Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery

Computer viruses are the self-replicating programs that can infect your computer system without your permission. Virus infection is one of the major reasons that cause data loss. These can be transmitted as a downloadable file or e-mail attachment or can be present on a CD or a diskette. To prevent against virus infection, Hard Drive Recovery experts always suggest installing a quality antivirus plus keep it up-to-date. An antivirus or security suite can detect and quarantine or remove harmful applications as worms, viruses, trojan horses etc. You should also use efficient antispyware and antispam software for complete PC protection.

Consider a practical instance, you turn on your Windows system and the boot process fails with the following error message:

“STOP Error 0×0000008B
MBR_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH”

The error further describes four parameters: disk signature from MBR, MBR checksum calculated by operating system loader, MBR checksum that is calculated by system and reserved. After this error message, you can’t access your critical data.

Cause

The error message occurs due to MBR (Master Boot Record) checksum mismatch. When the MBR checksum calculated by the system doesn’t match with that of passed in by the loader, the system fails to boot with above STOP error. It happens when the hard disk is infected from virus.

Solution

In order to resolve the above issue, you need to follow these steps in order:

• Scan your hard disk with powerful and up-to-date antivirus software. To perform this, you need to boot your system using a write-protected disk that contains the virus scanner. These applications can help to disinfect the system.
• If your antivirus can’t fix hard disk infection, you need to reformat the hard disk and restore lost files and folders using recent data backup. In case, data backup is unavailable or it fails to restore the required information, you can use Hard Drive Recovery Software.

Hard Drive Recovery applications are special tools that can recover and restore lost data in cases of logical hard disk crashes as file system corruption, operating system damage etc. With completely safe recovery process, these tools can recover all types of lost files and folders, including system and data files. Also, they provide several advanced recovery options. Such software are designed with graphically rich interface and hence you can use them quite easily.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the foremost hard drive recovery Software to recover the lost data including deleted e-mails. The software can recover data from corrupted, deleted, lost or formatted partitions and volumes. It supports FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems. The software is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.

In case your computer is not able to boot, the hard drive crash can not be the only reason behind it. You should try to reboot the system in a different mode viz. Safe Mode, check all cables and connections. If this doesn’t help, then you need to shut down the system and consult Hard Disk Recovery service professionals.

If system can boot from the hard drive till it can display error reports through video subsystem, it becomes easier for a user to diagnose the actual problem. One of such error messages is:

“Initialization error on HDD0”

Where, HDD0 shows that main hard drive has got failed. Based on number of hard drives attached and their configuration, hard drive number may vary.

The error message occurs when computer system encounters issues starting from the hard drive after POST (Power On Self Test). It occurs due to physical issues with one or more hard disk components (mechanical or electronic).

Reason

A hard drive may get failed due to number of reasons:

• Head Crash: This is a frequently occurring instance. It occurs when read/write head comes in contact with the fast moving platters. It is the prime cause of physical damage to their magnetic material. Data lost post such malfunction is not recoverable.
• Air Filter Crash: Hard disk incorporates an air filter to maintain air pressure levels and moisture. However, when air filter function gets affected due to faults, dust particles may settle down on platter surface and create obstacles in read/write operations. More severely, it may cause head crash.
• Other Components Failure: Other hard disk internals may also fail. This includes spindle motor, spindle, actuator, head arms etc.
• Electronic Failure: A hard disk is comprised of several Integrated Circuits (ICs) that control its internal functioning. Their damage can make hard disk inaccessible.
• External Factors: If hard disk is exposed to high intensity magnetic waves, heat, water, shocks, heat or power surges, it may stop functioning.
• Wear and Tear: The continuous use of hard drives for long time intervals can cause wear and tear to its parts and make them fail. Hard drive manufacturers provide the expected time of failure known as MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) on their manuals, which is estimated by considering that hard disk is used under normal conditions.

Hard Disk Recovery service helps users to reclaim their lost data from such physically failed hard drives. To determine the cause of failure, affected hard disks are opened under safe environment of Clean Rooms. Clean Rooms are controlled lab environments to perform intensive component level tasks. After the cause of crash is known, hard drives are treated with appropriate Hard Drive Recovery procedures, which are tailor-made solutions as per nature of the problem.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the premier provider of state-of-the-art hard drive recovery services. The data recovery service is provided in Class-100 Clean Rooms. Our recovery solutions are available for almost all types of hard drives as SCSI, SATA, EIDE and IDE. We also provides solutions for Server, RAID, NAS and SAN hard drives.

Microsoft Windows XP is based upon the architecture of Windows 2000 and NT. But sometimes, during Windows XP installation, you may face issues like system file corruption. In such cases, you should take data backup as the solution may require a clean Windows reinstall. In case of backup unavailability or other issues like error occurrence while restoration, hard disk recovery becomes necessary to retrieve lost data.

As a practical scenario, you may encounter the following error during Windows XP bootup:

“The file C:\windows\system32\c_1252.nls is missing or corrupt”

The error message occurs due to the corruption or loss of ‘c_1252.nls’ file.

• NLS stands for National Language Support. The files with .nls extensions are code page that consist of tables. They are used to translate text into other languages or alphabets.

Solution

The possible solutions are:

•You can use Windows XP operating system disk to start the system and select recovery console option. You need to use the chkdsk/r command in recovery console. This command is used for repairing hard disk errors.
•If the problem persists, you can replace the required system file (c_1252.nls). It can be accomplished through Recovery Console with these commands:

cd system32
ren c_1252.nls c_1252.old
expand Drive Letter:\i386\c_1252.nl_ c:\windows\system32

Here, drive letter: can be C:, D: as per the system.
• If hard disk is formatted with FAT32 file system, you can replace the file by using Windows 98 emergency boot disk. After starting the system using this CD, the following commands need to be typed at the command prompt:

c:
cd windows\system32
ren c_1252.nls c_1252.old
extract drive:\i386\c_1252.nl_

This method is useful when Windows XP Recovery Console is not able to solve the problem.

•You can also try upgrading Windows XP

•If this doesn’t resolve the system behavior, you can go for clean Windows XP reinstall after backing up all important data. Backup must be checked as incomplete backup may lead to hard drive recovery post data loss.

Hard disk recovery is possible using commercial data recovery tools. These hard drive recovery software can scan the drive and recover data. The applications can be used in each logical data loss situation. They offer interactive interface and advanced options to achieve precise data recovery.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the finest hard drive recovery
tool that provides a solution to all Windows data loss situations. It can recover lost data from NTFS5, NTFS, vFAT, FAT32 and FAT16 file system. It is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.

The v3.0 of Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software has a new scanning & recovery engine that is three times faster and much more efficient. more…