Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with corrupt

WinXP Corrupt (this is news?) ...Desktop Disaster in Process

FauxScot — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:42:02 -0800

Win XP corrupted system and SAM files... disaster in process, need expert input and recommendation for a data recovery service I can trust. My backup strategy is to clone my hard drive periodically. Last time I did it in April, Windows told me I had changed hardware configurations too often and made me 'reauthorize' my installation, which I did, but with some trepidation.

This month, prior to installing some new development software, I went to do my normal tricks and while I am not sure what happened, after Windows asked me to reauthorize, apparently the operation did not complete.

Now, my backup is a broken and faithful version of my hard drive, and neither boot. Windows reports that the file \windows\system32\config\system is corrupt.

If I replace the system and SAM files with the last version I had, I have a computer that is a snapshot of my 4/2009 computer, with all the recent info that I stored on the desktop gone. If I were not in a quite literal frenzy of activity, I would simply tolerate this and go on, but the last four months have been a blizzard of work, and I am thinking that my only hope of recovering a lot of creative work is to send the drive out to a data recovery service.

I've only been experimenting with one of the two drives, so I do have one that has not been tampered with. I don't use restore points, and usually do this backup thing monthly, as it requires disassembly of my desktop machine, and I know I've been living on borrowed time, but that's life. The issue for today is recovery; punishment will come later!

The questions are:

Has anyone else here ever done this and how did you recover?

Who has the best (not cheapest, BEST) recovery service (with bonus points for Boston or NYC),

Secondary question:

In WinXP, where does the 'desktop' live... in the system file or SAM file? (It is there where a bunch of my most valuable files live.) XP needs both the SAM and system files to boot. Any way to extract its content if the OS won't boot?

Thanks in advance for uber tech advice....

How to withhold virus infections (of the computer variety) from the ones you love?

Napoleonic Terrier — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:39:59 -0800

Suggestions for cleaning a virus-infected Windows machine appearing in a non-administrator account without resort to (1) the administrator account or (2) a nuke and re-install? So my friend has a user account on her brother's Windows XP SP2 machine, with her brother set up as the password-protected administrator. She has picked up some viruses and/or spyware on her account.

I have booted the machine into safe mode and run some of the programs (such as ComboFix) recommended from prior MeFi posts. With access through safe mode, should I be able to get rid of all the nasties or do I need to run programs from the administrator account? Any other ideas?

She hopes to fix the problem without alerting her brother. So the best solution, a nuke and re-install, is currently off the table.
Thanks!

How to "lock down" Windows on a home PC

ackptui — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:52:03 -0800

I've been wondering if it is possible to apply the same solution to the never-ending problem of Windows corruption (and the resulting degraded performance) that data centers use. As I understand it, Windows is booted over the network, so what happens to the local hard drive does not matter. Is there a way of doing the same thing to a home PC? Can you make a hard drive "read-only" after putting a bootable Windows image on it, and then use a seperate hard drive for data storage? I really detest the solution that MS sponsors (virus protection/firewall software) because it is just another thing that you have to buy which supports it's business partners. Any other ideas?

Best hard drive practice?

edbyford — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:51:48 -0800

Is CHKDSK actually any good? I had a problem a few months ago where my hard drive started corrupting my files. I don't blame chkdsk for this, but when I was trying to sort out how I could recover some of these files, somebody implied that all chkdsk did was mark the sector bad, rather than try and save what is on there. Is this true? If so, isn't it a pretty bad hard disk checker?

Now, my hard drive contains many many photos, music and video files, which I want to make sure don't get corrupted or damaged in any way. What would you recommend I use or do to check my files over and make sure they're ok?

TIA.

Serious MySQL table repair help

Mo Nickels — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:22:20 -0800

Are there uncommon ways to repair a corrupt MySQL table? I have a MySQL database that is experiencing some serious corruption. Using the standard instructions, I have repaired all of the tables but one. No matter how many ways I try those instructions on the ornery table, in all cases either a) nothing happens or b) the data file is emptied, which is, obviously, not the result I want. I linked to the instructions above because I wanted to make it plain I have tried *all* of the instructions there, on two different servers (one BSD, one Mac OS X), and have had no joy including use of "REPAIR TABLE tbl_name USE_FRM"). Also, I do not have a good backup. I have only the corrupt database table to work with (it's somebody else's server--they are highly unsavvy).

