Rescue Cd Zeroed Out Files And Almost Filled Disk

rebadurchee
edited February 2022 in The Archive

I ran the rescue cd and after six hours stopped it. There were some issues, some of which I had fixed. I asked it to delete several infections, all of which were old and minor. I couldn't exit the cd so I ejected it. During the reboot Windows 10 stated that it was repairing my drive. Those files and many many others that were not infected were still in the directories but at zero bytes.

When I tried to copy two files from my two day old backup I was notified that I had insufficient drive space for the second file. This seems strange to me since so many files had been reduced to zero bytes.

Is it possible to repair the disk or do I have to do a format and restore what files I have backed up? And why did this happen?

Thank you.

Comments

  • Hello,

    My best guess is that your Windows environment was already damaged and by stopping the cleaning process prematurely may have removed only a part of the infections.

    I would suggest booting using the Windows CD and restoring to a previous point. Should that option not be available for you, run a CHKDSK using the Windows CD.

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415/windows-10-recovery-options

    Let us know how it all goes.

  • The good news, sort of, is that the damaged disk was not the system disk but a data disk. The computer still boot_s and I have access to all the programs, except for Outlook because my .pst file was on the data drive. It appears that there were no infections on the system drive. However, about 335 files, spread over numerous directories, that had significant content are now zero bytes and there is not enough disk space to copy them back -- even if i wanted to hunt each one down. All the 14 detected objects were on this disk, mostly in old zip files. I do have a full disk backup that's only two days old.

    Of course, what's terrifying me now is that I don't know where to go from here as far AV. My confidence is quite shaken that what's supposed to save me ends up hurting me more. Suggestions?

  • A closer look at my system shows that the affected disk is a dynamic disk that takes up space on the drive in two separate locations. It appears that now disk management software like Windows Explorer and ZtreeWin are only logging one segment of the two segment dynamic disk. Does this help explain and of this and is there a way back?