Boot Mode Files & Folders Restore: PDF file corrupt and unreadable

With 3 days remaining on my trial of ATI9v3633, Acronis has given me every reason to trust their product - until today.

I expected the best, but thought I should give the Rescue Media restore a quick run-through before purchasing ATI. Creating the CD was reassuringly trouble-free. Not wanting to spend too much time confirming my growing belief that ATI is indeed extremely competent and works as advertised, I chose to restore one reasonably small (30mb) folder. Further, to avoid the risk of corrupting the existing folder, I (quite logically, I believe) chose to restore to a new location. And since I expected to merely confirm a successful restore and then delete the new folder, I didn't think much about where to put it. C:\ would be fine. After restoring and booting back to Windows, I logged on to the (non-admin) user account of the original owner.

Then things turned a little southward...[/I]

I thought the new folder name of "C:\Drive(D)" a bit strange, but double-clicked it anyway. The response:

That's odd, what are the security settings? Answer: There ARE no security settings. The Property Sheet has only TWO tabs: "General" and "Customize". The General Tab reports:

Geez, this is all wrong, even the time, which should be a bit before 2 PM. Perhaps 1:45 PM or so, EDT. GMT(-5:00), or is it (+5:00)? Is that five hour difference simply a coincidence? Anyway, I logged into my admin account to have a look. Ok, things look better here. Many files. Many subfolders. Seems the right size. The General Tab reports something like:

But they all have the same timestamp, and I believe I'd told ATI to keep the originals...Oh well, perhaps I'm mistaken. I'll just delete this successful test, buy ATI, then live happily ever after. Delete response:

Uh-Oh. I began exploring. Found some files to be deleteable and some not. Some files WERE corrupt, and some were not. Ran chkdsk. No help. Came to this forum. Found Curt's message:

"WARNING! Possible problem using Rescue Media for 'Files or Folders' restore!"
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=146108&highlight=rescue corrupt

Which led me to this thread. Thanks, Curt! I read the entire thread this afternoon, and now am better informed, but feel dismayed.

Some thoughts:

1. I wonder what ELSE went wrong during my restore.
2. I wonder what ELSE is wrong with ATI9. What about ATI 10?
3. I wonder what ELSE went wrong during my partially successful deletion.
4. When you offer trial software, your first goal is to convince trial customers to buy. You learn what they're looking for and how they're gonna test-drive your product, then make sure all those features work flawlessly. And of course that's just the beginning!
   When it comes to Rescue Media, whole image restores may be their customary use, but trial customers are not professional testers. We don't have the time for lengthy, exhaustive planning and testing. In fact, we despise it. We're looking for features that suit our needs, not shortcomings in the fundamental competency of the product. We kick the tires, look for certain features, take a test drive to exercise a few of 'em, review the performance and sticker price, then make a decision. Given this, it seems to me that a "Files or Folders" restore is exactly the kind of cursory test that professional testers should EXPECT trial customers to run. Additionally, we're simply not likely to RISK OUR DIGITAL LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS by restoring to the original location! In short, it appears that Acronis completely overlooked the most basic testing of a high-profile test-drive target. Very unfortunate.
5. I wonder how many other trial customers have run into this problem and simply moved on. The very first image I created with Paragon Drive Backup 8 Personal was DOA. Strikeout! They never heard from me, I just moved on. Symantec products struck out long ago for being WAAAY too intrusive and resource-hungry, so Acronis was next at bat. Now I've pitched them a strike, and the customer service performance in this thread looks sluggish, strike two... I wonder who's on deck?
6. Since Acronis makes an ATI plug-in for BartPE, why don't they just sell THAT? Why saddle their customers with this apparently flawed (even if impressive) Linux-based Rescue Media approach?
7. Christopher NC may have the right idea when he said in post #46: "So, I am going to quit searching for a solution, and suggest those of you who are reconsider how worthwhile this is." Smart companies don't expect their customers to be professional testers. That's THEIR job. But Acronis is fortunate to have some true contenders among it's customers: Curt. John Gallagher. Christopher NC. Danilo. Others. They're working WAY too hard, FOR FREE, and should be rewarded, not strung along or ignored.

