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Hi All,

I have just visited the Spinrite 6.1 Pre-Release page, entered my details and downloaded the srpr.exe file.

But when I try to run the executable, I get the following errors from Windows 11.

Please see attachments for full details.

Thanks

Adam

From the latest SN episode, the prerelease is pure DOS code with no code for Windows to run (the 3rd message you got). The first two (mostly a side effect of the first) is the EXE file is not signed.

miquelfire said:

From the latest SN episode, the prerelease is pure DOS code with no code for Windows to run (the 3rd message you got). The first two (mostly a side effect of the first) is the EXE file is not signed.

Click to expand...

Exactly right. So you'll need to copy that DOS EXE to the existing SpinRite v6.0 boot media, boot it and go!

I think I'm missing something. I had a USB stick that with SpinRite 6.0 on it. I downloaded the pre-release and copied the file to the SpinRite 6.0 USB stick. I then booted a computer from the USB stick and I'm running SpinRite, but I think I'm am running 6.0 not the pre-release of 6.1.

I don't see any visual evidence that I'm running the pre-release. It still says it is going to take over 24 hours to scan a 2TB drive on level 4.

The pre-release file was srpr.exe. Am I supposed to delete SpinRite.exe or make some other changes to the files on the USB stick?

rakosnik said:

The pre-release file was srpr.exe. Am I supposed to delete SpinRite.exe or make some other changes to the files on the USB stick?

Click to expand...

You're right. The instructions I provided are incomplete. By default, the "Spinrite.exe" is the DOS shell (like command.com would normally be) so you should rename "spinrite.exe" to sr6.exe and then rename srpr.exe (SR Pre-Release) to spinrite.exe.

Sorry for the incomplete instructions!

Please can someone create a guide on how to get the pre-release spinrite 6.1 working?

I have created an .iso image using the spinrite 6.0 installation media, then changed the file names as Steve stated above, I then found out that I am unable to add aditional .exe files to the .iso image file.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

Adam-F said:

Please can someone create a guide on how to get the pre-release spinrite 6.1 working? I have created an .iso image using the spinrite 6.0 installation media, then changed the file names as Steve stated above, I then found out that I am unable to add aditional .exe files to the .iso image file. What am I doing wrong?

Click to expand...

Sorry, Adam! To use the pre-release DOS executable of SpinRite, you'll need to create a bootable USB drive. The easiest way to do this would be to use GRC's "InitDisk" freeware (https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm), running it from the command prompt with the "freedos" parameter, which will install a bootable FreeDOS operating system. Then copy your personalized and licensed SRPR.EXE file to that USB drive.

Boot a PC with that USB drive attached at boot time, overriding the system's normal boot from the 'C' drive (various BIOSes are able to do this). Then run "SRPR".

Rename or no rename, on windows 11, I get the message that 'this app can't run on your pc'

Edit- I just saw Steve's post. Thanks Steve.

dmot said:

Rename or no rename, on windows 11, I get the message that 'this app can't run on your pc'

Edit- I just saw Steve's post. Thanks Steve.

Click to expand...

I'm working on the SpinRite FAQ page right now. The FIRST THING I'll get posted there is a "How do I run the SpinRite Pre-Release"

Steve said:

I'm working on the SpinRite FAQ page right now. The FIRST THING I'll get posted there is a "How do I run the SpinRite Pre-Release"

Click to expand...

I'll need to wait for that, I can't get initdisk to do anything other than esc to exit or NUKE and the only option is esc to exit when the NUKE is complete. I can't make a bootable disk even when trying with freedos.

Or I'll need to wait for your utility to be complete which creates the ISO.

Thanks Steve.

Steve said:

Sorry, Adam! To use the pre-release DOS executable of SpinRite, you'll need to create a bootable USB drive. The easiest way to do this would be to use GRC's "InitDisk" freeware (https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm), running it from the command prompt with the "freedos" parameter, which will install a bootable FreeDOS operating system. Then copy your personalized and licensed SRPR.EXE file to that USB drive.

Boot a PC with that USB drive attached at boot time, overriding the system's normal boot from the 'C' drive (various BIOSes are able to do this). Then run "SRPR".

Click to expand...

I will wait for the SpinRite FAQ page with the guide for the pre-release.

If I still haven't got it working after that, I will wait for the final release version of spinrite.

