Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinstall..

Let me start by saying that I claim to have absolutely no knowledge regarding the technical in's and out's of PCs. I do know how to use them in the usual day-to-day activities that revolve around the home and school environment. Outside of that, every bit of information I have acquired has been through the school of trial and error. With that said I will try to describe my situation as best I can.....

I have a Gateway Desktop, model GT5404 with a few minor upgrades by way of video card, sound card, and ram. It came with Vista Home Premium installed and, for the record, this machine is the first experience I have had with Vista...period.

Several weeks ago I started to notice some quirky behavior regarding switching to and from user accounts and ending up in a neverending user account screen cycle. The only way to get around it involved a complete restart, so I started looking online for information as to what the cause may or not be. I will add that Kaspersky ran as the AV program supplemented by Uniblue's Powersuite. After much looking, reading and online chatting it became apparent that the common denominator may have been a recent security install due to automatic updates. I went into the event viewer, found the installs that coincided with the buggy issue and (Heaven Help Me!) deleted them to the recycle bin. Yes I know now...not a good move... After the next restart, Vista invariably gave me an blue error screen. Going down the checklist I tried to boot in any of the available safe modes, to no avail. Either a blue error screen or a loop back to the 'Advanced Boot Options' menu. Next step was to try to repair/reinstall the OS from operating system disk that came with the pc. No luck there either. The screen hangs on the system32/drivers screen on the crcdisk file. I can't even get to the repair/reinstall screen.

Next logical step after perusing the web was to find a way to boot up, if nothing else but to determine that all information was still intact. I burned an image of Ubuntu to disk and changing boot priority was able to launch in linux. All programs and files intact. Okay, cool. Now mind you, at this point of this wonderful endeavour I must have greyed 5 years, because I know nothing about linux, grub4dos, emulators, command lines, etc., but I do now within this 3 day crash course. I have burned several other recovery cds to see if they would boot, but no luck. Same result as the original OS disk. I have come to the conclusion that I need to fix those files, or put them back, or find some way to chkdisk or fix the boot registry. Can this be done by way of grub4dos? All I want to do is get those files back in place or fix the bootldr. Can this be done? Since I have Home Premium I can't access the d:recovery partition and even though Gateway's manual says that F8 will get me to the advanced boot screen, the option to 'repair' isn't there even though the manual says it should be. Note: nowhere in the manual does it mention anything about needing a certain version of Vista or a certain model of PC. Frustrating.

I am really trying to avoid buying another SATA drive, installing the OS, and installing it into the tower just to fix the problem. Any advice, help, or insight would be greatly appreciated. The ironic thing is...despite the frustration of the situation, I am really enjoying learning more about just how expansive everything is 'behind the scenes' so to speak.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Can you boot into safe mode? Can you log in as administrator. Do you have a full copy of Vista or just the Gateway restore?

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Hey there and thanks for the reply. To answer your questions...no I cannot boot in any safe mode at all. I have a Gateway Operating System Disc that specifies Windows Vista Home Premium32-Bit. When trying to install/repair with the disc the screen invariably hangs on some system32 file and then goes to the blue screen. Since I cannot get in at all, or get to a cmd prompt, getting to the admin part is not happening either.

I spent some time today on the desktop with Ubuntu just looking at the files still in the recycle bin, but having no idea where to put them back or even if I could actually do so, but all the info is still there. The C drive with all folders and the D partition for recovery which I cannot use since I have Home Premium and not the next step up. Last major thing I tried today was to slipstream SP1 to a copy of the install disc I have and going from there. No luck. Same blue screen unfortunately.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

If there are a small number of files, we might be able to help you.

Worst case scenario: you use your Linux LiveCD to copy your documents and such to a USB flash drive, which are super-cheap these days, and grab your Gateway restore disc... putting your computer back to factory defaults. But let's see if we can fix it, first.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Thank you for your response. I will see what I can do. The drive does have a large amount of data on it. I would say about 215-220GB of 240GB SATA HD. What would you recommend as the best route for transferring the files, and to what in particular? Many thanks for your input.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

SPQR Spectre said:

Thank you for your response. I will see what I can do. The drive does have a large amount of data on it. I would say about 215-220GB of 240GB SATA HD. What would you recommend as the best route for transferring the files, and to what in particular? Many thanks for your input.

Click to expand...

Gooo... that's a bit more than I was thinking when I recommended a USB flash drive.

Is all of that user-data? (documents, pictures, audio, video, etc)

See if you can get a list of what files you moved to the Recycle Bin. If the list isn't too ridiculous, I'll see if I can help point you to the right folders.

As a general rule of thumb: most DLL's go in \windows\system32, and most SYS's go in \windows\system32\drivers.

You have to be careful though.. that's a generalization, and you may have files that belong in other locations.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Thanks again. I've been at this now for three weeks, learning the ins and outs of this magnanimous error I've made on my part. Prior to this I've never worked with Linux OS or anything of that nature. I've been to 10 forums ( all of which I have bookmarked for responses ) and talked to a plethora of individuals as to how to go about fixing this problem. Granted, I've learned a lot, just the hard way. LOL. Nonetheless, here is a list of the files I copied out of the recylce bin and pasted here. I am not sure as to whether the file names look different looking at them with Ubuntu or not.
I have an NTFS reader and mounter package installed so as to be able to mount and access them on the desktop.



/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-501
/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-1000
/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-1001
/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-1004
/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-1006
/media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-2152478756-3922319563-605102323-500

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Inside $Recycle.bin are typically one or more recycle bin sub-folders, where the actual deleted files reside. That is what your list is.

I could be wrong, but you should be able to open up those folders and look within.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Yes, you are right. The first folders contents are as follows:

[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID={645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-8964

The second:

[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID={645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-8964

The third:

[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID={645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-8964

The Fourth:

[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID={645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-8964

These are the contents of folders labled desktop.ini

I am totally lost as to what these are or what they mean. I am sorry if I cannot be anymore specific, outside of print screening the pages.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

desktop.ini is a file Windows XP and Windows Vista use to customize folder appearance. In this case, it's telling Windows that those folders are Recycle Bins and what icon to use.

Still, inside of those folders (ie. /media/disk/$Recycle.Bin/S-1-5-21-1180191498-1519831297-3905228839-1000/ ) should be the deleted files. If you've permanently deleted the files instead of simply moving them to the Recycle Bin... well... I'm unaware of any undelete software for NTFS that runs under linux.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

At this point I know I haven't deleted them permanently. They are all in the recyle bin still.

Re: Huge Vista problem. Deleted udate files and now won't boot in any mode or reinsta

Then inside one or more of those directories you should find those files.