Restore freezes 1/2 thru, @partitions something

Been working on this night & day for 4 weeks now, b4 asking for help. I messed up my partitions &OS by stopping Recovery Disk b4 was done, thinking I could use Paragon Restore instead, but then restore didn't work, couldn't find partitions. So I searched & studied like a fiend all this time, tried many, many things, learned more pc stuff than I'll ever need to know again, all to no avail. I thought last night that I FINALLY had the partitions rewritten like they should be, ran HD manager 2010 Suite/restore wizard, it got 1/2 way done (60+ Gigs of 122 G)and said something about checking partitions or similar to that, and froze. It had done the same the day before, & I had to delete all partitions & recreate them again to get HD Mgr to work with it at all, both times, b4 running HD Mgr of course.. (BTW, other times I tried it for weeks it said it couldn't find Universal File System Drivers.) It's driving me insane now, as I know I have a perfectly good backup in my ext hd, & I have tried all else online. BTW, the 1st couple weeks of problem, HD mgr suite bootable /restore PLUS the backup capsule, would freeze at the restore button itself, saying "something" about partitions. Flashed it so fast I never could read it. Then later it couldn't find the Universal FS drivers. Til last few days when I deleted & recreated partitions, which I probably did wrong.
1 thing I haven't tried yet is incremental type restore, as I'm not sure that can fix partitions, which seems to be my basic problem still. I had/have C: Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition (OEM) & D:Recovery partitions before, & I think my backup has all disk. I didn't create a partition for the MBR, though, as nothing told me about it til I saw that today. Does it need a partition? Or? You'd think I'd know that after all else I studied about it. I'd like to have the recovery partition back too, but if it's not possible, that's ok, too. But I NEED my PC and XP! We have 2 other PCs in house, so if needed I can make disks on those, in case you tell me to burn an iso or something. IF I can't use a Paragon tool to fix this, can you steer me to direction of how to get a free version of XP to run to fix this maybe, & then use my backup to restore my own system? Sounds dum, I know, I'm just so depressed & desperate now. I've tried re-partitioning this thing til I'm now wondering if I'm making it worse every time even. Tried every partitioning tool I could find. Should I try recreating partitions again so I can try running HD mgr 2010 restore (ISO) again, or?
I'm scared nothing can fix it now, of course, but if anything can, it's probably from Paragon! I rant & rave online about Paragon so much people probably think I work for you. lol I love Paragon! It has saved me several times. I hope I've given you enough info. At the end of my proverbial rope. Any help you can give me would be more appreciated than you can possibly imagine!
Hoping there is still hope , Skye-hook

 

Can you post a screenshot (or screenshots) of what HDM shows for the partitions/disk in the backup?

Does the backup verify successfully (Check Archive Integrity)?

Have you tried restoring with both the WinPE and Linux versions of the recovery media?

The MBR isn't a partition. It's the first sector (sector zero) on the drive.

 

Not sure I can do a screenshot & save & post it on my site or not, using the stuff on the HD Manager Suite DOS only. I shall try & see if I can get that. Yes, the verify on backup was good. It has nothing to verify with now. When I tried to run the backup it shows different things it restored when I use different programs to check it. One looks like the whole C: was done, but it still won't boot, but recovery is empty.
The phrase it gave me when it froze was "Getting partition info". It froze at that point several times now.
I will have to see if can do screenshot later in late evening, or Sunday, as I'm not with that PC right now.
Thanks for your response! I will get right on this again as soon as I can. Thanks again.

 

I don't think he has a screen capture app. in the boot media.

If you have acces to another machine, you can make this little boot disc.

Get a copy of 32BIT win 7 Repair disc .iso [ Win7 recovery disc d/l http://cybernetnews.com/windows-7-recovery-disc/

or http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/ ]

Extract the contents of the .iso into a folder on the HD. ( http://www.7-zip.org/ can do that )

d/l this http://cid-b0a22789320e3247.office.live.com/self.aspx/pe/HDMaddPATv3.zip - extract it with 7zip

Rt click and run as admin on the HDMaddPAT.cmd file.

Say yes to adding HDM.

Browse to the launcher.exe of your installed Paragon HDM ( Install HDM first on the other machine to do that ).

Say no to including Paragon alignment tool.

It will make a boot disc for you. It only takes three minutes to do.

Boot it up, start paragon and take a screenie with the included screen capture app.

If you have a wired internet connection - you can post the screenshot here ( fire up the included browser to do that).

Otherwise, save the screenshot onto the HD of the other machine.

Then post it up here in the normal way.

Hope it helps.

