How To Recover a Dead Windows Machine

It’s dead, Jim! How do you bring your Windows PC back from horrid, gory Windows-induced Seppuku?

This process can take up to 48 solid hours of exasperating labor.
Back up your work. The first step in any restore is to back up your data from the hard drive. If your machine runs well enough attempt recovery, then you may be able to plug a USB2 hard disk and back up your files. It will make you feel a lot better to have that backup if the computer hangs halfway through the ‘restore’ and then never boots again. A failing hard drive can work intermittently enough to get the data off maybe once and then die for good.

New User

Sometimes a system that partially boots and/or misbehaves badly, or has a ‘dead’ application that can’t be run anymore can be ‘recovered’ simply by creating a new user account and logging in as that new user. A corrupted registry is the most common culprit for ‘dead’ windows machines, and a large subset of these (potentially) corrupt entries are in your user profile. On Linux machines, often ‘corrupt’ application settings are in a particular user account as well.
Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->User Accounts.
Create a New Account.
Give it a Name.
Give it ‘Administrator’ privileges. (This sounds bad, and it is bad, but many Windows applications assume they’re ‘Administrator’ (’root’ in Linux) at all times. Reducing privileges can make the computer more secure, but can also disable some of your software.)
Reboot or log out and login as the ‘new’ user.
See if the system is stable.
If the system is stable, you will still have to restore all of the settings you had on the old account, and move the ‘My Documents’ contents from the old account to the new one.
BACK UP YOUR WORK.
You can’t trivially delete and re-use the dead old account. Windows will just try to re-use the same bad data again.
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System Restore on Windows XP
Use System Restore for a shaky computer that still boots but doesn’t work well.
Go to Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore.
Leave the radio button on ‘Restore my computer to an earlier time’.
Click on ‘Next’.
Pick a date before the bad system behaviors began.
Reboot and see if it works better.
If it does not, try again with an earlier restore point.
Go through your documents and files. You’ll discover ‘versioned’ file names of various files that were modified between now and your restore point.
Delete or remove the ‘old’ files and make sure the ‘newest’ or most correct versions of files exist.
Windows XP does not come with a tool to browse the old restore point files to individually recover them, even though that would be super handy.
The Windows XP boot disk does not have a ‘System Restore’ tool to restore Windows to earlier states like this, so your computer must boot to use this method. If the machine does not boot, try one of the methods below to recover your data and your machine.

Boot with Linux
Download and burn a Linux boot disk from your favorite Linux distribution. You may need to use another computer if you have not done this already.
Boot from the Linux CD.
Mount the Windows partition.
Using Linux, back up your data from the damaged partition onto a USB drive, or the network, or burn a CD.
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Use a Third Party Boot Disk
Try ‘UBCD’ (see link below), a free ISO of a self-booting CD image accompanied by a big pile of tools and utilities.
Various hard disk tools like ‘Partition Magic’ or ‘Norton Utilities’ come on a bootable CD that will let you tinker with ‘bad’ drives. It is best to back up any intact data before attempting to ‘recover’ lost data.

Use the Recovery Disk or Recovery Partition
Many manufacturers don’t give you a Windows boot disc anymore instead you get a ‘Recovery Disc’ or a ‘Recovery Partition’ that contains an image of the boot partition in the state hey shipped the machine.
Put the disc in (or boot off the ‘recovery partition’), follow the prompts, and the version of Windows with all the right drivers and all of the default unlicensed bundleware that came with the PC will be restored and ready to go and need licensing (or deletion) again.
This restore will not restore other applications that were installed, downloaded, etc.
This restore will not restore software licenses that you paid for on-line and didn’t keep the receipts and keys to.
This restore will not restore drivers for new hardware you added since you bought your computer.
This restore will usually destory any data on the Windows partition, including including personal information in Documents and Settings, which includes your ‘My Documents’ and anyone else’s ‘My Documents’ on the computer.

Reinstall from a Windows CD
If your computer didn’t ‘System Restore’ or have a ‘Recovery Disc’, but did come with a shiny Windows CD and still has that hologram license (or the license is often stuck on an inside door or on the case) then
Put the CD in the drive and boot from the Windows CD.
Change your BIOS settings to start the computer from the CD.
Install Windows and reboot the fresh install.
Rummage around for the driver CDs and any software CDs you had, and follow the prompts to install each driver CD for the motherboard, monitor, etc. as required.

