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I'm paying a bit of an idiot tax here, and could use some help. Had windows machine that was virus-laden, so prior to wiping & reinstalling XP, I used Ultimate Boot CD for Windows to get in, and DriveImage XML to create an image on an external USB HDD.

For whatever reason, the system went down before the XML file was finished writing. Last time I looked, it was at 99%. I have a reasonable amount of files and space in the .DAT files, but if I open the Drive_C.xml file, you can see it ends mid-record....probably, too soon.

Unfortunately -- I had already wiped and formatted the original drive before I realized this. DriveImage doesn't seem to be able to open the image, since it's corrupted.

Any ideas? :(

Matthew
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I'd assume that DriveImage is choking on the incomplete XML. You might be able to get away with finishing the XML in an editor such that it validates, by at least completing (or removing) the node that it was working on and closing any open nodes that did not get closed when it went down.

I'd also have a chat with DriveImage support. I would guess that this is not the first time this has happened. They might have a tool that will salvage the XML file.

squillman
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  • Thanks for the help. Gave completing the XML a shot, but no dice, Chicago. The app now runs until it swallows ALL available RAM (I have 4gb, it makes it to about 2.1gb), then crashes with an out of memory exception. Was hoping it was trying to rebuild or something....but that's probably wishful thinking! :( – Matthew Oct 17 '09 at 03:20
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Sympathies for your problems. Idiot tax just gets paid back to yourself in the future! I think I'm right that if you created an image of a virused OS, then the image will also be compromised. You were probably going to use the back up to reinstall the viruses. The only true way to remove viruses is a new installation, so I think that's what you can now do if you have the OS disk. Or am I paying my own idiot tax!?

outsideblasts
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  • If only there were deductions on idiot tax. I wasn't planning on restoring the full image, with the viruses. I was planning to use DriveImage's browse feature to recover files from my documents, etc. – Matthew Oct 16 '09 at 21:42
  • I see. Didn't know that DriveImage XML had a browse feature! Just about to use it myself, so thanks for that news. Good luck. – outsideblasts Oct 16 '09 at 22:18