In its default corrupt state, I get the following when I check the file:

check  	warning  	Size of datafile is: 4791392       Should be: 0

check 	error 	Wrong bytesec: 0-0-0 at linkstart: 0

check 	error 	Corrupt

The "should be" size is wrong. This means there's some discrepancy between the MYD, MYI, and .FRM files. If I repair the file with MySQL, I get

repair  	info  	Wrong bytesec:   0-  0-  0 at 0; Skipped

repair 	status 	OK

This makes the file 0 bytes, which is wrong. Then I restore the copy of the corrupt file and try all the steps on the MySQL repair page. They do not solve the problem, so I am looking for other ideas and other solutions.

I want to corrupt my memory!

ChrisManley — Mon, 26 May 2008 07:03:12 -0800

How can I corrupt memory? I have a plain SD card, and I'd like to be able to reliably make the memory corrupt. Can this be done? Basically, I want to get that error that everyone dreads when it shows up on the digital camera. That the card is corrupted and needs to be formatted.

I've found many resources on how to recover from corrupt memory, but none that give any idea how to cause it consistently. The only information I've found are the things that might cause it - running on low batteries, unplugging during file copies and the like.

I've spent some time with a hex editor, attacking the headers and such of the memory stick, but none of these have caused corruption.

Any ideas?

My computer's gone HAL on me!

edbyford — Tue, 06 May 2008 05:45:02 -0800

It appears that chkdsk has corrupted some of my files. How can I stop this happening? I restarted my computer one day (just to refresh it, not because of an update, new program or crash) and it ran chkdsk automatically, which I thought was strange.

It found several errors in a folder of music I have in My Documents. It said it fixed them so I thought nothing of it, until a couple of days later I was looking over my backup logs and my backup program (JungleDisk) had noticed that some of my music files had been modified, so had made copies of them. The files were the same ones chkdsk had scanned and "fixed" a few days before. I thought I'd better check out the files, so I went to the folder (whose name was corrupted btw) and tried to play them...but although the files still showed the correct size, they wouldn't play! They were corrupt!

This has really shaken my confidence in my PC. I am running Win XP Home with NTFS. I have a large music collection, and am left wondering: why these files corrupted? how many MP3s and other files have I lost without realising?

Can anybody offer an explanation of the problem? Is there anything I can do to stop this happening again?

Constant corruption - and I'm not even talking about the government!

twiggy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:42:44 -0800

I have a few mysql tables that keep repeatedly getting corrupted - help! I'm running a website that uses OSCommerce, though that in particular may not be relevant to my problem. The sessions and whos_online tables both seem to keep getting corrupted. I run myisamchk -r on them (even after stopping mysql server altogether in order to do so, just in case) and they're fine for a very short while (measured in minutes, not even hours) and then both keep getting corrupted again.

I've rebooted the server (Red Hat linux), I've tried dropping the tables and recreating their structure, and I'm now at my wit's end.

I figured a reboot would run fsck to see if it was a disk issue. I must plead ignorance here -- I'm an amateur when it comes to being a sysadmin, and I built this box so long ago I don't remember if it ran fsck on boot automatically, or if some other job checks first if it should run fsck, or what... Anway, I looked a boot.log and see no record of fsck being run.

Anyone know what might be causing this, or what else I can look into? My understanding is that I can't run fsck on a mounted file system so I'm not sure what to do.

An educated egg-dicator (for computers)

Plug Dub In — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:01:05 -0800

Mac OS X: External drive is dying, many corrupt files randomly strewn about it. What Mac utility can copy all the non-corrupt files to a new disk and provide a list of the files it couldn't copy? Copying certain files gives an error -36. These files do not open in any application. Disk Utility says everything's just fine. It's lying. It's also unable to image the disk. DiskWarrior is no help either.

