I think my HP boot sector was erased

[bucolic_frolic]

Not really looking for help here. Just venting. My main archiving computer is an HP Desktop, Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition).

HP had so many problems back then. Once I upgraded the BIOS and that locked the PC, had to replace the motherboard. Now I learn that would have worked if I had upgraded the CPU instead. But that's a different problem.

Yesterday I was archiving and clicked delete button to erase a file. Total instant shutdown. Now BIOS loads, but it never boots. Of course HP manuals are useless - HP's never have problems!

I have a set of recovery dvds, but I think they are install . Don't know if they'll boot the OS. Don't want to wipe out the hard drive. So I have 3 options, I think

1) Recovery dvd boot. I don't think this will work. I think a bootable Cd is needed. I never made one.
2) Rig the XP hard drive as a USB drive and copy files into a Linux machine. Same with Windows 11, but no experience with W11.
3) Boot the entire XP machine from Linux DVD. Supposedly that will be able to read Windows files.
4) what is supposed to work is System Recovery Set and Supplemental Disc. It has printed instructions. I guess that's lucky.

I also have printed instructions from HP online. But HP issues broad instructions covering several OS - Windows 2000/XP/2003. Mine is XP MCE final edition, 2005 or 2006. And of course no tech support, the personnel familiar with XP are long gone.

Wish me luck!

[AllaN01Bear]

1. my venerable mac possibly at the end of its upgrade and support life . ( mac os big sur 11 .) if that is the case ill

get a usb stick and put tiny linux on it and do my web exploring or just scrub and use suse linux. good luck with your recovery.

[AllaN01Bear]

2. id have a dos key ready to go with boot sectors and so fourth as well. just my preference .

[bucolic_frolic]

7. That's a good idea as well. I still do OS installs off DVD's.

Last edited Wed Jan 10, 2024, 08:10 AM - Edit history (1)

Linux is so much less hassle than Windows. I had forgotten all the antivirus software, and compatibility problems. I use Libre Office for example, and plan to use it on the recent Windows 11 laptop ($50!) I bought.

[AllaN01Bear]

9. i remember using boot floopies when i had hd trouble . good thing u have your dvds .

[TwilightZone]

3. If the files are accessible, get an external hard drive enclosure or connector...

and just copy them to another computer. You don't really need experience with later versions of Windows. The file transfer process is still pretty much the same, though the interface has changed, of course.

You know this already, but using a nearly 20-year-old system as your primary backup is asking for trouble. Online backups are pretty cheap these days, so you might want to look into those, if only to have a secondary backup in case of failure. External hard drives are pretty cheap, too.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Agree with all of that

Surely I have 95% backed up, not just on that hard drive but also on USB thumb drives. They are cheap today too. But I really need to do some organization.

I have 2 replacement drives for that hard drive, one is brand new. I don't like to keep photo albums in the cloud, but for everyday records it would be easy, cheap, fast, and reliable.

[AllaN01Bear]

11. i really dont like using the cloud period for my personal stuff.

[TwilightZone]

12. I added another response below with a link for XP MCE

Hopefully, it's legit and will help. Obviously, it might be just as easy (or easier) to connect the drive to another system and copy the files, but that would allow you to try a repair if that would be preferable.

In fact, it might be best to transfer the files to another PC first, then put the drive back in and try a repair with the XP MCE disk. That way, you know they're backed up if there's a problem with the repair process.

[erronis]

4. Wishing you lots of luck!

It sounds like your hard disk drive (HDD) may have some serious problems. If possible remove it from the chassis and put it into another working computer to run utilities such as chkdsk. There are also fairly cheap ($20?) USB devices that accept all sorts of HDDs to treat them as an external drive.

My computer is my lifeline. I back it up every day (Macrium Reflect) and make separate bootable drives (USB thumb drives). I also rotate my backups off-site every month.

[bucolic_frolic]

8. Good to know

I have cabling, non-housed, to run drives via USB. Just have to use the power source from inside the desktop.

I've heard of Macrium, will look into it. Thanks.

