Stellar Knowledge Base

How to recover data from an Unbootable system/ Crashed OS?

 Modified on: January 2, 2023 |    52530 views

To recover data from a crashed or non-booting Windows PC and Laptop, follow these steps:

Video Tutorial

Step 1: Prepare a Bootable Data Recovery Media

For this, you need an empty USB thumb drive (at least 1GB size). Connect the USB thumb drive to a working Windows PC and follow the instructions below:

a) Download, install and launch Stellar Data Recovery Professional software.

Free download

b) From ‘Select What to Recover’ screen, click on ‘Waffle Menu’ at top-right.

More Tools

c) Select ‘Create Recovery Drive’ option.

Create Recovery Drive

d) From ‘Create Recovery Drive’ dialog box, select the USB drive using drop-down list.

Slect USB

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please ensure that the USB drive is empty. Backup all your files from the USB drive before proceeding to the next step.

 

e) Click ‘Create Recovery Drive’ and click ‘OK’ to begin the process.

Once the process is completed, a new ‘Activation’ window appears. Paste or type ‘Activation Key’ received through email after purchasing the product and click on ‘Activate’ button.

Make sure your PC is connected to internet!

Stellar Data Recovery automatically communicates and validates the entered key. After key validation, the software creates a bootable data recovery media that you can use to retrieve lost and inaccessible data from a crashed or corrupt Windows PC.

Step 2: Use Bootable USB Media for Data Recovery

a) Connect the bootable USB media to your crashed or non-booting Windows PC.

b) Power ON your PC and start pressing boot option key, usually F12, to see connected bootable USB media. Refer to your laptop or motherboard manufacturer’s support website for more info.

c) Move selection to bootable data recovery media by using the arrow down button and press ‘Enter’ to boot.

d) Once the computer boots from USB media, you will see Stellar Data Recovery software interface.

e) From ‘Select What To Recover’ screen, choose file type(s) you want to recover and click ‘Next.

Select What to Recover

f) Choose the Windows drive from where you wish to recover data and click ‘Scan’.

Scan

g) After scan, choose all the files you want to recover. You may also preview files to ensure files are not damaged and are recoverable.

Scanning

h) If you are not able to find desired files, click ‘Click Here’ link at the bottom to run a ‘Deep Scan.’

Deep Scan

i) Then click on ‘Recover’ button.

j) Click ‘Browse’ to select a location to save recovered files. Use an external hard drive to save your recovered data to avoid data overwriting.

Select Destination

k) Finally, click ‘Start Saving’ to save recovered data.

In case you are unable to create the bootable media through the above steps or get any error to refer this article for solution: Create activate bootable usb media

 

 

24 User Comments

Is it correct that one has to purchase the product in order to use the "see first" offer if you need the bootable USB program to check an unbootable computer?

The process says you need the "Activation" key before you can get to see if files are actually available for saving>

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Derek Pemberton

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Abdul Majid

Dear Derek,

Yes, the software need to be purchased to create a recovery drive.

Once you purchase the software than you can activate it and use Create Recovery Drive option. Now software will ask you to enter the key so you need to enter the same key to create a Recovery Drive.

Can I save the data I want to recover to the same USB flash drive used for the recovery drive? Or does it need to be a separate external hard drive?

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Marc P Valentin

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Rajeev

Hi,

We understand the inconvenience caused to you.

Our application will not allow you to save the files on the same drive because it may lead to overwritten activity and you may lose all the data. We suggest you to save them in a separate hard drive.

For more assistance, you may submit a ticket using the below link.

https://www.stellarinfo.com/support/

Regards,
Stellar Data Recovery

After purchasing and activating the software, I inserted two different empty 8GB USB drives, but I cannot complete step "1e" because the software dialog box does not have a "Create Recovery Drive" button. Tech support did not respond to my ticket, but they did answer the phone and promised to email me a file to manually copy to the USB, but I have not see it yet.

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JackP

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Abdul Majid

Dear Jack,

We understand the inconvenience caused to you.

Our team has replied to your email with the steps to create a bootable USB. Please follow our email and feel free to get back to us for any further assistance.