I'm imagining something that would crawl through the disk file by file, copying what it can and making a note of what it can't.

I've got a somewhat recent backup, so I'm not really freaking out, but I'd like to keep the most recent files possible. Thanks much, hive mind.

How Can I Extract Video From A Corrupt VOB?

sciurus — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:33:29 -0800

How can I extract video from corrupt/poorly burned VOB files into a format that is editable? I received a bunch of DVDs of video camera footage from my childhood. It looks like they were burned on-the-fly as the tapes were played back. They won't spin-up on any DVD player, and the only way I can get to the video itself is to open them in something like MPEG Streamclip, and even then playback is a fifty-fifty chance.

There are plenty of timecode breaks so MPEG Streamclip borks when I try to extract from it. I've tried Handbrake as well, with less success.

Searching around the internets doesn't seem to provide any clear options. There are a ton of programs out there designed to extract from DVD, but frankly, most of them look like crap and I'd rather not fork over cash for a program that might not be able to do what I want.

I've got Leopard and XP dual-booting on my iMac, so I'm pretty flexible. I've got access to FCP at my office as well, but I've tried to do tricks with it already to no avail.

You can't hide forever, Baal!

Rallon — Tue, 15 May 2007 12:57:49 -0800

So I have a scratched CD with a few corrupt files, and access to the files that I need on another PC...can I combine these somehow to create a working CD or image with which to install/use my program? The program is Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction (the expansion). Yeah, I'm a nerd. Anyway, the original game installs fine, and I own a perfectly legal copy of the expansion, but the disc is scratched to hell, so the install hangs trying to copy two files (d2exp.mpq and d2xtalk, if it matters). These won't copy to the desktop, either, so I assume they're just gone. I can hop on an ancient PC that lives in the closet and pull these files off via thumb drive, however, so I have access to good copies of the files that are corrupted.

The installer, unfortunately, insists on copying over whatever's in the directory, so just tossing those files into the install directory before the installer starts trying to copy doesn't work, it still tries to copy the files and hangs. Worse yet, copying the files into the directory makes the launcher think the expansion is already installed, so it won't let me try to install over/install the rest. Long story short, I think I need to somehow replace the files on the CD with the good versions. I can get all of the other files off of the CD by copy/paste, but taking an image of the whole CD fails because of those bad files.

Is there some way for me to successfully create an image with all working files that should work? I'd really like not to have to go out and buy a new expansion, and torrenting it is pretty much out of the question due to bandwidth issues. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Recovering corrupt data from otherwise fine SD cards

Hogshead — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:13:25 -0800

Has a no-brand cybercafe SD card reader borked our honeymoon photos/video, or is there anything we can do to recover them? Half-way through our honeymoon we checked the photos and video on our SDs cards in a cybercafe (Compaq/WinXP; no-brand external card reader). After a while the image-viewer siezed up, directory names started showing up as hieroglyphics and wouldn't open. We put the cards back in our devices (Treo 650 and Minolta Dimage) and found that some of the image and video files had been corrupted/won't read -- only ones taken in the last few days. On the Treo, the images displayed the top 10-15% before degenerating into grey; the Minolta simply reported them as unreadable. Pics taken earlier were fine, as were the ones we took over the rest of the trip.

Back at home, the Treo syncs fine and transfers all images -- imcluding the corrupted ones -- but Windows reports the directory on the card is corrupt. The corrupted video doesn't seem to have synced. My wife (must get used to writing that) seems to have got the pics off the Minolta okay but isn't sure how she did it; I suspect voodoo.

Two questions: what did the card-reader/PC do to our SD cards; and is there any software or method for recovering the still-corrupted files?

All thanks appreciated.

