[coordinateur]

I'm trying to recover some information that was on a hard drive for someone. They were running Vista trial and i was told by them that they were simply locked out due to the trial expiring (Note: I'm not looking for an illegal hack to extend the trail as i already know how to extend the trial the legal way). However, when i tried to boot the disk up, it showed only a black screen with a blinking cursor at the top left. It wouldn't let me boot in safe mode or with the last known good configuration... When i try running it as a slave drive, it prevents my master drive from booting as well and no drive at all is detected. It did eventually tell me that some system files were missing... I was going to try to download and run the Vista recovery disks, but i'm wondering if it's possible for me to find out whether it's the 32bit or 64bit version of the OS that is running on it? I don't have a CD/DVD-RW, so i'm trying to prevent wasting a disk.

Thanks in advance for any help

Edited by coordinateur, 27 May 2010 - 03:25 AM.

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Hi coordinateur, Welcome to geekstogo. That's why its called (Vista Trial) He would have
to call Microsoft and buy it.

Please read Terms of Use.

http://www.geekstogo...boardrules.html

Dwight

[Dwight]

Hi coordinateur, Welcome to geekstogo. That's why its called (Vista Trial) He would have
to call Microsoft and buy it.

Please read Terms of Use.

http://www.geekstogo...boardrules.html

Dwight

[coordinateur]

Hi coordinateur, Welcome to geekstogo. That's why its called (Vista Trial) He would have
to call Microsoft and buy it.

Please read Terms of Use.

http://www.geekstogo...boardrules.html

Dwight

The OS isn't booting...if it was simply because the trial locked the user out due to it expiring i would be able to boot the OS and extend the trial another 30 days. In Vista you're allowed to extend the trial 3 times for a total of 90 days. Only one trial was used. If the hard drive and/or OS were working properly, the trial expiring should have nothing to do with it, and i would be able to get the information off of the drive.

I don't see anything in the board rules or terms of use saying that i shouldn't be asking for help in this situation. I'm not asking for a hack to extend the trial illegally.

Even if all 3 trial extensions had been used, Vista doesn't lock the user out of the OS completely and i should at least be able to boot it up; that is what i need help with...

Edited by coordinateur, 27 May 2010 - 03:03 AM.

[megabite]

Sounds more like the Hard drive itself has problems....as you should be able to access the drive from another PC.

[coordinateur]

Anyone have any advice?..

[SpywareDr]

Have you tried hooking it up to another computer with a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter?

http://www.newegg.co...amp;PageSize=20

[rshaffer61]

I don't have a CD/DVD-RW, so i'm trying to prevent wasting a disk.

This statement alone is going to be a problem because if you truly feel it is a hardware issue then you need to run HD diagnostics will means you need a cd to burn the ISO image and do the diagnostics by booting to the disk.
A Linux live cd like Puppy Linux would allow you to gain access tot he data on the drive and back it up but again you need a cd to do this.
Memtest86 would test the memory but again another cd to do this.
Short of putting the drive in a enclosure as SpywareDr has suggested or in another working system you have very few options.

[coordinateur]

I don't have a CD/DVD-RW, so i'm trying to prevent wasting a disk.

This statement alone is going to be a problem because if you truly feel it is a hardware issue then you need to run HD diagnostics will means you need a cd to burn the ISO image and do the diagnostics by booting to the disk.

What i was trying to say when i said "I don't have a CD/DVD-RW", was that i didn't have a rewritable disk, therefore, if i were to burn the wrong version of the recovery disk, it would have been a waste of a disk. Yeah, i know they're cheap, but it's still a waste. Sorry for the confusion.

Whether i should burn a 32bit or 64bit recovery disk was actually my initial question, but it was probably overlooked because i got into too much detail. I suppose it would have just been helpful to find out which Vista runs by default.

Have you tried hooking it up to another computer with a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter?

http://www.newegg.co...amp;PageSize=20

That was a useful suggestion, but thankfully i never had to use it, as the problem was unexplainably resolved.

I connected the hard drive as a slave drive in another computer and was able to read the files as expected. I don't know why it wouldn't work on my other PC when every other drive i've connected to it as a slave was read just fine.

Thanks for the help. Problem solved. It finally ended up being as easy as i first thought it was going to be. Just took a bit longer.

[rshaffer61]

Congratulations. for a successful resolution for your issue.

You are very welcome. I'm glad we could help and please let us know how everything works out for you.
If there is anything else we can do to help please feel free to ask. I appreciate that you allowed us to assist you with your issue and for your patience.
Thank you for choosing GeeksToGo for help.
This issue now appears to be resolved.


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