Any PC Win 10 guru who could call me? I can send you my number

I have a Asus PC running Win 10 that is repeating a disc repair on start up...over and over

Tried to roll back to a restore point but it does not recognize one and it’s back to disc repair

Tried to go back to Win 7 it was updated from but that goes back to disc repair

Tried to reset while keeping files. Would not complete that and then back to disc repair

#cososec #cosocomputerhelp

@AndersonArtwork
Disc repair or "startup repair"?

Is it giving you any kind of error message?

What was the last thing you were doing before this happened?

@voltronic

@AndersonArtwork
Hmm. I was thinking you just had a corrupt bootloader / MBR, but it's possible something else is up.

While you're downloading things, grab a copy of this, which has some things that could help.
https://paul.is-a-geek.org/aio-srt/

Top priority it's to get your valuable data off that drive ASAP.

You could also grab one of the Linux distros that have a Live CD / USB version, boot from that, mount your main drive, and dump the files you need to other external storage.

@voltronic

It did something like this before. That time it let me reset but save my files. Pain in the ass but not disastrous

I’m sure we can get a shop to pull the drive and download it but I sure would rather get it salvaged here rather than there

Some of the images are not supposed to be accessed except after editing and approved by the model.

Underwater has quite a few “less discrete” shots where things pop out

Some of the models don’t publish that much exposure

@AndersonArtwork @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri
Were you able to boot from the Win10 USB drive and do System Repair?

No one says you need to view the files; just grab all of your images and dump them to an external drive.

That repair disc I linked you to is one way you can do that. Do you have an external hard drive or big enough flash drive for this? Being a pro photographer I'm sure you have a lot of very large image files.

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

I had a big shoot today and I’m forced to use my slow old one to get the files copied onto my archive drives.

Once that is done, I’m headed to Microsoft to get a Win 10 on a USB

This old one is SLOW but it’s still operating properly

It should be about 1/2 hour and I will be downloading the Win 10 usb

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

Downloading the file onto a freshly formatted 128 GB SD card I can directly plug into the broken ASUS laptop

I stoped with the ASUS at the point where it has tried and failed at the auto repair, offers options to try

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

There seems to be no way to have the broken one use the Win 10 file on the SD

I’m burning a Win 10 ISO onto a DVD to see if a cold start on the broken one will access the Win 10 on DVD before it looks at any other option.

It’s a 2012 machine so looking at D: drive before C: drive is likely

Unless you guys think of something else. Virtually nothing in those articles seems to possible at this point but all of them mention DVD start ups

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

What would the command prompt line read to tell a brand new hard drive to read and install a Win 10 ISO from either a DVD or a SD memory card?

We put in a brand new 1T drive and went from 4 GB RAM to 8 GB of RAM

We can seem to get it to go read the ISO off of the media even though we can get it to show us the files on the media

It keeps asking us to check the RJ45 cable connection

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

Can’t seem to get it to read off and run the setup.exe on the media even though we can get it to see the files and show us the objects in the roster

@AndersonArtwork
Ok, clearly the install media did not get created correctly. It sounds like you extracted the ISO and just copied those files to the disc.

Did you use the Windows Media Creation Tool to make bootable media?

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

Yes, I went to the microsoft site and followed the directions so it loaded the info on both an SD card since the laptop has a reader and another time to burn a DVD of it. We can get the laptop to bring up the BIOS screen with all the options with F2

He is ging to bring an original Windows 7 disc to see if we can get it to load Win 7

I will go look at the rufus site

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri use a usb flash stick, not an sd card, you'll have better success imo

@jordicusmaximus

SD cards can be fickle. USB drives are the way to go.

@AndersonArtwork @AlphaCentauri

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

You all are amazing friends!

All it took was using the thumb drive...did it all itself after that. Who but my PC guru's would have known it could be that fickle?

I now have a working Win 10 Home with my Google Chrome back in full operation and I can see my old files running as an external hard drive but I have not figured out how to get past them being password protected since it's not giving me the chance to enter it.

1/2

@voltronic @jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

Is that in "Properties" someplace? Can I go in and change that? Or do I need a command to bring up a sign in?

My IT guy is not back yet to ask him

I now have a 1TB solid state drive and twice the ram I had too. This laptop is MUCH faster now

@AndersonArtwork
Glad you're mostly back up and running.

Hard to know what to do about the password protection without first knowing what was used to apply the password protection.

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@voltronic @AndersonArtwork @AlphaCentauri ahh.. Hmm..

So, it was previously Windows 7 right?

Do you know if you used bit locker encryption? Or something similar?

If it's only ntfs stuff, you should be able to right click on the folder containing the files and "take ownership" of them, then change the security. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/take-ownership-folder-windows-10-using-file-explorer

@jordicusmaximus

That article looks like it will work for what I need to do. I have my Photo Shop downloading to install and then I need to restart to finish up the HD install. It just sent me a message on that

You have been a GREAT friend to me in this...ALL of you have

@voltronic @AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri glad you've made progress 😊 I'm sure I don't speak for myself alone when I say you had us nerds worried heh

@jordicusmaximus @voltronic @AlphaCentauri

I was right there with ya! I have been playing with these things since Win 3.1 but not on the coding or hardware end of tings. I am a whiz at photo manipulation but I was in over my head on this one. I even handled having my RAM fry out on two separate occasions but never had a hard drive go bad on a physical level before

It appears to have lost a chunk of real estate right where the OS is supposed to reside on the disc

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri 😬 you didn't format did ya? Just install over top right?

Do you see a windows.old directory? Or your old c:\users profile folder? Do you know where you stored your pics?

@jordicusmaximus @voltronic @AlphaCentauri

New 1TB Samsung solid state drive. So I'm now burning from the old drive to the new one. I will have to download Dropbox again and few other programs before I can move some of the files back though

@jordicusmaximus @voltronic @AlphaCentauri

My old drive seems to have a bad area right where the OS is set up to be so it goes into archive storage once I get the date off it.

A snap shot of my work on Jul 7th 2020

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri ah ok gotcha, phew! Sweet. Sounds like you got 'er going good. Excellent 🤘

@jordicusmaximus

That article on how to take ownership was a godsend!

That was EXACTLY what I needed after switching to the thumb drive. That thumb drive worked like magic after struggling so long with DVD an memory card. This laptop just won't accept anything in BIOS mode but a thumb drive

Once I plugged it in and hit escape...it was loaded and installed in about 22 minutes

@voltronic @AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri Well that's the happy ending I was hoping for to start my Friday on. 🤘 Badass

@jordicusmaximus

WTG on the solution there. I was asleep for the conclusion of this saga.

@AndersonArtwork
Glad to hear this worked out.

@AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork
Please make yourself a short and long term data backup plan.

You dodged a bullet here in the sense that the corrupted areas of the drive was not where your photos were stored. You may not be so lucky next time. All mechanical drives *will* fail; it's just a matter of when.

I use this for automated nightly backups of my important files:
http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork
^ for that app, it I have it set to mirror to another HDD in my system only used for backups.

Then I periodically burn BD-R backups. Optical storage is far more stable long-term, as long as you use quality media and store it carefully. I have 20+ year old CD backup discs that still read fine. I can't say that about any magnetic media approaching that age.

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@voltronic

I have plenty of local HD's* to keep my original shots and all the edits backed up on mirrored drives.

But I thought I might then back up just the finished edits on my dropbox and maybe google drive too.

That way only my edited work is out there not totally under my control but all my originals stay with me. That would make it easy to prove any copyright infractions

* 4x8TB, 2x5TB plus 12 TB more across a bunch of 1 TB or 2 TB sized drives

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork
That's all good to hear.

Please consider doing optical disc backups along with this. It's very cheap, and will be stable far longer.

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@voltronic

That exact thing has been floating around in the back of my head for a while now. I may start doing that. One of my goals is to make sure my works survive me in as close to permanent way as possible. I have already arranged to have them stored at the Nelson-Atkins Museum with their Local Kansas City Artist program. My intention is for them to have a copy of my edits on some form of media to preserve in case some future person wants to see them

@jordicusmaximus @AlphaCentauri

@AndersonArtwork @voltronic @AlphaCentauri 👉 this plus the four hard drives of your choice: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=mp_s_a_1_7