Remove the Hard Drive
Pull the hard drive out of the dead PC if the computer can’t be made to boot, restore or install its operating system.
If you have one, plug an IDE drive into a USB2 or Firewire hard drive adapter to be plugged into another computer. Nearly external USB2/Firewire hard drive can be opened up and used temporarily in this manner.
If you don’t have an adapter, or your drive is SATA or SCSI, you can plug it into another computer’s available compatible port. Just make sure to configure BIOS so the drive you add doesn’t get booted on the host machine when it starts up, or any ‘infection’ could be spread to it, and Windows tends to throw a nasty fit attempting to ‘detect’ the new computer, and XP wants a new ‘authorization’.
Backup the data from the mounted drive.
If the drive won’t mount (and the host OS definitely can mount the NTFS file system), then try some data recovery software (this may require you to plug the drive into an IDE/SATA/SCSI device directly). If that doesn’t help, the data on the drive may just be lost to you.
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BACK UP YOUR WORK! When the hard disk PHYSICALLY CRASHES, your work is probably lost, no matter what. Even investing thousands of dollars for data recovery might not get much more than file fragments back. Back up early, back up often. An ounce of backup is worth a TON of re-creating things from scratch.
Get some REAL system recovery software, like Norton Ghost (formerly PowerQuest Drive Image), and make hard drive image backups of your own boot drive with ALL of your software and drivers installed. It turns a day-long, maybe even week-long ordeal into a mere 45 minute cuss-fest when ANY version of Windows self-destructs and croaks on you. Especially useful if your living is based on your PC. It also means that you don’t have to “live with” a Windows installation that has gone ’senile’ from all the viral and spyware junk that crawled into it, or got wrecked when you bought a new piece of hardware that installed 100 megs of buggy garbage into the OS to ‘extend it’, instead of a simple device driver.
You really should have backed up the data very routinely on your own, every month or so, or whenever you did “important work”, but almost no normal computer user ever does. Tragic.
If you have system restore, be sure to save everything, and create a new, named checkpoint just before you install a new piece of hardware or a new driver. There will usually be a lot less mess to back out of when you need to.
Save your passwords, registration codes, receipts, etc. When you make logins/passwords, or receive registration codes, record them somewhere safe.
A text file on a cheap little USB thumb drive can be used for saving information like logins, passwords, utility company addresses, online accounts, etc. and whatever other ‘private’ things, like tax records. It can sit in a box, or a safe only to come out when you NEED it, and keep all those private things will be off-line and unavailable to the various frightful things that get into Windows. Anyway, if the computer takes a dump all over you, then all that stuff you lazily and insecurely left on the PC for anyone ELSE to steal will not die with it. Grow a carpal tunnel and type those passwords when you’re prompted. You won’t forget them so much.
Make two partitions when you partition and format a hard disk, or buy a second hard disk. One partition gets Windows and the software installations. One partition gets the data and work files, like the contents of ‘My Documents’. When you need to STOMP the Windows partition, the other data can remain safe and relatively untainted. A second hard disk can even be UNPLUGGED so the Windows install or other system recovery software can’t “accidentally” reformat it “for you”.
To a degree, the ‘two partitions or two drives’ thing applies to Linux and other operating systems. For straight-forward recovery after a little mishap or major disaster, you seriously don’t want OS/programs and your personal documents and work intermixed.
The partition (or separate hard disk) with your data and work files should be formatted ‘FAT32′ and have ‘System Restore’ turned OFF. That way, if you have to mess with or re-format or restore a backup copy of a mangled Windows partition, you don’t have to overwrite all of your current work, and you can get that drive mounted by nearly any other OS.
What drives ‘System Restore’ operate on can be configured from “Start->Settings->Control Panel->System”, then picking the ‘System Restore’ tab.
Nothing you do with the software can really damage modern hardware. However, sometimes things like the CMOS memory can be overwritten, and (if you leave jumpers set the wrong way) even EEPROM BIOS on the motherboard can be stomped.
CMOS is relatively easy to ‘fix’, just go into the BIOS settings for the motherboard and reset it and then set the time and reconfigure it back the way it used to be.
EEPROM BIOS being clobbered, well you’ll have to order a new chip from the manufacturer and swap it out. Some flash-able BIOS chips have a ROM backup that they can always revert to. If not, and it’s soldered to the motherboard, then the motherboard will need to be replaced. If the BIOS can be flashed, find out which jumper (if any) disables flashing the BIOS and make sure that’s disabled, and you should never have this problem.
A USB2 backup drive that’s probably twice as big as the hard drive in your computer can be had dirt cheap. It’s a good investment for backing up data. After the initial, time consuming backup, incremental backups take only a few minutes. Then the backup drive can be unplugged and put away somewhere safe, preferably where the same kinds of physical disasters that kill your computer won’t get it, too.

ONLY when the documents, internet shortcuts, mail, work files, etc. that the user used to have are safely and securely backed up onto another hard drive and/or burned to a CD or DVD, should you attempt to format or reinstall Windows.
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Don’t get carried away. THINK. What’s more important? Booting this irritating, dead box, or the data (contacts, mail, work, documents, media, etc.) that it contains? The DATA is job #1. NOT the computer