Digital BW, The Print

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