Some questions:

1. What should I do now that this trial has put me in this position?
2. Do I really NEED to get rid of this 15 MB corrupted folder? What is the downside of simply leaving it alone?
3. Did my partially successful deletion of the folder create latent problems?
4. Does ATI 10 have this problem? Acronis please respond. This is a well-defined problem that shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to test. For a free copy of ATI 10, I'm sure the semi-pro testing team of concerned customers in this thread would be happy to thoroughly screen ATI 10 for this problem. Acronis please respond.
5. Is there a better, more competent Windows imaging product out there?

It's been fun. Wish it could also have been productive...

 

DocDay,
You were the smart one! I made the fatal mistake of placing trust in Acronis as I had earlier used the program with great success. The difference, though, was that I was cloning drives for a consistent image.

I then spent over two months (not consistently, but when I could get to it) in troubleshooting an issue that I thought was either manufacturer or Microsoft (although I'm not convinced yet that MS has no part to play with this issue).

ATI Support has given me all sorts of "solutions" yet the closest to work was found on this board. Now, in an effort to satisfy ATI Support that I've jumped through the appropriate hoops, I now have other files, mostly binary but a few .csv files downloaded from an institution that are now showing as corrupt.

Sometimes trust has a cost. It's cost me a few bucks and an awful lot of time. The cost to Acronis? What's that commercial tag line? Priceless?

Oh, and the only tried-and-true method (IMHO) is to reformat that partition.

 

Good post by DocDay.

A couple of tips that you might find helpful... and a few comments / observations on this whole odyssey.

If you're curious about the success (or lack thereof) of a backup or restore, try verifying the operation with a third-party solution. I've successfully used WinMerge (www.winmerge.org), an open-source file comparison (a.k.a. 'diff') utility that also has the ability to do binary comparisons and compare entire directory structures.

To verify a restore is straightforward. To verify a backup, I mount the backup with TI's mount-an-image-as-a-drive function and compare versus the original source directory. Unfortunately, you can't mount a files-and-folders backup in TI (which sort of makes sense), but you could restore it and compare the results, which is really what you want to do in the first place.

So far, doing drive-image backups and restoring under Windows only, I've never seen corruption with TI9. Now, I haven't tested every backup I've done. But even after getting some "This archive is corrupt" messages during the verify operation in TI9 after a successful backup, I've mounted and compared the mounted archive with the source and they've compared without error using WinMerge. That's good news. If anyone who has experienced corrupted files can post to the contrary, that would be really good to know...

Of course, doing this (a) is inconvenient since you have to do the whole thing by hand each time and (b) takes a LOT of time and processing resources.

I'd like to see Acronis build in a bit-for-bit verify operation into their product, but I'm not sure I'd trust it anyway. I'm not sure exactly what their current verify operation does do, but it's almost too quick to be a bit-for-bit compare and I've seen a couple of posts where the poster indicating that they were doing checksums. Don't know if that's true or not, so for the time being I'm spot-checking things with WinMerge just to be sure, and so far, so good.

That's my major concern. I've done a deletion via TRK (referenced earlier in this thread) and so far, after a couple of months, I haven't experienced any other problems with the volume. I've yet to get to the bottom of what TI does to NTFS to result in the problems we've all experienced, but your questions are exactly why I want to do that. If I ever figure it out, I'll let you know... right here in this thread.

My thinking is that deleting the problem files and directories should do the trick. If you can successfully do a binary compare with WinMerge (et. al.) of your entire volume (after the deletions) with, say, a current image backup of that volume mounted with the TI image mounter, then clearly all of the files and directories are at least accessible, that the data read is the same data written to a backup, and there's no indication that creating an archive in any way damages the source data... it's just the restores that create the problems. But, of course, until we dig into NTFS, we'll never know for sure.

That's what all this is about in the first place... TRUST.

Acronis has shaken my trust in their product and hasn't done too much to get it back. Having said that, it's still the best solution I've found so far. As I was admonished earlier in this forum, I'll keep comments relating to other software out of this forum. But I'll be checking the "Software & Services" forum to see if others have found something better.

But that's the reason I'm continuing to dig into this issue... to restore on my own some level of trust in the software... which trust Acronis has so far been unable to restore for me.

