Visible yet unreadable data.

[dniym]

Hi everyone, I recently located a backup of some mostly un-important yet sentimental files on a cd. Opening the drive in windows explorer lets me see the directory structure as well as all files as best as I can remember them. Folders are all accessable, however it seems that 95% of the files on the cd can not be copied or read from the cd by double clicking, *alot of these files are txt documents*. As far as I can tell any executables, documents, or zip files will not open. The only thing that seems to be openable is some old VB6 source files that I saved.

The error i get when opening an exe on the cd:
--- Soandso.exe is not a valid win32 application.
The error I get when opening txt files in notepad.
---Something to the effect of the file is not available or missing.
The files are not reported as being 0 bytes in size, all seem to be what they should be.

*Things ive tried*
-The CD seems to copy fine, but produces a copy exactly like the original, un-openable files and all.
-Ripping an image and opening in alch 120% is exactly like copying the cd and trying to open files.
-Can't be opened in a HEX editor (A last ditch effort to try to get anything out of the affected files)
-Linux will not mount the cd
-a wide array of CD-R recovery software packages.
-iso buster seems to not see ANYTHING unless theres some new version that has more features than my older version.


Anyone ran into this before? I sure haven't had any luck locating anyone with a similar issue yet.

Thanks in advance.
-d

*edit* P.S. the cd drive works fine with any other CD i've tried.

[geeksRus]

the latest version of ISO Buster is 1.6...i have used it to recover a lot of files. the only other thing i can think of is the format that was used to create the CD. what happens if you try to rename the saved files with a different extension? check the properties(attributes) of the file you copy and save to a hard disk.

[dniym]

Following files are located on locations that are unreadable.
Extracting them might prove difficult and the resulting files may contain errors.

>:\Mud\Zeemud Logs\doorfind.txt
>:\Mud\Zeemud Logs\drow.txt
>:\Mud\Zeemud Logs\eq.txt
>:\Mud\Zeemud Logs\garius.txt

along with most every other file on the cd :P
extracting them with iso buster results in a 0 byte size file.
any other suggestions?

[NooNoo]

Was the cd created with packet writing?

If so, your computers udf reading may be up the swanny... Get the udf reader from roxio or nero.

this may help (http://www.downloadatoz.com/badcopy-pro/download.html) if nothing else does.

[dniym]

Bad copy pro was the first recovery tool i tried. No such luck getting anything off or recovering anything. I used a really old version of nero to burn the CD originally, and no it wasn't packet written.

*whine*

[NooNoo]

right, so reinstall the old version of nero.

I had a similar problem with an old backpack parallel port one... reinstalling the original software allowed me to recover it.

[dniym]

im 90% sure the old version isnt XP supported, so provided I can locate the original CD and scrounge up a 98 pc ill give that a shot :P