Thanks for the support @Steve

Guys... Given your feedback, I'm going to take a different approach to this. I'll have full details in the FAQ shortly. But, in short:

1. Insert your existing SpinRite boot USB stick into Windows and view its contents in Windows Explorer. You should see a file SPINRITE.EXE.
2. In Windows, rename that to SR6.EXE.
3. Copy your SRPR.EXE file to your USB stick.
4. In Windows, rename SRPR.EXE to SPINRITE.EXE.

Safely eject the USB stick. It should now boot and run the SpinRite pre-release.

Steve said:

Guys... Given your feedback, I'm going to take a different approach to this. I'll have full details in the FAQ shortly. But, in short:

1. Insert your existing SpinRite boot USB stick into Windows and view its contents in Windows Explorer. You should see a file SPINRITE.EXE.
2. In Windows, rename that to SR6.EXE.
3. Copy your SRPR.EXE file to your USB stick.
4. In Windows, rename SRPR.EXE to SPINRITE.EXE.

Safely eject the USB stick. It should now boot and run the SpinRite pre-release.

Click to expand...

I just tried that, the PC does see the bootable drive I made, but it doesn't run spinrite, fails to load.

Edit- picture attached.

I used the spinrite 6.0 to create a 6.0 bootable drive then I edited/copied the updated file per your instructions.

dmot said:

I just tried that, the PC does see the bootable drive I made, but it doesn't run spinrite, fails to load.
Edit- picture attached.
I used the spinrite 6.0 to create a 6.0 bootable drive then I edited/copied the updated file per your instructions.

Click to expand...

That all looks exactly right! If you rename them back, so SR6.EXE is SPINRITE.EXE (and the new SPINRITE is again SRPR.EXE) does your original SpinRite 6.0 run correctly?? To make sure this would work I just did it all myself.

Steve said:

That all looks exactly right! If you rename them back, so SR6.EXE is SPINRITE.EXE (and the new SPINRITE is again SRPR.EXE) does your original SpinRite 6.0 run correctly?? To make sure this would work I just did it all myself.

Click to expand...

Great question and a good test. It does not work when I switch back. I guess that confirms I named the files properly but something with the bootable creation didn't work properly. I did use the spinrite.exe 6.0 program to create a bootable disk, I pressed D to indicate that was the drive to use and everything seemed smooth. I guess I will try again.

Steve said:

You're right. The instructions I provided are incomplete. By default, the "Spinrite.exe" is the DOS shell (like command.com would normally be) so you should rename "spinrite.exe" to sr6.exe and then rename srpr.exe (SR Pre-Release) to spinrite.exe.

Sorry for the incomplete instructions!

Click to expand...

Thanks Steve. It works great now. That was all the understanding that I was missing.

Two questions about this version of SpinRite.

#1 The user interface mentions level 2 and level 3. 6.0 mentioned level 2 and level 4 although I know that the odd number levels were there too. Why isn't the user interface mentioning level 4? Is level 4 still there? Is there a reason I shouldn't run level 4 on a spinning hard disk?

#2 I thought 6.1 was going to work in AHCI? Am I mistaken or is that not in the pre-release version yet?
When I tried to run SpinRite in AHCI mode it said that it found the hard drives, but said it didn't have access to them. I went back into the BIOS and changed the mode to IDE and then ran SpinRite and everything worked well.

When I run the spinrite 6.0 exe all it does is add the spinrite.exe file to the D drive and nothing else. I think there should be more files on the D drive. I don't have my original SR USB stick with me, I have that at another location. I'll be able to see what is on my original SR USB stick, tomorrow.

I have so many hard drive that are waiting to be scanned with 6.1 I was hoping to get this going today but I'll need to wait a bit longer, it seems.

Thanks Steve.

@dmot, @Adam-F

Given that you BOTH refer to Win 11, you guys are running a UEFI boot system. SpinRite 6.x cannot run on on such a system.

To see if there is a possibility of doing so, please see this forum article:


You may have no choice but to wait for SpinRite 7.0.

DanR said:

@dmot, @Adam-F

Given that you BOTH refer to Win 11, you guys are running a UEFI boot system. SpinRite 6.x cannot run on on such a system.

To see if there is a possibility of doing so, please see this forum article:

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/

You may have no choice but to wait for SpinRite 7.0.

Click to expand...