If I can satisfy myself that I know the boundaries of what TI9 does well and doesn't do well, at least I know how to successfully use the tool without hurting myself. Sort of like driving a car with bad tires... just don't go out on a rainy day.

Check the “Software & Service” forum. You might get yelled at for asking that question here. Tsk, tsk.

Probably not… but I don’t like the idea of something broken just hanging around waiting to cause other problems. For instance, maybe you’re working in your word processor on a document that’s taken hours to create and, because it’s late, your guard is down and you haven’t saved in a while. You start looking for another file with the application’s “File -> Open...” dialog box and mistakenly browse to the corrupt directory. Your word processor doesn’t handle the exception gracefully and dies. Now you’ve lost hours of work. The problem with the one corrupt directory hasn’t technically gotten worse (i.e., it didn’t “infect” other parts of your drive), but the potential is certainly there for additional headaches if it’s just hanging around.

I asked that question when I received the “ad” for TI10. Specifically, I asked them:

“If TI10 fixes the problem that exists TI9, will you upgrade me at no charge? After all, I paid full price for TI9 which, so far, doesn't work properly...”

The response from Ivan Belinsky at Acronis was:

“I'm afraid that this problem is not solved yet. As soon as this problem is solved I will contact you.”

While that doesn’t speak to whether the problem exists in TI10, my guess is that it probably does.

If anyone has a chance to test a files-and-folders restore of an image booting from the TI10 Rescue Media, let us know how it goes here in this thread.

But if they’ve fixed it for TI10, there’s no reason to believe the fix wouldn’t be fairly easy to apply to TI9 (there don’t seem to be a whole lot of fundamental differences… just added features). Since they’d probably want us to BUY TI10, it would make sense for them to fix the problem in TI9 - so we’d have no argument for a free upgrade to TI10 - and then convince us that the additional features in TI10 are worth the upgrade price.

If it turns out that a later version of a product fixes a problem that exists in an earlier version, yet the manufacturer refuses to fix the earlier version and insists on a for-fee upgrade to the later version, I’d contend that they failed to make a good-faith effort to deliver a product to the market that was free from material defects when brought to market and therefore the purchaser(s) would be entitled to either a replacement at no charge or a refund of the original purchase price.

So it remains to be seen whether TI10 fixes the problem. If it does, I’m pushing for an upgrade. If not, then I’m waiting for them to get the TI9 product that I paid for working properly.

Frankly, I’m not all that eager to jump to TI10 because who knows what other problems were introduced with the extra functionality in the new version. I’ll wait for a fix to TI9.

Thanks for the compliment! Acronis… you’ve got my credit card number. Feel free to deposit any amount you’d like into it -- positive numbers only, please… preferably with three or more zeros trailing the most significant digits.

To Acronis’ credit, they haven’t ignored us. To their detriment, they usually take a LONG time to answer our questions and aren’t always the most thorough or forthcoming in their answers. I’m going to be an optimist and chalk that up to lack of adequate resources. They’re a small company trying to make a buck in a tight market… consumer software. And I’m sure their biggest cost is support.

Nevertheless, if they want to continue to stay alive in this game, they’re going to have to figure out a way to support their customers adequately of they won’t have customers left to buy their upgrades or other products.

That’s back to the points DocDay and Dafut made about trust. It’s a precious commodity, Acronis, and at least with this small (yet vocal!) group of your users, it’s in jeopardy right now.

Hopefully, Acronis, you'll either fix TI9 or upgrade us to a more healthy TI10. And while you’re at it, tell us what you did to our drives with the problems your software had.

Thanks.

-- Curt.

 

Test with Acronis True Image Home 10.0 (build 4.871).

I created the Rescue CD and used you to execute the restoration of a few folders. The test result is this:

• the restored file "seem" ok: I can to open them, to copy them, to rename them, to remove them.
  
• The command MS-DOS "DIR /Q" shows the file owner.
  
• The command MS-DOS "DIR /X" does not show the short names of the file (name in the form 8.3 of MS-DOS), like TI9. This however only creates problems to the MS-DOS applications.
  
• I used WinMerge to compare the original file with the file restored:
  Much file are not identical!
  The dimension is bigger than 90 bytes respect the original.
  At the end of the file was appended the text "Zone.Identifier: $DATA [ZoneTransfer] ZoneId=3"

Why?

