Question re Hiren's Boot CD please

paddyrg

If the box will only boot from the CD, it suggests a hard drive failure. If you then cannot mount the hard drive from within Hirens, it suggests a hard drive failure. I suggest it is a dead hard drive - if you can't even mount it, it sounds like a hardware fault. My 2p.

Richie-from-the-Boro

He seems to have got stuff off with Hirens via a plug in USB drive so It ranges from boot sector only to totally goosed. I don't know why he's pratting about with it, use Hirens to format & check the drive then stick an O/S back on to see if it's a go~er

GunJack

I've seen a few machines over the last couple of months that have been so badly infected that initially the file system on the C: drive wasn't immediately accessible via hirens or bootable in it's own right. I did manage to clean enough of the infections in order to access the files via miniXP by scanning them with avira and dr web bootdisks. Is this maybe what the OP is trying to achieve ???

Hammyman

nessa1422 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.
Can't open C drive - get C:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
Could someone explain to me please?

Either the hard drive is fried or you need to reinstall Windows because of data corruption. Either way you're going to be reinstalling Windows.

GunJack

^^^^^^ agreed, those I've seen have both needed reinstalls even after being able to rescue the data

Toxteth_OGrady

My (uneducated) guess is:

The OP can access data on the hard disk via the Hiren's XP PE as he/she has already recovered files using this method. I think OP also wants to recover previous browser Favorites/Bookmarks but is finding nothing on opening a browser in XP.

I think this would be because, on opening the browser, they are seeing the default Hiren user's Favorites list for the RAM disk. In other words they are seeing the contents of the directory X:/Users/Hiren/Favorites.

The OP needs to browse to C:/Users/nessa1422/Favorites to get the previously used Favorites. If they want old Opera bookmarks the filepath will depend on whether Opera was originally installed for All Users or with an individual user profile.

Linbox

nessa1422 wrote: »

Hi,

My question is - I start up via the Mini XP version on the disk and get onto the internet via Opera, which doesn't recognise a lot of my previous web sites. I've tried to download IE but it won't let me.
Does anyone know of a way I can do this as I would like to get to my original desktop etc.

umm...
1. Opera is the pre installed browser in minixp - what favourites are you trying to get at, firefox?
2. You cant download programs to minixp
3. Desktop, do you want to get files off your old desktop? your desktop is the minixp, but files are kept in a folder on your old hard drive for your old desktop. Under users or documents and files on the C:\ drive

What operating system were you running XP,Vista,Win7

nessa1422

Thanks to everyone who has posted constructive comments.

System is XP and basically I am wanting to know if/how I can access my C drive. However, I have transferred all my pics and documents over so am happy with that and will probably call it a day and just get rid of the whole thing.

Thanks again,
Ness

stilltheone

So do you want help?
It's easy to put the old hard drive in a caddy for use as an external hard drive and to place a new hard drive in the XP machine. Why get rid of anything?

Linbox

Well, you can brows to your C drive from minixp. But I think you need to start off by deleting your hard drive. Repartition it and reinstall xp.