I'm building the USB Bootable Drive on win11, but running it on an older PC that I've ran spin rite off of before. The machine I'm trying to run it on ran the initial 6.1 USB stick I made, but it wouldn't scan the drive, it was restricted to testing to see if SR could boot/load/see the drives and nothing more, as I understand.

My issue is with creating a new bootable drive, from what I can tell.

dmot said:

My issue is with creating a new bootable drive, from what I can tell.

Click to expand...

Ah . . . OK. I have NO experience with Win 11. However, I do know that is is UEFI only. So, it occurs to me (speculation) that there may be something inherent in Win 11 that will NOT allow the proper creation of DOS bootable media? Just wondering . . .

DanR said:

Ah . . . OK. I have NO experience with Win 11. However, I do know that is is UEFI only. So, it occurs to me (speculation) that there may be something inherent in Win 11 that will NOT allow the proper creation of DOS bootable media? Just wondering . . .

Click to expand...

Very possible, but my two machines are windows 11, regardless of which PC I used, I was able to get an earlier version of SR6.1 to boot using USB media.

I have a windows 10 laptop, but I haven't turned it on in a while, so I know I didn't use that machine to create the first SR6.1 USB drive (which did boot).

dmot said:

When I run the spinrite 6.0 exe all it does is add the spinrite.exe file to the D drive and nothing else. I think there should be more files on the D drive. I don't have my original SR USB stick with me, I have that at another location. I'll be able to see what is on my original SR USB stick, tomorrow. I have so many hard drive that are waiting to be scanned with 6.1 I was hoping to get this going today but I'll need to wait a bit longer, it seems.

Click to expand...

I'm SURE you'll be able to get this going quickly.

Three years ago, at the start of the work on v6.1, I was NOT happy with the Windows SpinRite USB formatter. That's why I first created the InitDisk utility.

I believe you will find that there are "hidden system" files on the USB stick that SpinRite creates. Windows won't let you see them, but the command prompt will. If you open a command prompt then do: "dir d: /a" (where the USB drive is 'd:' the '/a' stands for "all" — I think you'll see more files.

Here's a probably sure-fire way to get going:

1. Use InitDisk but be SURE to add the "freedos" command option. So run: "InitDisk FreeDOS" at the command line. THAT will make that drive bootable from DOS.

2. Then copy SRPR.EXE to that drive and boot it.

That REALLY should work if anything is going to!

Steve said:

I'm SURE you'll be able to get this going quickly.

Three years ago, at the start of the work on v6.1, I was NOT happy with the Windows SpinRite USB formatter. That's why I first created the InitDisk utility.

I believe you will find that there are "hidden system" files on the USB stick that SpinRite creates. Windows won't let you see them, but the command prompt will. If you open a command prompt then do: "dir d: /a" (where the USB drive is 'd:' the '/a' stands for "all" — I think you'll see more files.

Here's a probably sure-fire way to get going:

1. Use InitDisk but be SURE to add the "freedos" command option. So run: "InitDisk FreeDOS" at the command line. THAT will make that drive bootable from DOS.

2. Then copy SRPR.EXE to that drive and boot it.

That REALLY should work if anything is going to!

Click to expand...

Thanks Steve, that time initdisk seems to have worked. The first time I didn't see the program doing anything in CMD (I did run as admin) this time I saw initdisk going through some tasks. I got SRPR running on level 2 on a 8TB drive as I type this, thanks @Steve.

On my 11 year old PC, that has a UEFI BIOS, I did create a USB stick years ago, with some online guide, but since misplaced the stick.

But spinrite did run. I will give the FAQ a look at the weekend and try initdisk.

Significantly older machines can sometimes have issues with USB and booting or USB and DOS. I think it boils down to the BIOS treating the USB device like a floppy drive in some instances and like a HDD or CDROM in other instances. I've never run into this problem, but most of my machines are 2014 or newer, and I think you need machines from the early 200x's (from when USB was too new) to run into the issue. (Or I could be imaging things and the issue is some other problem.)

In any case, rather than specifically worry about SpinRite, I encourage you to use ReadSpeed to make the USB. Once you get that booting and working, you SHOULD then be able to just copy your copy of SpinRite.EXE onto it, and use the ESC provided to bypass ReadSpeed and drop to DOS. There you should be able to invoke SpinRite.EXE and have it work.

rakosnik said:

Thanks Steve. It works great now. That was all the understanding that I was missing.

