Recently I had mentioned in a podcast of my adventures of restoring my tablet from a catastrophic failure, that happened when I was backing up my Tablet, which I do routinely before going away for an extended period of time. While writing the new image of my latest nibs and bits Drive Image failed to correctly write the boot loader for the 2 partitions and my C: (boot) partition was no longer accessible. I had tried running a windows repair(via the repair console see below for more details) and couldn't recover the partition. I had tried to restore the image from my D: drive partition, but it came up with the same error and rebooted XP ad nauseum. I also tried several utilities I have for data recovery and all seemed to be lost.
I also contemplated reinstalling XP Tablet PC Edition(lucky for me I have an MSDN subscription- other wise I would have to wipe my drive clean and default to factory defaults from the system restore disk-not at all optimal) to copy over the bad and "repair" when necessary, this had worked in the past, but always took longer the the actual set time displayed on the screen[at least Vista's new time meter is actually accurate and doesn't need user input to install it just does it:) ]. This process generally took me between an hour and an hour and a half to perform if all went well with all apps and settings preserved and the bug repaired. I have done this many times and began to question the stability of the OS and files after repeating this so many times.
Luckily for me, to get me up and going I had a previous image only a few days old saved on an external hard drive(if you have the bucks I highly recommend getting one they are around $100 and well worth it) and I was quickly back up and running in less than 15 minutes. And I was able to extract all of my recently changed files from the image on my second partition without any problems from the imaging program's built-in file restore utility. This was all done on the road without having the resources I normally would at home.
This got me to thinking what I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't take the precautions I did and would be in a predicament that many Tablet PC owners are today experiencing with no recourse to reinstall or restore their Tablet PC. When I got Home I made up a DVD of all my "must have applications", settings, and docs as well as a bootable install of XP Tablet Edition just in case. Since I had made this "personal restore DVD" I had decided to place it into practice (on a spare hard drive I have) while decompressing and watching some mindless show on television. After about an hour of fresh install of the OS and must have applications, a copy of 'My Documents', Magazines, PST file, My Maps, etc. Also some great tools to use to backup Outlook is OutBack Plus 5 and Outlook Express Newsgroups,Mail, settings,etc with Outlook is Express Assist 7 .
If you don't want purchase this software at least use the manual method of backup detailed here:
Use Outlook Folder Backup to safeguard all that important information:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA010875321033.aspx.
For the Outlook Express Address Book and Folder Backup, go to:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;188854;
and for Outlook Express data backup, head to:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;270670.
Speed up Installation
On my DVD I also rewrote the setup.ini files to automatically fill in the product ID:
Copy the source files to a directory on your hard drive to burn to disk
For either product, you need to modify the SETUP.INI file
In the [OPTIONS] section, add a line PIDKEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
(Note: the X's are replaced with your product id without the dashes)
For Office2000 the SETUP.INI file is on the root of the CD
For OfficeXP/Office2003 the SETUP.INI file is in the FILES\SETUP directory
More info on network install is here if you wish to forgo a DVD/CD based install.
I was back up and running with a much faster machine with the latest drivers and software. I was pretty happy with the outcome. Still I plan to backup, backup, backup!
In case you take a wrong turn down the road of data corruption all isn't lost here are few options available to you.
Data Recovery:
Some things you can do to recover your data is by using a 2.5" to 3.5" HD adapter, External 2.5" HD case or one of the new USB to HD adapters that are available and copy all you can to another hard drive before attempting a repair. This generally involves a screwdriver removing a very delicate hd cable and your hard drive. If you are technically challenged then I would suggest another method if possible.
Next if you are lucky to get a hold of an XP install disk- Note: only some Tablet PCs have this like HP and Motion- (XP Pro, but XP Tablet Edition is more desired) try and perform a repair from the recovery console (selecting R for the Repair Recovery console after booting from the XP install disk) from the repair recovery console select the Windows installation to repair, which is usually 1 and enter the Administrator password if asked. Here you brought into a DOS window and if you type HELP you can find out what you can run.
I first suggest running a CHKDSK /R and see if that fixes it( this can be run inside of XP as well if he has an external drive chassis on another PC under My Computer->rightclick on the drive->tools->select Error-Checking which may help if a hibernation file is corrupt preventing proper bootup.
When the system displays on booting a message of "missing" NTLDR or NTDETECT,you can copy these files(NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM) via Repair Recovery Console from the CD-ROM from the i386-directory to the C:\
FIXBOOT and FIXMBR may also fix his problem but your mileage will vary on the extent of the problem. If there is a problem with the Boot-sector on the C:-drive, "FIXBOOT" will write a new boot-sector. If there is a problem with the Master-Boot-Record of the disk (maybe damaged by a virus or some problems writing a hibernate file- I have in the past out of impatience or pure dumb luck shut down my machine before it could finish writing to the hibernate file),you can use "FIXMBR" to write a new MBR.
The last is a reinstall/repair which copies over the files and keeps your installed apps, settings,etc IF the partition is readable. This is a last resort, but I have been successful with this many times. If your partition is not readable or repairable you will most likely have to do a clean install and having a regular backup and all your installed programs handy is a reason for my personal install disk, which is also now backed up on a my portable HD for quicker installs/reinstalls/repairs.
If you can't get hold of a bootable windows CD/DVD you can also use some third party utilities like Bart's Pre-Installed Environment aka Bart PE which will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for recovering systems with no OS and copying files to another networked computer. A very good disk to have in your computer toolkit...
Hope this helps many of you out and if anyone has any other suggestions please add them!!
:)