Windows wont start after gparted froze

[learnin2hack]

Ok I am stumped. I had linux mint 15 installed in a dual boot with win xp on the family computer. I removed linux mint and then tried to resize the windows partition to the full size of the hdd off a live usb. gParted froze and my father plugged out the computer. It now says windows cant boot(something.exe) is corrupted or missing. I dont have the windows cd. Sorry I'm in a rush

 

[trumpet-205]

Explain in detail, how did you try to resize? What exe is corrupted or missing?

 

[Originality]

MBR corruption?

 

[Foxi4]

MBR corruption?

Putting my money on that as well - start from using a live cd/usb and try fixing the master boot record.

 

[PsyBlade]

No not MBR.

Massive filesystem corruption.
He interrupted a filesystem resize, that's a sure way to disaster.

Afaik there's no good ntfs fixer for linux.
You will have to fix it on a different windows install. If it CAN be fixed that is.

Easiest it probably to restore from backup (if the machine was important)
or simply wipe and reinstall.

 

[FAST6191]

I am with PsyBlade on this one -- interrupting a drive resize is generally bad news all round. If you are especially bored you can recover some stuff from raw drive reading but mostly it is bad news.

You might give http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk a go, strictly speaking this sort of thing is not under its remit but a this point it is probably worth a go. Its companion program photorec might also be able to penetrate far enough to pull back a few files if not. It is available for everything, indeed if you used parted magic it is probably already on it.

 

[Ritsuki]

I had a similar problem once, it was actually only the partition table who was corrupted. I used an utility like the one FAST6191 proposed, and luckily enough, I managed to get back pretty much all my data.

 

[Foxi4]

Massive filesystem corruption.

While this is certainly a possibility, I don't think the system would even start the boot sequence if the disk was borked to that extent - everything depends on when exactly the process froze, so it's best to go through step-by-step recovery before assuming the wrost-case scenario occured.

 

[PsyBlade]

so it's best to go through step-by-step recovery before assuming the wrost-case scenario occured.

Running the suggested fsck/filesystem checker (in checking only mode) is simply the first thing to do with a misbehaving filesystem.
The rest depends on the results but isn't exactly long either.

If it finds no errors it probably isn't the filesystem. Look for problems elsewhere.
If it finds unfixable errors there's not much choice too: wipe it (create a new filesystem or restore a backup from before the problem).

Only if it finds fixable errors there are some other steps:

The very first thing is making sure it isn't caused by defect HW.​

If it is, fix it. (Included for completeness, I doubt its the cause here)​

​

Then optionally make a backup of the complete FS.​

​

The next thing is telling the checker to fix the error. Repeat as needed. Possibly with different repair tools.​

If you run into problems you can restore the backup from the step before to try again.​

If you run out of pacience: wipe it​

​

And that's about everything you can do.

 

[Originality]

If the filesystem is corrupted, I would think nothing would be readable and you'd end up with the boot device failure message. If its just the MBR, then at least it would be able to read the drive even if the corruption breaks several key files from the boot up sequence.

Then again, I've had a lot of fun with intentional filesystem corruption in the past. Depending on what is accessing the affected drive, I've seen as many as 6 different file tables, with most folders and files relatively intact. And it booted, but anyway. I'm getting off topic.

 

[learnin2hack]

Thanks for the suggestions. I used photo rec to recover most of the data. I repaired the MBR earlier. I think it is a file system corruption. I downloaded a Dell OEM win xp home edition iso and it is just finished now I will try to repair the installation with it. Wish me luck

 

[learnin2hack]

It doesn't recognise the windows installation

 

[learnin2hack]

The exe that is corrupt is ntoskrnl.exe

 

[Mantis41]

run chkdsk.exe /r from a PE bootable disk

 

[learnin2hack]

run chkdsk.exe /r from a PE bootable disk

I'm running that now