Solved HELP!! Unable to run system recovery(OS not detected)

Hi,

I have an Acer Aspire M5711, intel core2 quad, Vista Home Premium 64bit(OEM), it's 2.5years old and have never done any re-installation.

Some history (tried to be brief... sorry..):
Few days ago my comp just restarted itself and boots into repair/recovery mode, but i think the system overheated and the comp just shuts down again. So i cleaned my fan and booted again. but it refuses to boot(ran the bar for ~5mins) and gave 2 options: repair mode and start windows normally. tried both options and went back to the same screen. Pressed F8, tried last known good configuration(ran the bar and restarts again) and safe mode stops at crcdisk.sys.

Thought i would just back up my data and reinstall Vista or use system restore. So, I used Ubuntu LiveCD and backed up my D drive but i cannot access C drive(ubuntu told me to run chkdsk /f in windows). Googled and the solution given is to run Vista installation disk and use the 'repair your computer'. So now i'm stucked at 'System Recovery Options', it doesn't locate any vista OS and tried 'load driver'. Downloaded driver from acer website, but now i'm not sure if i downloaded the correct driver.
(Download)



so i used the chipset driver, in the folder IDE>WinVista64>sataraid>nvrd64.inf
but a pop up says: 'The specified location does not contain information about your hardware.'. Search all other folders and could not find any raid controller driver.

Questions:
1. Am i on the right track? i really need to recover the data on my c drive, good deal of my uni work are there..

2. Where can i find the correct driver if that is what i need?


3. Else, what are the steps i should take?

Thanks so much for your help=)

Cheers!

I'm not really familiar with reinstallations or backup, but I had a problem with my computer a while back and forgot that I could use a Linux CD to back it up. So I found an alternate method.

When you used your Vista CD to get to System Recovery Options, was there anywhere where it gave the option to run Command Prompt? Because I can guide you through backing up your data from there, although it will be a little more difficult, but not too bad if you just want a blanket backup of C drive. I don't know what's wrong with your C drive as far as not being bale to access it from Linux, and think Id probably do more harm than help if I tried to help get that issue resolved So all I can offer is an alternate backup method if no one else comes along with ideas to fix it.

Thanks for replying=)

I would really love the idea of backing up c drive, really regret not backing up my data regularly.

Yes, i can access command prompt from the installation disc. Anyway, as suggested from another forum, i tried running chkdsk and this was what i got..

X:\Sources>chkdsk c: /f /r
cannot open volume for direct access.

Ok here's what you do: in command prompt, type in regedit.exe and hit enter. When the registry editor comes up, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then go to File -> Load Hive. This will open up the windows explorer. From there, you can easily cut, copy, and paste things from your computer to an external drive. I'd recommend you just copy your whole C drive onto your external drive, and then when you reinstall Windows or whatever you'll be able to copy back over all the files you had on C. Now, it won't work for backing up your installed programs. At least I'm pretty sure it won't; maybe if you imported the registry too.... but lets just start with backing up your stuff that way

Thanks Slammer! I have no idea that u can access data from registry editor=)
(however in order to access my c drive, i still need to load the driver since my system is running on raid)
transferring is slow but i can wait =) there's 250gb to transfer.. thanks again!

Anyway, just an update on the situation:
was unable to run chkdsk because hdd was running on raid... so there is a need to load sata raid controller(the correct one) However, the driver set downloaded from acer website will give u one whole list of drivers which will have the same name when u try to 'load drivers' from the nvrd64.inf. Basically, i tried each and every one of them until one of the drivers is successfully installed (patience is the key, as for my case the screen hangs for like 5-10mins after installation, just WAIT, since i'm booting from vista installation disc, everything is snail pace).
POINT TO NOTE: For some weird reason, even though the driver is installed, vista os is still not displayed on the list of os on the system recovery window. Just ignore it and go ahead and press next.
From there, i went to cmd prompt and did:

'in command prompt, type in regedit.exe and hit enter. When the registry editor comes up, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then go to File -> Load Hive.'

Anyway, it recognises my C: drive (note: it may be given some other alphabet) but it's locked up(cannot access/no folders detected), because it's corrupted by the sudden shut down previously during recovery mode. So i when to cmd prompt again to do chkdsk [chkdsk X: /f](note that X is the drive alphabet) on my C: drive. I did chkdsk 3 times, 1st time many errors were corrected and removed, 2nd time some corrections did, 3rd time found no problem=)
NOTE: at the end of the check it says, 'Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50', which is no issue since u need to unmount your drive in order to run chkdsk, since the drive is unmounted so it cannot write to the drive.

If u need to check the label for your drive refer to this post:
(Solved) - System recovery options-HELP!! « How-To Geek Forums
Or u can just check it from windows explorer from the registry editor

From the windows explorer, i copied and pasted my whole c: drive into my external hdd(which may just take hours, it's occuring as of now). For my case, no copying window is shown so just wait and check it once in a while using your cursor, or u can open the properties window to check the memory size.

Will update later on progress, if system restore doesn't work for me, i will just reinstall vista, or perhaps switch to Linux

hope this post will help if u face a similar issue=)

Glad to hear it's working! I didn't understand much of your RAID stuff (I'm not familiar with any of it) but I'm glad you figured it out.

Not being able to see transfer progress is normal, it's another downside to using this method. But I'm sure you'll agree it definitely better than nothing! keep me updated on the transfer progress, hopefully it will go down without a hitch.

Successfully transferred all data!! Even though it took one whole night..
Vista is restored/repaired but i figure will need to reformat or at least clean the registry..
Thanks for the help given=)

No problem glad it ended up being so easy for you after all.