ive got a pata hard drive along with a sata hard drive, but i installed something on the sata on the hard drive and the pc crashed. it says something like beginning memory dump and it just reboots over and over again. i've got very very important files like major assignments, is it possible to recover this??? very urgent!
Don't worry, your data is likely to be undamaged. It sounds more like a hardware fault with the RAM or something. If its urgent, take the drive out into another computer and recover the files there.
Try linux LiveCD (www.slax.org), of course u must use another pc to burn it. Change boot sequence to boot from CD-drive. As ur pc specs is pretty good. use a USB flash to copy ur files. Slax recognises a usb drive with problem. U might as well keep a liveCD for further recovery. it always come in handy. Opps. correct me if i m wrong. I m not sure linux knows SATA drive. But it should.
Actually a memory dump has nothing to do with bad memory. Data is being copied from the memory to the hard drive so it doesn't get lost. This data can include specific details of the failure and writes to the Event Log among other places. Roy92, Can you describe exactly what happens when you turn on the computer? What were you installing when the computer failed?
I didn't say memory dump was to do with bad memory, its only used for running a debugger on the raw memory state for analysis. The constant reboots leads me to think about a hardware failure, and RAM was the culprit with my experience with the problem. However it could be other things. As JohnLynn said, try a linux Live CD like Knoppix, and boot into it. You may be able to use that to recover some files. Also which of the drives contain the data, the SATA one I assume? Just make a copy of the data onto the other drive for redundancy (unless the hard disk is formatted with NTFS, in which case you'll only be guarunteed read access not write.) And then try to remedy the problem.
sorry guys, i was away at school camp for week. This was what happened. I was installing SWAT 4 on my WD SATA HD, then the screen went blank. It rebooted, then it goes past the windows loading screen, but this is where everything goes wrong. it goes past the windows screen and it shows a blue screen, its too fast to read it all coz it reboots in like one second, but i did see beginning of memory dump. hope this helps and thnx for the replies.
