hey

oh nvm

This might explain why runas and psexec didn't work: superuser.com/questions/550170/…

forgot to ping @Bob in any of those

@JoeyLópez ...huh. could've sworn I tested yesterday to make sure that wasn't the case

@JoeyLópez Can you pull the setupact.log/setuperr.log?

bah, mis-tested

@JoeyLópez ok, figured out a way to switch user properly, though idk if this will help with the setup problem

first, is your user local or on a domain (e.g. work/education network)?

psexec -u <username> -h -i cmd

the -h is important

the user must be a local admin

don't worry, it's my personal laptop so I'm the admin (the chromebook is enterprise enrolled though, I'd have it running Ubuntu otherwise)

I think it worked

\\JOEYS-FLEX3: cmd is now the title of the window

(my laptop is a lenovo flex 3, that's the reason for the name)

@Bob

So we just spent two days trying to figure out the equivalent of su on Windows

basically

well now we know the -h parameter works for psexec

should echo be returning anything after that...?

ok I got another window to show the C:blahblahblah line after that

(removed the -i)

and echo %username% returned my username

@JoeyLópez the -i should have made it open a new window

oh well

try running setup.exe from there

it didn't

ok

...and you really need to go find those logs

it's much more effective than blindly guessing

ok

uhh

setup.exe is not recognized as blah blah blah, and start setup.exe isn't returning anything

it just broke output

well I'm gonna find those logs then

@JoeyLópez ...you'd need to actually navigate to the directory it's stored in

on whichever flash drive you put it on

I did

...

what does dir show?

I typed E:\setup.exe, then cd /d E:\, then setup.exe

then start setup.exe

well output stopped working so nothing at the moment

close the prompt, open a new one, do it again

Directory of E:\ is "File Not Found"

uhh

how do I do a check to see if it changed drive labels on me?

You have plugged in the drive, yes?

diskpart

list volume

yes

Volume E is now an empty partition I accidentally made out of unallocated space because windows setup stuff.

it's now drive F

that would be the issue

well setup.exe from drive F just returns "setup.exe" now

It's just echoing my commands

...what

photo?

gah, just grab the logs

not getting anywhere with this

ok

the setuperr in $windows.~bt is 0 bytes

there is no $windows.~ws that I can see

the setuperr in C:\Windows\Panther was also 0 bytes

:\

reboot and try running setup again, from the system account?

the one that actually showed an error last time

I mean I have two setupact that are 40-some kB

but ok

@JoeyLópez oh, see if you can upload those

do I pastebin them or use something like google drive?

your choice

pastebin.com/HnfeEmUG

pastebin.com/wCCwAUzT

@JoeyLópez where did you find those?

did you look inside C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther?

yes

look at the tab heading

the first one is that

the second one is somewhere inside C:\Windows\Panther

And how much free disk space do you have?

(probably \setup.exe)

on what, the computer?

yea

well windows setup kinda made a partition out of the unallocated space while I was messing around with it...

also, at which step did it fail?

did it ask you anything before failure?

or as soon as you launched it?

no

wait the setup?

or after spinning for a bit?

well I ran it via the boot menu

@JoeyLópez ...what?

If it failed to run ... how did it partition anything?

ok

so

I ran setup via the boot menu, and I tried custom install, and when I selected the unallocated space I was hoping it'd give me options, but it started something so I cancelled it. It somehow made a partition in those 5 seconds.

should I run it from a SYSTEM cmd and upload the logs again?

...yea

might as well

not seeing any errors here

I'm gonna assume it aborted abruptly because you forcibly restarted

I hit the x button on the window

because... it was there for whatever reason

@JoeyLópez go through it step by step.

launch setup, take a photo

need to know exactly where it stops

when opened from the system thing, it just tells me it couldn't start properly with a purple windows splash logo in another little window

nothing happens

...huh.

the logs you provided imply there's more happening

it left no logs...?

maybe that was from a different attempt

those are from directly booting it instead of running it from windows

I forgot that was the last thing I did before pulling those logs

try running it from within Windows and grab the logs again

I ran it

$WINDOWS.~BT no longer exists there

and C:\Windows\Panther\setup.exe is now empty

hmm, I wonder if trying this over remote desktop would work any better

might bypass the broken login screen

how the heck are we gonna use remote desktop

just for kicks, do the psexec as your user again but this time run explorer.exe

with -i

ok I'll try

doing cmd wouldn't let me start explorer but idk what was up with that

now it's not even consistently reaching the logo pre-boot, this is the second or third time I've had to try booting twice... it's still working after that, though...

It's... not doing anything. It won't return to C:\Windows\System32>, either

o.O

hdd failure?

wait now the cmd window is titled \\JOEYS-FLEX3: explorer

should that happen?

it's no longer taking my password because of the stupid window focus thing

explorer.exe exited on JOEYS-FLEX3 with error code 1.

no, it shouldn't

that's what happened when I tried another window

back in 30

running out of ideas though

I'm gonna go for the night

if you think of anything, leave me instructions for tomorrow or something

unfortunately I don't have a VM handy right now to test much on

the fallback, of course, is a full clean reinstall

(yes, I know that's a huge pain - I don't really want to recommend it. but it eventually comes down to how much time you need to set everything up again vs how much time you spend trying to fix this)

hopefully I'll be able to try something myself tonight...

Speaking of VMs, would it help collect any more information if I tried running the OS in one (if you can do that with the HDD connected via USB3)? I've been meaning to figure out how to run one anyways (because WINE isn't perfect), but I don't think my laptop has enough power to run anything intensive in one.

facepalm

new info

@Bob one of the logs said stuff about looking in \Recovery\Logs in partition 6

that was my onekey partition

...before I screwed it up. I was trying to resize a Linux partition (I thought that was painful at the time, since I had to move it to the left) and an online guide used sda6 as an example. I forgot to change it on one command, and the whole partition was removed. If I remember correctly, I used a program named "ddrecover" to recover the data and I tried to remake that partition and put the data back, but I believe ever since then Windows would occasionally want to run disk checking.

I think something may be off about my OneKey partition- such as the UUID, or start/end block- causing both the occasional "Press any key to skip disk checking" on boot, and perhaps System Recovery's inability to run at all. I do have the files- do you think I might be able to make Windows realize that the partition is there, just under a different UUID (probably)?

Wait... I might not have put the data back on partition 6. If not, I think I have it on my main Windows partition, in my documents folder or something.

Wait... I feel stupid, I confused OneKey with some windows thing and everything I just said is probably totally useless.

It would reset my computer, since I highly doubt I have a backup, and it doesn't seem to have a "fix boot" option. Also seems to be manufacturer-specific.

Oh hey, there's also an AOMEI tool named OneKey Recovery, which is not what I'm talking about.

o_O