How recover files? - bugcheck50 video mem failed, sys restore fails


  1. Fidheal
    Posts : 3
    Win 7 Ultimate x32
       New #1

    How recover files? - bugcheck50 video mem failed, sys restore fails


    Ok...long story, with whining included. I apologize if this is the wrong forum (no BSOD) but hope it is correct.

    So the computer wouldn't boot up anymore, the screen had lines on it (which should have been a big hint), safe modes wouldn't work, restore points didn't load, repair and recovery disks didn't work, everything kept erroring out and rebooting. After two days of trying everything I could think of and find, I located my Win 7 disks and tried to fix with that and that didn't work, leaving only the reinstall which I really didn't want to do. I gave up and started a reinstall but guess what, that errored out and wouldn't load. I tried it twice which I now reeeeaally wish I hadn't because my windows.old would be the original system. At this point I found an old HP PC Doctor disk which ran a bunch of low level tests and told me that something was haywire with the video card. Wish I had known that before starting the reinstalls... I bought a new card and it cleared up the video issues, but the Win 7 still didn't start. I got a Ubuntu ISO and booted off that. It loads fine, the computer works like a champ. So I can now see the hard drive but both the windows and the windows.old are the two install attempts. All of the directories and files that I can see just look like your basic empty computer after initial install.

    I know all my music and books and documents are sitting on the drive somewhere. The NTFS directory appears obliterated and recreated during the install attempt.

    Is there some other way to maybe recreate the directory? I really don't want to have to just reformat the drive so I can get WIN 7 to load. Yes I have a backup but it is from Aug 2010. After I shifted to 500GB disks I couldn't really make more backups as I would have needed TB of storage and at the time that was too expensive.

    Oh... and my spousal unit is truly not happy right now.

    Any uplifting thoughts?


    ps Disclosure - I posted this same question on how-to-geeks.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  3. Injust
    Posts : 418
    N/A
       New #2

    Can you try to mount the Windows.old file using 7-Zip or some other archive manager?
    I believe that those can open it, although I am not quite sure.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  4. Fidheal
    Posts : 3
    Win 7 Ultimate x32
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    I can try that. I think that the windows.old is just the copy of the first attempt at re-installing windows and the Windows is the second attempt. I think the windows .old that I really want got lost on the second attempt of an install.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  6. Injust
    Posts : 418
    N/A
       New #4

    Well, try to open Windows.old AND Windows
    Good luck.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  7. Fidheal
    Posts : 3
    Win 7 Ultimate x32
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    Thanks for answering.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

 

  Related Discussions
Hi all, I got myself into a bit of a muck here. While trying to create a bootable USB, I accidentally selected the wrong USB disk (my back up USB disk that contained the manual I was using), & ended up clearing it out. The exact commands I ran are as below:- Diskpart Select disk 1 (my bad...
i had a malware attack -not sure i successfully removed it- and all files are corrupted, the trouble is that i didn't find any restore point saved, so is there any way to restore them.
My Laptop started to run really slow where it would take about 10 minutes to get to the log-in screen, I ran virus checks nothing came up, done a de fragment nothing helped to speed it up. Then about 3-4 days later the Laptop would not boot into Windows 7 Home Premium. When running start...
Hi, Today I tried updating my win 7 Home Premium using the win 7 iso, following the instructions in tutorials here at 7 forums, and everything was going great until there was a power outage and my laptop ran out of charge before the update finished :cry:. On restarting my computer, I was caught up...
Hi to all, When I format my hardrive and re-installed win7, I realized that I did not backup some of my very important files. I ran Recover My Files software and recovered some of my files but not all. Later, I realized that there also recovered many system restore files about 17gig under...
Our Sites
Site Links
About Us
Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

 © Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 15:30.
Find Us