Tony,
Thanks for the expertise.
At this point I'm up and running with the new C:/ drive, and most of the
data has been recovered from my backups. PS installed fine.
Trying to minimize my downtime due to the problems, I'm inclined to see if
someone with an external drive bay might be able to recover the 2 files
that were not yet backed up and have about a day's work on them. Other
than 2 specific files, I'm essentially back to where I was in most regards.
If the disc appears to still be good, I'll then try to install it as a D:/
drive.
Paul
www.PaulRoark.com
On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Tony Sleep <TonySleep@...>wrote:
> **
>
>
> On 17/05/2013 16:37, Paul Roark wrote:
> > I suspect the disc is still usable. There were no weird noises. Most of
> > the sectors are still readable according to checkdisc. Unfortunately, the
> > unreadable ones include the boot sector.
>
> This sounds promising. Chkdsk would not be able to access the disk if
> there was serious corruption or total hardware failure (though the disk
> may have hardware problems causing bad sectors).
>
> However, restoring to a new disk from a backup/image containing PS always
> requires a reinstall over the top of the restored installation, because
> Adobe messes with sector 0 to register the activation to a particular hard
> drive. As the drive has changed, at the very least you'll need to
> reactivate PS again, and reinstall is necessary first.
>
> Unfortunately the same is true of repair techniques outlined below. If you
> mess with the MBR (which Fixmbr does below), PS will likely lose its
> activation.
>
> A reinstall over the top of the existing copy will retain all your
> customisations, settings. So DON'T uninstall PS unless you want those
> gone. It's really only PS activation that needs to get sorted out.
>
> NB that if this does work, but you want to use PS on the new disk, you'll
> have to de-activate the version on the old disk because Adobe only allow 2
> concurrent activations - and you want to be able to activate the new
> without wasting the old. A right PITA. And a good reason to try and repair
> the old disk, because Adobe don't seem to have thought about drives dying.
> You have to phone them up and beg.
>
> As a first attempt at repair:
>
> If you have a boot CD or DVD of the OS (I assume Windows - Mac, no idea)
> - remove your 'new' c:
> - reinstate the old one
> - boot from the OS CD/DVD (you may need to set the BIOS to allow boot from
> optical)
> - when Win has booted you'll get an option to install Win or Run recovery
> console. Press 'R' to select Recovery Console
> - at the Recovery console c:\>
> -- c:\>fixboot [press RETURN]
> -- c:\>chkdsk c: /R [press return]
> (nb /R parameter. Recovery Console chkdsk is different from the cmd
> version within Win, which would be chkdisk /F)
> ---If chkdsk hangs there are other problems, GoTo fixmbr below
> ---If it embarks on repairing scores of bad sectors, the disk is toast)
> ---If chkdsk completes, even after repairing some errors, this is good.
> exit and see if the machine will now boot from HD.
>
> (fixboot writes a new Windows Boot sector in case the old one had been
> corrupted and preventing Win from starting because it doesn't know where
> NTLDR is - the Win boot prog - and/or the Master File Tables (MFT) which
> tell the OS where the files are.
>
> If still no good, repeat, only at the c:/>
> --c:\>fixmbr [press RETURN]
> (NB: fixmbr rewrites the Master Boot Record, which is what defines the
> disk as a disk and the filesystem used, eg FAT, NTFS. If the disk has only
> one partition this is safe, but if there are two or more it may cause one
> to become unavailable. Dells have a small hidden FAT16 partition full of
> Dell diagnostics right at the front of the disk. I have run Fixmbr without
> any problems, ie the hidden partition and C: remain untouched. Still,
> there is a risk. However that isn't a problem if you don't mind working
> with Active Partition Recovery free DOS version from
> http://www.partition-recovery.com/. But don't do that yet, only if you
> need it.
> --c:\>fixboot [press return]
> --c:\>chkdsk c: /R
> (watch chkdsk for results as previously)
> if chkdsk completes OK
> REMOVE CD/DVD
> ---c:\exit
> machine should now reboot and start Win from the HD, hopefully fully
> functional
>
> If it still doesn't, or chkdsk hangs, then we're into using Active
> Partition Recovery DOS version next. The hardest bit of that is creating
> bootable media (floppy, CD or USB drive) that you put APR.exe on. It comes
> with some intructions about that. If you need to use APR, let me know and
> I'll tell you what next.
>
> But try all the above and see whether Recovery Console stuff works, first.
>
>
> --
> Regards
>
> Tony Sleep
> http://tonysleep.co.uk
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]