InDesign crashed for no reason. Why??

niles — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:11:39 -0800

Was working on an InDesign file, and i just up and crashed. Now it's corrupted, as are the saved copies. I was working on an InDesign document last night, and all of a sudden the linked images (about 12 per page, 4 pages) disappeared. Closed InDesign, and now it crashes when I reopened the file. I have copies of the file (saved after the images turned to gray boxes), but those also cause InDesign to "crash unexpectedly". I really do not want to recreate all four pages, so is there a way to recover at least some of the file? This was Indesign CS, on Mac OS X 10.3.9 G5. I also have access to CS on Win XP, CS 2 on Win XP, and CS 2 on OS X 10.4.8 Intel iMac.

Yes, I have thrown away pref files, and checked Adobe's web site.

Help fixing a hosed NTFS

lundman — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:00:25 -0800

Big help needed, Windows corrupted most of my NTFS disk... Win2k, Tyan 2885, two HDDs, C: and E: (which is actually ARAID1000 mirror.. and I wish I had...) I did ALL my operations off C: since E: has important data on it after all.

I uninstalled the AMD Driver Pack in an attempt to get the onboard audio to work, during the boot, Windows then claims E: is dirty and needs CHKDSK. It did _something_ for over an hour, thanks!

Anyway, at the end of it all, E: was completely re-indexed. That is to say all Directories and Files appear to be there, no files are missing, but their data-blocks are messed up. With .JPGs sometimes the image is good, sometimes half one, and half another, but most often just corrupt.

CHKDSK again finds no issues.

Any hope at all, is there some software that can try to reindex the data blocks correctly? Any insight at all? As a giant puzzle should I hand assemble files ?:)

Best software to recover a corrupted .pst file?

Kwantsar — Fri, 05 May 2006 11:51:16 -0800

Best software to recover a corrupted .pst file? I have a corrupt Outlook archive, in the form of a .pst file. Many of the demos available on the web seen to recover the archive, but since they are all demos, there doesn't seem to be a really good way to compare them. Spending $100-$200 isn't a problem. Much more, however, is objectionable.

Which of these million programs is best? My main concern is getting back as much of the data as is possible.

Help me save five months of memories?

skryche — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:38:42 -0800

How can I fix the corrupted jpegs on my Win XP computer? This tragedy begins, as so many do, with a disk repartitioning. Not only was the repartitioning aborted by the program, it rendered my NTFS partition unrecognizable. Via many different tools, I finally gained access -- but all my files were squished to 8.3 format (e.g., "DOCUME~1.TXT"). I backed 'em up to a FAT32 partition, reformatted and installed windows on the graveyard partition, and moved them back.

All of my restored files seem to be okay (excepting their names, of course) except for the JPGs, which cannot be opened in:

Windows Preview ("Drawing failed")

IrfanView, Firefox (opens partially, but bottom half is grey)

Photoshop

Here's one of them.

The really weird thing is that I have a restored MS Word .doc that has embedded pictures... the document is fine, but the pictures are screwy!

I tried PixRecovery. No dice.

The EXIF data's all there, as is the thumbnail. The files seem to be about the correct size. How can I fix them? And if you can't tell me that, do you have any idea what happened?

Windows XP crashes during file access, can I fix it?

monsta coty scott — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:04:48 -0800

Windows XP crashes whenever it accesses a specific file. The problem: I don't know what file it is. What would cause such a serious error and how do I fix it? I know it's a file located under D:\mp3s\ . I first had the problem when backing up the directory to an external hard drive, in the middle of the copying it crashes the computer. I get a short glimpse of a blue screen of death and then intant reboot. I attempted again and it crashed about the same time into the copying.

I ran scandisk on the drive to hopefully fix the corrupt file, but it crashes when accessing that part as well. I ran a virus scan, once again the computer crashes anytime any program tries to access that file.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to track down what file it is and how to remove it? (Short of accessing files one at a time to find the culprit.)

Cause of corrupt PDF's?

Grod — Sun, 09 May 2004 19:08:50 -0800

HELP! Suddenly, every PDF I download from various databases is corrupt in some way. Either there is "insufficient data for an image" or "unable to extract font X", this has never happened to me before. I have no problem grabbing PDFs from other sites, so I don't know if the corruption is caused by dropped packets going through the library proxy server, evil gremlins, or my recent installation of Reader 6 alongside Acrobat Pro 5