WinXP, with SP2, introduced an ADS which calls ZoneIdentifier.
ZoneIdentifier is an invisible file, connected to all the file that you download from internet or what receive by mail with Outlook (but only if your file system is NFTS).

TI9 writes ZoneIdentifier in the reserved zone to the file attributes, and it damages the access rights (ACL).

TI10 append the ZoneIdentifier at the end of the file.

Therefore, with TI10, the problem is less heavy but was not solved.

No problem using BartPE.

--Danilo

 

Hi Danilo,
Acronis Support don't seem to reply to all problems raised in this forum.
Maybe they don't read them all.
If they miss this thread then the problem will never get fixed.
Anyway, if you haven't already sent a support request, perhaps you might consider doing so here: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/

Correction
Oops - If I'd taken the trouble to re-read the whole of this thread before replying to danilo then I would have known that Acronis Support had read it earlier and was well aware of the problem.
Although perhaps this last lot of extra testing done by danilo might have escaped the notice of Acronis Support so it still wouldn't hurt to send the details in a support request. At the very least it will give them some extra info and perhaps point them in the right direction to solve the issue.

 

I've had a running exchange with Acronis over the last 3+ weeks regarding the corrupt files that resulted from using the boot-disk file & folder recovery method. The consistent theme of this discussion is: we want you to do this or that, which I'd do to no avail.

Long story short: I asked for my money back. Which they agreed to--until I told them that I bought their software through NewEgg--they then said to "go to NewEgg for a refund". Rather bizarre concept, in my mind, as NewEgg is simply a vendor. Nor does NewEgg provide support (although that's not too different from Acronis, for that matter).

So they offered me another of their "award winning products", which I decided to accept--mostly because I'm weary of their games. "Bird in hand..."

To say the least, I'm very distrustful of their products and especially their unwillingness to accept responsibilty for those products; I'm not even close to having been made whole again.

Unfortunately for Acronis, they've lost at least one more customer--and mostly due to their support failure. I've never expected software to be a panacea for all my computing ills and, amazingly, this is the biggest problem I've had with a program in quite some time.

It would also be unfair to not level a salvo at Microsoft. As Danilo has pointed out, the ZoneIdentifier appears to be a major component to this problem--all because Microsoft builds an OS that has had major security issues from the outset and attempts to apply bandaids when a trauma team is required.

Now that that's said, "I feel better now."

 

I rebuilt my PC last week, and to be fair, thought I'd test once again and see if perhaps a new mainboard, chipset and Athlon 3400+ CPU would allow ATI to restore new directories from boot mode accurately.

Just now, using TI 9.3677 Full Boot Mode, I created a fresh Files and Folders backup of one NTFS directory, with several PDF files and jpgs, then Restored that Files and Folders backup to a new location, an empty NTFS logical partition, the first partition on my second internal SATA HD.

The results were that several files would not open, notably the Acronis TI 9 and Disk Director 10 PDF user manuals, and the newly created directory, Drive(F), was corrupt and could not be moved or deleted. So, new hardware did not change this (mal)function.

To repair the damaged partition file structure, I restored an image of the empty NTFS partition.

Seems fair to expect Version 9 of this program to restore valid files, and to leave the partition and file systems intact. Or to report failure, offer a resolution, and inform customers that this feature is problematic, and in what situations. Perhaps some file types cause this corruption, while others do not? This information would be very useful.

From what Curt posted, and the lack of response from Acronis Support, it sounds like Acronis has not yet resolved this issue.

Regards,

Christopher

 

I installed Build 9.3854 today, and ran a number of tests to see if this anomaly has been resolved.

I used the same files from previous tests...the Acronis TrueImage9.0_UserGuide.pdf and DiskDirectorSuite10.0_ug.en.pdf, both downloaded from Acronis several months ago.

To be fair, using TI 9.3854 Boot Mode, Full, I made a new Files & Folders (F&F) archive of a number of PDF manuals and other files, and then restored that archive to a new location on an internal SATA hard drive. The results were as before, both of these Acronis user guide files were corrupt, would not open and the containing directory could not be repaired or removed. I tested this to two different NTFS partitions on two different hard drives.