[usonian]

5. Some tricks from the past.

I used to back up windows computers by booting off a linux CD and copying the entire disk to another disk using the "dd" command.

You can also just boot up from a CD/DVD. I prefer Knoppix, (linux) personally, and running from it, leaving the HD untouched, or install onto a hard disk. Running from CD/DVD is what the Tails distro does. Since the OS is on DVD, and parts of it are only temporarily in memory, it can't be corrupted by malware.

There's also a "System Recovery" linux CD that will let you mount the windows disk and perform whatever you need to do with that file system.

It has been a while, so these are just from memory.

I make it a policy to use "Super Duper" on macs to make a bootable image of the system disk now and then.
It's free to make clones, but not incremental copies, so it just copies the entire disk each time.

There's also CCC, but I don't use it. Must be ones for windows.

Too late for you? Then just rescue your files.

I also like to put all my important files on external disks anyway. $70 or so for a terabyte of SSD. By using sneakernet, you can transfer a terabyte in a few seconds! Unplug and plug into another system.


P.S. you can get a bootable linux CD from the net (knoppix.net) and burn it on another machine, obviously or copy to USB drive using the recommended tools. Or, when I hit the bookstores, I'd get a bootable dvd in a magazine.

🍀🍀🍀 AND GOOD LUCK 🍀🍀🍀

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Thank you very much

Printed your post to follow up on, as well as some of the other posts. Looks like I've taken on a new project for a few months.

[TwilightZone]

10. More....

As you noted, you would need the Windows XP MCE installation disk to do an in-place recovery and retain the files, etc.

There's one archived at the following link:

https://archive.org/details/windows-xp-mce-2005-sp3

I can't vouch for the security or veracity of that file, but the source is usually reliable. You'll need to burn a CD based on the iso file, and that should allow you to boot into recovery console.

[bucolic_frolic]

15. That's gold also, thanks! /nt

[canetoad]

14. I've used Linux Mint on a USB stick

To rescue a bricked computer. Did a format, reinstall OS. All worked fine. All files saved.

It used to be a bit tricky to make bootable usb but really easy now with Rufus. https://rufus.ie/en/

[bucolic_frolic]

16. Thanks to all, more expertise here than in 100 Google searches and 5 hours AI wrangling

Drinks all around!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

17. Knoppix...

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

[Wonder Why]

18. I fixed that problem once by backing up the C drive with an offline utility. Then installing a fresh

copy of Windows, then restoring the original C drive over the one from the fresh copy. Unless your disk layout has changed, it should work w/o a problem. I used the free Macruim to backup/restore but Clonezilla should also work.

Sometimes, but not always specialized offline free third-party boot restore utilities will work. Macrium includes one but it would not work although it thought it did.

[bucolic_frolic]

19. So I booted Linux Mint 23.3 from USB stick

This would not mount the Windows HDD.
Error mount /dev/sda1 at media/mint/HP_PAVILION

So, I used Boot Repair to rebuild MBR. That seemed to go fine. It will boot the PC, only to the Recovery shell. And that's where, just like the genuine HP Recovery Disks I have, it warns that all data files will be lost. I believe I did this once with the HP Disks and no files were lost, but it was 15 years ago.

I'd like to backup the data off that HDD. How do I mount it? As I recall it is NTFS, or perhaps FAT32.

Alternately, if I connected that HDD running off the desktop power supply, into a USB 3.1 data transfer only of a Windows 11 laptop, would it read the HDD and transfer files? I think "data transfer only" refers to no charging, no external monitors. Data files includes txt, graphic, and video I think.

Didn't anyone know the computers would need compatibility at some point?

[usonian]

20. Have you tried System Rescue?

https://www.system-rescue.org/

I haven't been following this thread, so apologues if this is a duplicate post.

I like Knoppix, and emailed Klaus about a newer version. He's real busy but has it on his list.

[bucolic_frolic]

21. Thanks for your diligence, have bookmarked system-rescue.org for tomorrow

I get about an hour a day on weekends to deal with this. Today I asked ChatGPT. It gave a method, but have to try tomorrow hopefully. Will post if successful!