Computer help...?

[Syvarius]

Okay, this problem has been driving me nuts, but I'm at the point where I need help and I've googled everything I can.

Here's the problem.

My primary computer is about to bite the dust (happens often) but I really really need to get some things off of it before it casts itself into oblivion.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, just hooking the hard drive up in another computer and taking the contents out like that, but the entire damn thing is PGP encrypted. You know, Whole Disk Encryption or whatever savvy term people want to use these days.
So that rules out just casually taking the contents out like that.

Now here's what I really need help with. When windows starts loading up on that system, it throws that skyblue screen forward and keeps wanting to run checkdisk on my system. This little bastard has been the thing that has completely eaten my computer the last three times (the very first time windows ate my computer it was windows disk cleanup that deleted everything on the drive), and I really don't want that again until I can salvage some important stuff off of it.

How do I disable that checkdisk that insistantly loads on bootup?
The Grim Reaper is hanging out in my room over my computer, but I can't sacrifice it to the checkdisk of death just yet!

Help?

[JPS]

Re: Computer help...?

Go into BIOS and see what you can disable

or

Go to "Run" and type msconfig and go to the startup tab and uncheck it

or

theres a file called autoexec.tsh(it might be autoexec.bat if tsh is empty) the program link should be in there somewhere, just delete that line of code, best way to do this is go to the DOS prompt and type in "EDIT AUTOEXEC.TSH" (or BAT)

but it all depends on the OS you have, I'm sure you know some of this, if not all, I'm assuming if your HD is encryped then you are pretty savvy on comp tech, as I dont know anyone who has a completely encrypted HD

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Computer help...?

Also checkdsk doesn't always wipe drives a lot of times it creates file fragment files, which admittedly aren't very helpful unless you remember the file sizes and file types of your files. Had this happen to me once when one of my partition tables decided to blow up. Luckily that partition was full of 20 minute videos all in the same encoding so I just had to change the extension from .fck (or whatever it is for file chunk) to .mpg.

I'm curious as to why you had your disk encrypted in the first place (I know that's in Vista but I'm pretty sure it's only in the Ultimate package). I know I don't have any data I would feel needed encrypting, as my firewall does a good job of keeping people out. Not to mention that slows down HD performance since everything has to be decrypted all the time and then re-encrypted on a write.

So beyond what JPS said I'm not sure what else to do, though you could try one of those Linux Distros that run off a cd and just make sure it has PGP support and support for you filesystem (NTFS I would imagine).

I'm also curious why computers dieing is such a common occurrence to you. Sounds like you might want to switch HD manufacturer. I have yet to have a harddrive die on me and I have 6 of them, some are 6 years old now.

[Syvarius]

Re: Computer help...?

Ah..maybe I should clear up a few things.

-The hard drive is encrypted so it can't have the files extracted by means of placing it as a secondary drive.
-Upon booting up the checkdisk thing will try to start after the WindowsXP loading screen. I'm trying to disable this because if I forget about it I'm pretty sure history is going to repeat.
-I'm having a very difficult time getting into Windows itself. Shell32.(some extension) is apparently corrupt and 90% of the time doesn't want to load after typing in my password. Sometimes the user selection thing doesn't even come up.
-If I do get in, it either won't load, or decides to BSOD after 10 minutes or so. If I could just get 20 minutes of clear time to do stuff I could get what I need off with a USB drive before I let the ship sink.
Decrypting the drive won't work either in this case. The process takes a couple of hours, and if it is interrupted (BSOD, power reset) then everything will be gone.

Yeah...
I encrypted the thing because I don't want the government and that grumpy old lady in the Himalayas to have access to my cooking recipies and directions to the promised land.

Well aside from that, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
How often do you get to play with software that lets you do that?

As for my computer's death cycle, well, there's nothing wrong with the hardware. It's Windows, but I have no idea why I have such bad luck with it. I've had people tell me to use Faronics Deep Freeze, and I think I'm going to from now on.

I don't really understand if it's something I've done that makes Windows commit seppuku or if it just decides to kick the bucket by itself.
Sigh.

I'm going to work on it tonight. I'll post here tomorrow with the results.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Computer help...?

Well like I said it might be worth your while to find a CD bootable version of Linux which has support for unencrypting hard drives. I bet you if you look hard enough there is one.

As for worrying about the government, if you're that worried you probably should not be using Windows. I always wondered why IE made it so hard to delete you history, could be a government suggestion. Plus since it basically owns the OS market there could be lots of stuff in it like that.

So I've always thought encrypting a whole hard drive is a bit much. How likely is it that a person is going to break in your house, steal your harddrive (just your harddrive) and run off with it to steal your data. It would be much easier for them to just hack into your computer and start running programs as root (administrator in windows) which allows them to see your data encrypted or not. Just my .02, I guess some people just like to be extra safe. Though I can see me be curious and trying it out, but not on important data I did not have backed up somewhere else.

As for your windows problems that is pretty odd, unless you have a resident Virus you haven't gotten rid of (rare yes, but still possible). I know one time I did have my SYSTEM file get screwed up, but beyond that I've never had trouble with Windows not booting (it's done many other things wrong, but typically not system files messing up). So why don't you just reinstall windows, since that does not get rid of any of your data, just your installed programs and options (and that's only if you don't have the install discs/files for the programs). Alternately you could try replacing the one corrupt file, or run the rescue utility on the XP disc.

[JPS]

Re: Computer help...?

Maybe you're being too safe and all the protection programs are conflicting with each other, causing corruption to reign upon your HD?

Just my .02 also

[Syvarius]

Re: Computer help...?

...

Checkdisk ate my computer last night. Along with what I needed to get off of it.

****.

Well, that's it. Thanks for trying to help out.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Computer help...?

Well that sucks. It usually leaves FOUND#### folders though. Sure there are not any of those.

All I can say is backup, backup backup. Then backup again just incase. Though I've never had many problems with my computer losing data, the one time I got both my PS2 memory cards wiped by a stupid demo made me a lot more vigilant about backing things up. So all my important files are on two computers and DVD+R.

[JPS]

Re: Computer help...?

Well I think the lesson learned is disable checkdisk!