 

I'm back. Sorry took so long, but I had to go another route & get this PC running again. Answers to above things-
-The thing about a screenshot=the Paragon software never got that far to be able to see anything about the backup. In another DOS ap I could see that my C: partition seemed to be replaced ok, or was still lurking there in shadows, but none of the options for using the Paragon DOS ap showed me anything in the backup at all, except error messages, & the messages when it tried to do the recovery, such as "Universal File System Drivers Initialization" & then froze, and the "Getting Partitions Info" & then froze. All options did 1 or the other of those.
- I really didn't want to use a Windows 7 program on my XP! That sure doesn't sound like the right thing to do.
-I tried both the PE & DOS versions, PE seemed to be getting further but then it didn't.
**I truly LOVE Paragon products, & this hasn't changed my opinion, because Paragon cares more & tries harder than any software company there is! That's a fact. My only wishes for improvements would be a DOS that can recover a PC without ANY dependance on anything, such as partitions info or drivers initialization (see above). I also believe a backup someday should restore any PC without having to use an ap to run it, and having to go through making ISO disks & trying a bunch of things that sound scary.
- Is it not possible for Paragon to get/buy Windows system SETUPS from not only Microsoft, but also the OEM systems from companies like EMachines/ Gateway, Dell, HP, etc, for those times like mine, where the backup is just not able to function? I say this NOT to be critical, not at all, but just as a suggestion for future things to come. It was almost impossible to fix my system in any way! I had to get a torrent XP setup, & use my own ID/Keys. But now I've lost a massive amount of wonderful things I had on my PC before. I'm pretty devastated. I'm glad my PC works again, but what a price I've paid. Even weeks of hard work. And not least, movies & pics of my beloved dog who died 2 yrs ago. After fixing it, I'm afraid to run my backup now even. Maybe I'll try it someday when my courage revives. lol@me. But I do realize it isn't Paragons fault that I managed to stumble into the 1 stupid thing you don't have a miracle to fix.
**Anyone reading this, believe me when I say Paragon software has done more, makes the best software, tries harder, cares more, responds best, & is the absolute best software company you could ever ask for! (I've had tons of experience with many, many software companies.)
** 1 question left- what should I have done 1st thing when I realized I had deleted partitions? Is there something that could have worked well? I HAD Paragon virtualization software, (forgot it's exact name)- but I never used it. Now it's gone. Dang me. Would that have been able to restore my PC easily? Would it have had a way to run after I had deleted partitions? Would I have had to download several aps or would VMWare run at that point??
**Thanks SO much to all who responded to my problem! Thanks for being there for us all, Paragon!

 

Hi skyehook.

From your description, it sounds like an error with the partition table.

Windows boot discs , and those containing apps. which are made for windows will get the partition info from the Bios.

Some boot discs, GParted for example, will get that info from the disk controller and can often start up and see the drive when windows boot discs can't.

I have been able to fix such errors with GParted when nothing else would see the drive.

GParted is not specifically made for windows, but works fine for ntfs and Fat partitions.


I am sorry to hear about your lost pictures.

It is not impossible you may be able to get some of them back.

Not sure about XP , but with Vista/7 , only a quick format is performed during install.

That means any data not actually overwritten during installation and any subsequent activity on the drive , is still there.

You never know - you may find at least some of your stuff still recoverable.

Sadly , the more you have done since reinstalling, the more of the drive will have been written to - reducing the not amount of space still not overwritten - and therefore reducing the amount available for recovery.

The golden rule with recovering data - stop using that drive immediately.

Run the data recovery app. from a separate HD/Machine/boot disc, and recover to a different drive as well.

Recuva is a good free one. They do a portable version here:

http://www.piriform.com/recuva/builds


Easeus are doing a giveaway of their PRO data recovery Wizard at the moment.:

http://www.megaleecher.net/Legal_Free_License_For_Easeus_Data_Recovery_Wizard

Apparently , the Rapidshare link they provide is the one to use.

 

Hi skyehook,

do you still have the image/backup on your external drive?

From what I understood, the backup contained all your partitions and its integrity check was ok. In this case you haven't lost your files yet since they are included in the backup and you can recover them.
http://kb.paragon-software.com/para...atId=2124&objId=6178&statId=1493478&foLang=en

Also please mount the archive with the built-in Volume Explorer (or try to start a restore from that archive without confirming/compliting the final step) and post a screenshot here; it will help us understand what is included in that archive and what is not, and tell you how to proceed.

Panagiotis

 

@pandlouk - your advice was pretty solid, & the link you provided does tell me a lot of what I needed! Thanks! I really appreciate that you comprehended the full scope of my problem. I especially like that your solution was a Paragon solution! And I do believe it will work to recover my backed up data from the sound of it, now that I at least have the PC up & running in Win XP again, so I can use the Paragon software again now. I have either a cold or the flu now, & my brain is just plain gone, probably from meds, so I need to wait a few days to try your advice, when I can think again. I can tell it will work, though.

Yes, I still have my backup, & since I have XP running again now, with your advice, I can take it from here & get it fixed like I want. I actually may just restore the whole thing, as i know it was a good backup. I'll back up this clean install also, as it's kinda nice to have only 7 gigs on it, including many of my fave software already. lol My backup with 145-149 gigs used has a ton of software & 3 1/2 years of great info etc on it, though, so..

**?? BTW, IF I had made an archive using Paragons virtualization product, that would have worked to restore my partitions & OS, right? I've never used VM Ware or such, have you? Would that have run in DOS so I could have restored the virtualized disk?
Thanks so much for your help! I really can't thank you enough for your help & your knowledge!

 

You are very welcome.

Yes, with paragon virtualization you would be able to make a virtual copy of your pc and load it in vmware, virtual pc or virtual box. No it runs inside your OS (not in dos).

Panagiotis