Hi,
I am currently recovering data from a damaged drive but the files that are being recovered are all 0 bytes length. What am I doing wrong?

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Bob

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Rajeev

Hi,

We understand the inconvenience caused to you.

Kindly let us know the reason for data loss and type of files you want to recover.

We request you to submit a ticket using the below link:

https://www.stellarinfo.com/support/

Regards,
Stellar Data Recovery

How long should it take to create the recovery drive? I have tried several times and see no progress.

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David McCoy

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Kartik

Hi,

As per our records, recovery drive issue has been resolved now.

If you face any issue further, please reply to email which you have received from our technical support team.

Regards,

Stellar Data Recovery

Hi,
I have an old dell poweredge server with CentOS Linux on it, scsi raid disks. It is not bootable, I need to recover some tar.gz backups from it.
Can the bootable recovery media do this for me ?

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Sajiv Roy

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Rajeev

Hi Sajiv,

Stellar Data Recovery for Linux application can recover data from Linux formatted hard drive but it does not contain Create Recovery Disk option.

We request you to provide us your contact number and convenient time so that we can assist you to recover data.

Regards,
Stellar Data Recovery

I had a 2 TB seagate drive with about 1.5 TB of files suddenly report as RAW. CHKDSK does not work. Will your software allow me to recover files from the disk?

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Dan

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Naveen

Dear Dan,

We completely understand your situation completely.

We recommend you to try Professional Edition of Stellar Data Recovery software to recover the data from RAW formatted drive.

You can download the demo version from the below link to check scan the RAW formatted drive:

https://www.stellarinfo.com/windows-data-recovery-professional.php

Feel free to reach us.

Regards,

Team Stellar

Hi I am running into a problem.
I have purchased your tool and correctly installed to a USB drive.
My crashed PC is a Lenovo X1 running Windows 10.
When starting up, the BIOS proposes correctly the USB drive, but I cannot select it.
I believe that it is related to the drive protection. I have the relevant key to unlock it, but still, I cannot find a way to get your tool started from the USB.
Any ideas from your side?
Thank you.
Mathias

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Mathias

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Naveen

Dear Mathias,

We are assisting you on support ticket for the same situation.

Please reply to the same email for further assistance.

Regards,

Team Stellar

I have created the recovery USB but my Dell XPS is not displaying the drive when I enter the boot menu (F12). Can you assist?

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Matt A Knudson

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Naveen

Dear Matt,

We have assisted you over the chat.

Feel free to reach us.

Regards,

Team Stellar

Trying to use a recovery USB drive (with the activation key installed) on a crashed Windows laptop. The bootup runs for about twenty seconds and then I get an error message from Recenv.exe saying "Key Not Found". Thanks for any help to resolve this.

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ChuckM

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Kheshwar Sharma

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Stellar.

We have sent an email to you and key is available in it.

Please try and let us know the outcome.

Regards,

Stellar.

Once you recover the files on an external can you restore the files and programs to the hard drive once you reformat it?

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Zoheb

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Sunil

Dear Zoheb,

Thank you for writing to Stellar.

Kindly elaborate more on the situation and let us know whether you want to recover the data from a Mac non-bootable machine or from a Windows non-bootable machine such that we can assist you in a better way. Moreover, our software will help you to recover the data, and that data you can save on an external drive. Later, if you want to transfer the recovered data to other drives or devices you can do that as per the requirements.

Further, you may raise a ticket to our support team by visiting Help & Support page on our website if there is any issue during the recovery with our software:

https://www.stellarinfo.com/support/

Warm Regards,

Team Stellar

why is it not free

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karz

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Kheshwar Sharma

Dear Karz,

Thank you for writing to Stellar.

Our demo version allows you preview the recoverable data. In order to recover the data from Unbootable system/Crashed OS, bootable media needs to be created and it is only available in the purchased edition.

Regards,
Team Stellar.

 

User Comments

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Stellar Data Recovery Professional Stellar Data Recovery Professional is a do-it-yourself data recovery software that helps you to easily recover deleted files & folders, missing or corrupt partitions and even accidentally formatted hard drives.

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