Then, I thought, what if there is something different about the properties of these PDF files...and opted to try freshly downloading both files today. The TI 9 Users Guide is now only available as a newer version (TrueImage9.0_ug.en.pdf), though the Disk Director 10 Users Guide is apparently identical to the one which when backed up and restored will not open: same date, size, attributes, CRC32 Check Sums ( 5A415E18 ) etc.

Using these two fresh PDF files, in ATI 9.3854 Boot Mode, I created a new F&F Archive, and then restored them to a new location, and, both user guides opened, and there is no resulting directory corruption! I tested this again, first reformatting the NTFS partition to be sure that I hadn't given ATI Boot Mode any help, and they both came thru intact.

So, to confirm that this is unrelated to V 9.3854, I tested again with V 9.3677, and, they both restored intact! So, while I have no idea what caused the original PDF files, user guides from Acronis, to corrupt, the fresh ones work fine. There may be something in the way Acronis Boot mode handles compressed files...but at least, today, I have it working. Every other file in my test group opened fine: the only corrupt restored files were the two Acronis User Guides.

I noted along the way that Boot Mode V 9.3677 will validate a Files and Folders Archive made with V 9.3854, but cannot see the files that archive contains - the tree is missing any files of what is contained in the F&F archive created with the new build. V 9.3677 reports the restoration operation as successful, but does not restore any files.

So, to test this, I made a new F&F archive with the V 9.3677 Boot CD and restored from that. It worked...both PDFs open and the directory structure is intact!

So, what of this strange and inconsistent behavior? It seems that some files cause Boot Mode to choke, and restore incorrectly. But, other files work fine. I have a new motherboard without the NVidia chipset issues that plagued me when I first tried ATI with SATA and USB, so maybe something in the mix has changed?

 

Hello Christopher.

My opinion is what the problem is caused by a wrong management of ADS zone.identifier.
Zone.identifier identifies the file which come from internet (file downloaded with Internet Explorer or Outlook attachment).
Zone.identifier is only created if you use WinXP+SP2 and NTFS.

Please, do these checks:

1. you use windows XP with the Service Pack 2?
   
2. you use Internet Explorer?
   
3. the originating PDF, is in to NTFS partition?
   
4. compare the originating PDF with the restored PDF, using WinMerge (or the MS-DOS command "FC /b file_name1 file_name2" ). Are they identical?
   
5. use the program ADSSpy (http://www.merijn.org/programs.php#adsspy). Set "Ignore Safe system" = off. You execute the scanning of the original folder (where you have the original PDF).
   You look if you have ADS "TrueImage9.0_ug.en.pdf.zone.identifier".

For further information: #34, #39, #54.

Ciao, Danilo

PS: if you use Firefox, the zone.identifier is not created.

.

 

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I finally was able to get rid of my corrupt files. It's been a long slow battle, mostly learning about NTFS. I found a neat freeware program, Roadkil's Sector Editor Version 1.4, (http://www.roadkil.net/Sectedit.html) which allowed me to explore my disk sector by sector. When I finally located the MFT FILE records for the corrupted files, I reset the in-use flag, rebooted and let chkdsk clean up the mess. Result: files gone, directory deleted, me a happy camper! Yippee! And I didn't have to reformat and reinstall everything.

That said, I continue to use TI9 to make full and differential backups, but I know I can never use Boot Mode to do anything but a full restore. And let's just say that I'm reluctant to spend money to upgrade to TI10 until Acronis can prove that the problem has been fixed.

All in all, a valuable learning experience; I needed to learn NTFS internals anyway. There's still much to learn, but I can trace directories and find files now, and that's all I need.

 

Well, it seems that there is light at the end of this tunnel. Acronis Support invited me to test V 10.4940 to see if this issue of corrupted files and directory structures resulting from Boot Mode File restoration was resolved. And, from my extensive testing, it seems to be.

I've just run a comparison with V 9.3677, V 9.3854, and V 10.4940. In each case, I restored the same files, including two Adobe Acrobat Files, downloaded from Acronis in May, 2006 with Internet Explorer: the User Guides for Acronis True Image Home 9 and the User Guide for Disk Director 10.

Restoring with TI 9.3677 Boot Mode, Full, to an NTFS partition, results in both Acronis User Guide PDF files that will not open, and a corrupt directory structure.

