G+_Neil Carmichael Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 I bought Spinrite ahead of upgrading a pc to Windows 10 as it seemed a good point to "tidy house" but ...spinrite need to boot into freedos to run and my laptop is UEFI so cannot boot the "conventional" usb boot images, has anyone had any luck with getting this working in this situation? I tried their tech support and they weren't much help and I'm out of the returns period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Brand Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 You could transplant the hard drive to an older system and scan it there. SpinRite 6.1 will likely get the job done, but it won't be ready for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Brand Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 I've heard of major performance and functional limitations when using a usb controller so consider it a last resort. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Neil Carmichael??? Your issue may not be your UEFI/BIOS. Did you use the version of FreeDOS that came with the SpinRite image? That's version FreeDOS 1.0. If so, there are lots of issues with USB booting in 1.0. Make a generic FreeDOS 1.1 bootdisk and copy the SpinRite files to the new disk. See if that works. P.S. I just sent GRC support?? an email on this specific issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Neil Carmichael Posted August 14, 2015 Author Share Posted August 14, 2015 Ben Tyger Spinrites own mechanism for creating a bootdisk didn't work at all, I ended up using a usb boot maker that included freedos then copying spinrite into it I did email them about another problem (the gui weirdly requires you to click a mouse and hold a keyboard key simultaneous which my pc can't seem to do) but they didn't seem particularly engaged Steve seems such a genuine guy and the product sounds really good so I didn't want to simply ask for a refund. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Wayne Hobbins that's assuming the destination computer has an optical drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 First, Wayne Hobbins?, that's cool that you were able to make the USB UEFI compatible. Second, if you don't want to do that, you should be able change the boot from UEFI in "BIOS" (or whatever it's called now). I just did that on my wife's laptop to get a flash drive to boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Warren Knight (whk) Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Neil Carmichael I am confused about your mouse comment. I regularly use SpinRite and have never touched the mouse. I didn't even think a mouse driver was installed on the freedos image. You should be able to do everything with, , , , Arrow and # keys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Neil Carmichael Posted August 15, 2015 Author Share Posted August 15, 2015 Warren Knight The keyboard and mouse combination is when you want to write out spinrite to your usb device (the key is the drive letter of your device), I don't know why he didn't just use a simple dialog box! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Marsh Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 +1 for Rufus. I've used it to make USB boot drives for a number of things, SpinRite included. I've also had good luck with running SpinRite in MS DOS. I can't recall if I've had luck with SR on drives built with the tools available at PenDriveLinux, though. I still have to go into BIOS/UEFI and change the settings for the SATA controller between MBR/GPT depending on the disk and system, but that'll be straightened out in SR 6.1. My best SpinRite story is of a win server 2k machine I recovered two years ago, which it turned out had a copy of SpinRite sitting in Administrator's personal folders. He must not have used it because the machine ran like a top after a SR level 2 run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 +1 for Rufus and Freedos 1.1 respectively. I've been unable to run Spinrite in-place on some machines for YEARS now. Problem solved. Thanks guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Neil Carmichael Posted November 30, 2015 Author Share Posted November 30, 2015 I'll give it another go becuase currently its wasted money and windows 10 has just told me the drives going to die Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Tyger Posted December 5, 2015 Share Posted December 5, 2015 Neil Carmichael That also assumes you have a Windows machine. My house is Linux and android only... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Neil Carmichael Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 With the Christmas break, coffee, your advice, Rufus,swearing and obscure boot menu's I've got the darn thing working. The estimated completion for the level 2 sweep is 400 hrs, wish me luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Neil Carmichael Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 * I took a crappy usb key that I had hanging around * Rufus then made it in a bootable freedos dos key * I then copied spinrite.exe to its root * I then hit Google, what I needed to know is how to enable my bios' legacy mode, disable secure boot and enable usb booting * having done all that I was able to go to the bios boot selector and choose use "hard drive" * once at the dos prompt I just had to type spinrite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts