to continue using the boot sector (grub2) in the way I wanted to become accustomed... (Ubuntu user) hth

paddyrg

Well I've had partial success, partial heartache, and thanks for all your ideas above. I think my biggest problem is that it seems to be unpredictable in behaviour - but using RIPLinux ("Recovery Is Possible" Linux - on the Hirens CD - it's dead handy actually) and some of the MBR tools I have been able to get to a partial mount (how is that even possible?!) of the Vista NTFS partition. I appear to be able to see the folder structure OK, although many of the (user) files don't show. Maybe it's an NTFS privs thing, maybe the drive is just too flakey, maybe attempts to recover have killed them off (which I doubt - no partitions have been changed, nothing done which should affect user files). The disc isn't encrypted, but NTFS can be a wriggly fish, and maybe it is an implementataion mismatch. I'll see if the ntfs-3g libraries are better for mounting the disk too. That said I am nervous to unmount it as it had vanished altogether a few times...before the MBR tools on Hirens somehow made the partitions visible again.

I'm posting this from the RIPLinux session in fact, and I guess I'll bang away at recovering what files I can see. Funnily enough I've been wanting to rebuild the box for a while, maybe I'll stuff in a new disc and Win7 x64. Alas my software needs are not Linux compatible currently...

paddyrg

Gah! Gutted - I think we're into proper dead drive space now - NTFS both the MFT and MFT mirror are duff :eek: (this is the first time I've ever used this emoticon, but this is the first time to deserve it). I was getting closer, but there's not much I can do to overcome that other than a deep scan to recover what files can be found by looking for jpeg headers etc. I may as well let a scanner try overnight, but I've got most of what I wanted to keep backed up all smugly.

Thanks for your help guys.