Restoring with TI 9.3854 results in the same corruption.

Restoring with TI 10.4940 creates all tested files intact - both original PDF User Guides open, and the directory structure on the NTFS drive is intact.

Interestingly, TI 10.4940 in Windows XP Pro SP2 can also view the corrupt PDF files in an Archive of that partition, using the new Slice/Explore tool...from which both files open intact. I can also copy those files and paste them to a new location, where they remain intact.

So, it seems that TI 10.4940 now recognizes and correctly replicates the hidden file attributes, likely the Zone Identifier Danilo describes in post #59. However, I have no idea if the rest of this issue has been resolved...see Danilo's post #54...has TI simply added a tag to each file, the Zone Identifier, yet missed the other aspects, he calls the ACL, or Access Rights?

So, under "normal" conditions, TI 10.4940 seems to be up to the task of backing up and restoring PDF files, even those that TI 9 could not.

However, even on my computer, not all is well using TI 10.4940, with File level Backups and Restores.

Using TI 10.0.4940, in Windows XP Pro, to make a Data Backup of those same PDF files with the source as the Mounted Drive containing files restored by TI 9, including several corrupt files, TI 10.4940 reports the Operation as Successful, yet does not in fact create actual files from these sources, nor from other PDFs included in that same source folder. Rather than the Disk Director User Guide PDF file, TI 10.4940 restores only an empty Folder named DiskDirectorSuite10.0_ug.en.pdf with no contents...and the TrueImage User Guide PDF doesn't even get copied, or restored. Other PDF files in that same Data Backup were missing entirely...in short, from a Mounted Drive, only a few text or simple files were Backed up or Restored, even though TI reported that both the Data Backup and File Restore Operations were Successful.

As I read elsewhere in this forum recently, many professional photographers rely on extra hard drives to store their data, in non-proprietary file formats. Relying on any large "container", such as a True Image .tib file, to safeguard your non-replaceable data, is just too prone to data corruption. So, I'll keep saving my photos and other important docs as is...and use True Image as a valuable time saver to Image and Restore OS and Program partitions. Until a secure method of file level verification is included.

I do like the new Slice feature in TI 10.

Regards

 

Glad I checked my restored files test! I am running TI10 build 4871. Did a drive image to a second local hd..verified image..did a file level restore of a couple of directories with a collection of different file types..ended up with a c:temp\Drive(C)\Download\Netstat Live\nsl.exe that my file manager says is corrupted and unreadable. I successfully manually deleted .xml,.txt,.chm individual files and other restored directories..attributes of nsl.exe is d, size is 237,345. Windows explorer and PowerDesk both have same "issue". Can't rename file type, can't delete file, not read only, not hidden.
I'm going to update to build 4942 and try this all over again.
BTW, AV anti-spyware tried to check it and told me to Remove c\temp\drivec\download\netstat live\nsl.exe because it was corrupted and unreadable (nice catch on their part)

 

Just a note. BrianK has been helping me with a corrupt file problem on another forum (Beginners Guide for BartPE). I will move my continued efforts to this forum. I apologize for being in the wrong place. BrianK was nice enough to take me through some newbie stuff, and I appreciate all his efforts. I haven't been successful yet, but never say die!

 

The good news is that I have tried practically the same thing (same nsli.exe file and all) using build 4942 and both file restores worked. I did a full image, validated, restored nsli.exe using both winxp based restore and TI's Linux CD restore and both restored files are ok. Now on to getting rid of the previous corrupted file tracks.

 

Tonight I booted from my BartPE CD and went to the command prompt. I have only a single bad file, and I know where it is, so I set the current directory to:
c:\temp\Drive(C)\download\NetStat Live and did a dir and got File Not Found and no . or .. directories.
I then set the current directory to c:\temp and did a deltree Drive(C) and got "deltree not recognized".
I then set the current directory to c:\temp\Drive(C)\download and did a dir and got . .. and NetStat Live
I then set the current directory to c:\temp\Drive(C)\download\NetStat Live and tried del nsli.exe /p, it asked me to confirm I really wanted to delete it, I said Y, and I got two separate lines, both with "The directory is corrupted and unreadable".

