[SOLVED] Win 7 pro 64bit

[naviseyer]

I have a workstation that went down yesterday the user says she was just using Word. I have all email..IE gmail,hotmail blocked well atleast the 30 most popular , social media blocked,
ability to install blocked,

Anyway she is down, the work station gives me a choice of normal start up or repair. The repair doesn't work but it gives no details about the problem . Normal start up just loops back to the options to start up normal or repair . I do get a quick flash of a Blue screen of death but only for a split second..


I booted to a Bootable usb i created from another station. it has 1 hard drive but its partitioned c: is system reserve D: is data and software e: is only data .

I managed to get it to the restore GUI but the last restore point is no good and i cant find another. I also get it to start in safe/networking/cmd/ last known good config i tried them all they lead me to startup normal or repair.

I was able to make a clone of the drive to a external HD. I tried to create an ISO so i could try and use the repair. I had no luck making one or downloading one from microsoft.
I did chkdsk no errors found. I tried SFC it does the scan but wont do any fixing . no matter what sfc command i use i get a windows repair is pending, I tried Bootrec and all show successful except when i try to rebuild the boot manager then i get windows repair pending .

I also tried to stick another hard drive from an old win 7 machine we had laying around but i don't have any of the clips to go between master and slave so it boots to whichever drive is on the lowest P number . The drive from the old machine doesn't have any drivers not even the NIC which is on the motherboard so its useless ..

Any advice on the quickest way for me to get her up and running and hopefully restoring some of her files.. she has QB files on here and i kinda screwed the pooch. I never opened her workstation prior to now so she was storing her Quickbooks backup on D: because i thought d was a separate drive. Most of the stations here have a small SSD 250 which has the O,S and software and a big regular hard drive

My users know to store everything on the server because i don't back up workstations but she is the bosses daughter and has her own company . So she has her own QB software and file so she keeps her own projects,contracts right on her workstation . I picked up a mycloud NAS for her so i want have this issue again . But i really need some help to get her up and running and hopefully restore a good chunk of her files even if i have to do it one file at a time. i was thinking of just formatting the but im worried about the back up. Actually i would have to run a back up because i made a clone and i am not sure it would work . Anyway if anyone can help i would greatly appreciate it .

thanks for any and all help
Ivan

 

[USAFRet]

The OS and installed software does not matter.
The user files is what does matter, and you the IT guy should be doing actual backups. Of their systems as well as the central server.

Do not format anything until you know for certain you have 2 copies of any personal files saved elsewhere.

 

[naviseyer]

Its A very small company and i don't have room to back up each workstation. Besides her everyone else works directly off the server. No work files are to be saved locally . They have some personal items here and there but anything work related is saved on either one of the shared folders or in their own user folder that maps like every other shared folder at login. But thanks for the advice. I made a clone i guess i should make a regular back up image and mount it somewhere so i know i can access the files. I am still hoping i will find away to create a repair USB .

 

[USAFRet]

"no work files are to be saved locally" ...... except for this instance.

"I don't have room to back up each workstation"
Yes you do. $100-$200 in external drives would have solved your situation.

What ever you do right now...you absolutely need to recover whatever personal files might still be viable on this system.
This is the boss's relative.
Do this correctly, you are a hero. Get it wrong, you are a goat.

 

[naviseyer]

When you say Goat im guessing you dont mean Greatest of all time..LOL

Any advice that may get me closer to a repair disk besides ordering 1 on ebay ?

I purchased software to make and iso from one of the working win 7 stations but had no luck when i open windows usb tool it gives me an error when i select the ISO the software created. I also tried to download a ISO from microsoft i searched through registries to get product keys and i got the same error with all 3 product keys. I know there valid 1 has the matching sticker but also i know the owner and his family it wouldn't even dawn on them to use bootlegged software. so im not sure why i couldnt download an iso. I really want to try and create repair media and give that a shot .. im a little nervous about doing a format and trying to restore form her back up . Only because of the way its partitioned .

Any ideas on fixes ? anything ?

thanks
ivan

 

[naviseyer]

By the way when i try bootrec/rebuildbcd
it ask me to add i say yes or all hit enter then i get the requested system device cannot be found i think this is my issue.

 

[USAFRet]

Do you have a known good copy of all the users personal data that may live on this machine?
Then, do you have a second copy of that?

If not...do nothing else until you have that.

 

[naviseyer]

I ran a clone last night using AOMEI backupper, I am using it to make another backup now.
But again i really want to try and use repair media. I know i can create it with an iso from a simliar win 7 pro 64bit machine which i have. Unfortuantley the program i purchase created a file called ISO even had the right ICON but the microsoft program that enables u to use it on a usb kicked back an error.

I also tried creating an image straight from control panel but it was not an ISO image it was backup image i believe . Almost like A VSS

 

[USAFRet]

Not a clone.
That is simply a full copy of whatever crappy condition the system is in now.

I'm just saying...you absolutely need to have the users personal data saved off somewhere else.
Not trapped in a clone.

Once you have that, then you do a full wipe and reinstall of the affected system. Even if this means you buy an actual new OS to install from and license.
Being proactive on your backups could have prevented all this heartache.

For any of m systems or individual drives, if one of them were to die or be completely corrupted...I could recover the whole system or individual drive as it was sometime between midnight nd 6AM that morning.
Take about an hour max.

Play with "repair" on your own time with your own data

 

[naviseyer]

Anyone else have any ideas ?

 

[Deathviper1]

Anyone else have any ideas ?

Why not just disconnect the hard drive that is giving you problems and throw a different hard drive in there and image it. Then you could hook the drive that has her files on it and pull them off.

That is about the only other solution you have.

 

[Ketchup79]

So you have the data backed up onto another drive at this point, correct? At least at this point all you have to worry about is getting an OS back on the user's computer.
I am confused by this statement "I also tried to stick another hard drive from an old win 7 machine we had laying around but i don't have any of the clips to go between master and slave so it boots to whichever drive is on the lowest P number ."
Please tell me this isn't IDE! I am hoping this is just your wording. And all you need to do is go into the BIOS and tell it your replacement drive is the boot drive. Install Windows. Then use your backup to restore the data you saved off.

 

[hang-the-9]

Anyone else have any ideas ?

Not sure why you are messing with the old drive this much past getting the data from it. As above post, get a new drive, install Windows on that, if you don't have the media, find a local computer shop and buy a copy/license of Windows. You already cloned the original drive to another system, use that with an external enclosure or as a secondary drive in a system to see what you can copy from that.

Does not sound like this business was setup very well without any sort of procedure in place to get broken systems replaced or fixed, that needs to be addressed as well as data backups. Any person or company needs to have a disaster recovery plan for when things go bad.

 

[USAFRet]

This is well into Day 2 of what should have been a 1 hour job.