BTW, I did a chkdsk /r yesterday and I have a clean C drive.
My image has the corrupted file on it.
I'm probably going to look at the roadkil or Trinity solutions next.

 

desertdad,

From BartPE, have you tried deleting that file using the A43 program?

 

BrianK, Just tried the A43 program. no joy.."Cannot delete nsli: the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."
Tried changing the attributes..nope
Tried deleting upstream directories..nope
Tried restoring a good copy of the file from another place on my image to the Temp directory, went ok with a different directory name (c:\Drive(C)\download\NetStat Live new copy\nsli.exe), tried copying a good nsli.exe to the bad nsli.exe, nope (In fact, TI said I had to "reboot" to complete the operation)..gave up, rebooted normally.
New directory with the good nsli.exe was there, deleted them. Naturally, CHKDSK says I have a dirty disk.
Thanks for the suggestion..I'm trying everything I can at this point. I may revert to doing a file level backup without the offending directory, format the drive, doing a file level restore..I hate to give up. I'm learning a lot in this process and it may help somebody else in the future. I can't believe this product (which I intend to stay with) has this exposure for every customer. Hurray for BartPE!

 

You should try using Linux based on the excellent work of cequi in post #14 of this tread. I suggest you download Knoppix from http://knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html. It is a live CD that boots directly into Linux to the KDE xwindow GUI. It is using the FUSE file system that cequi mentioned to mount the hard drives. The drives should be premounted on the desktop. You may be able to simply delete the problem file from the GUI without the need to learn any Linux terminal commands.

 

Have you tried Unlocker, see my post #37

 

OK, I have the following:
KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso dtd 4 Jan 2007
Knoppix-cheatcodes.txt dtd 2 Jun 2006
KNOPPIX-CHANGELOG.txt dtd 5 Jan 2007
Knoppix-wincd.txt
KNOPPIX-FAQ-EN.txt dtd 19 Oct 2004
packages.txt dtd 5 Jan 2007
All came from ftp.kernel.org using http from a California mirror.
Now I need to do a little reading to see just what in the world I have and what to do with it.

 

All you need is the large iso file. Just use any burning program to make a bootabe CD. With Nero it's made using Recorder/Burn Image... from the menu.

 

Built a boot CD..worked..holy cow!..found some basic Knoppix tutorial stuff at www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix and will very gently get comfortable with the Knoppix interface and just navigating around. Too bad a five pound sledge and a chisel wouldn't work to delete my file.

 

I understand I'm in over my head with Knoppix, so here goes:
I was able to mount hda2 (my C: drive) but I got an error msg (in a separate window) that said the mount process forced a "dirty volume mount". Maybe that was what I should have expected.
I can see the file nsli.exe, modified 3/2/07, and is shown as a Windows executable.
I could not delete from within Konqueror (maybe that is what I should have expected)
Using a root@knoppix:xx command shell, mountallfs command was not found.
Using Shell-Konsole, mounallfs command was not found.
Using a root@ttyp0[Knoppix]# mountallfs command was not found.
I have more shells than a beach:
Knoppix/
System/
Shells/
Bash
Dash
Sash
Sh
There is also a Synoptic Package Manager which tells me I have a mount-ntfs-knoppix 0.5.4 installed and it is the latest version.
Obviously I am not a unix/linux/knoppix guy. Any real fundamental guidance here?
thanks for your patience.

 

I looked at Sector Editor for changing something in the sector containing nsli.exe, and could find nsli, but chose to not really attempt to change anything with it. I'm not at all comfortable I would get it right the first time.
I looked at Trinity Rescue Kit, downloaded v3.2, build 279, built a bootable CD and booted with it.
Not being a linux guy, I think it is too "close to the bone" for me and offers all kinds of opportunities to screw things up.
My hats off to those of you who were successful with the above solutions to TI's product problem.

 

I've decided to keep slogging with Knoppix. I will tiptoe through the minefield, one command at a time. If anybody has some good tips on web sites or books "for dummies", I'd appreciate the tips. In the end, I think Knoppix will end up being a great tool to have in my toolkit. Apparently, mounting and writing to NTFS partitions has been problematical in the recent past, so there is a lot of "better you than me" advice just within the last six months to a year (prior to rel 5.0.1).