Two questions about this version of SpinRite.

#1 The user interface mentions level 2 and level 3. 6.0 mentioned level 2 and level 4 although I know that the odd number levels were there too. Why isn't the user interface mentioning level 4? Is level 4 still there? Is there a reason I shouldn't run level 4 on a spinning hard disk?

#2 I thought 6.1 was going to work in AHCI? Am I mistaken or is that not in the pre-release version yet?
When I tried to run SpinRite in AHCI mode it said that it found the hard drives, but said it didn't have access to them. I went back into the BIOS and changed the mode to IDE and then ran SpinRite and everything worked well.

Click to expand...

Level 4 is still there, as well as the new Level 5. You can press 1-5 on that screen to select them, or you can change the level in the settings menu.

The 6.1 pre-releases do work with AHCI. Can you share a picture of the error message you got, please? Also, what is the model number of your computer/motherboard?

rakosnik said:

#2 I thought 6.1 was going to work in AHCI? Am I mistaken or is that not in the pre-release version yet?
When I tried to run SpinRite in AHCI mode it said that it found the hard drives, but said it didn't have access to them. I went back into the BIOS and changed the mode to IDE and then ran SpinRite and everything worked well.

Click to expand...

Could you share what that you mean by "it found the hard drives, but said it didn't have access to them" ?? There are a number of different messages that SpinRite can display. And, yes... SpinRite should be able to work on those drives through AHCI without trouble.

But, for what it's worth, you lose NOTHING (really, nothing) if you instead access those drives through "IDE" -- that uses SpinRite's new ATA driver which is every bit as capable and fast as AHCI.

Hello Again,

I have just gone through the How to run the SpinRite Pre-Release page instructions, but I have been unable to run the SpinRite Pre-Release.

I used InitDisk.exe to create and format my 8GB USB 2.0 Stick, then I added the original SPINRITE.EXE and renamed it to SR6.EXE.
I then did the same with the pre-release file (Added to USB then renamed from SRPR.EXE to SPINRITE.EXE).
Ejected the USB re-booted my PC, charged the boot order in my UEFI BIOS and re-booted the PC.
Then the 8GB USB 2.0 Stick, didn't boot into SPINRITE.EXE (SpinRite Pre-Release).

Please see screenshot of InitDisk formatted USB and all the executable files.

Thanks

A drive that has been formatted with "initdisk freedos" will not boot directly into SpinRite. It will boot into a DOS prompt. Did your computer get that far, or did it fail to boot DOS at all? If it failed to boot, you'll need to change more BIOS settings, such as:

• The CSM (Compatibility Support Module) may need to be enabled
• Secure Boot may need to be disabled
• Legacy USB Support may need to be enabled

@Adam-F

Adam, follow Steve's instructions in this post, this got it working for me. If you are putting this on a drive that doesn't have the previous version of spinrite, you only need the single spinrite pre release exe and nothing else.


Then make sure you boot off of the USB stick, on my machine I can press f8 to get to the boot menu where I select the USB Stick and when the DOS prompt appears I type in 'srpr.exe' w/o the ' ' and spinrite loads right up.

Adam-F said:

Ejected the USB re-booted my PC, charged the boot order in my UEFI BIOS and re-booted the PC.
Then the 8GB USB 2.0 Stick, didn't boot into SPINRITE.EXE (SpinRite Pre-Release).

Click to expand...

Firstly, the InitDisk prepped USB stick will only boot into a DOS environment. Then you must enter either sr6 or spinrite at the C:\ prompt to run the desired SpinRite.

HOWEVER: Your Win 11 machine is likely UEFI boot only. In which case, running SpinRite 6.x will NOT be possible.
Please see the following article for more info:

DanR said:

Firstly, the InitDisk prepped USB stick will only boot into a DOS environment. Then you must enter either sr6 or spinrite at the C:\ prompt to run the desired SpinRite.

HOWEVER: Your Win 11 machine is likely UEFI boot only. In which case, running SpinRite 6.x will NOT be possible.
Please see the following article for more info:

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/

Click to expand...

I checked my UEFI BIOS and I couldn't find a legacy boot option, so it doesn't look like it will work.

I will just have to wait for the final version of spinrite 6.1.

Adam-F said:

final version of spinrite 6.1

Click to expand...

No, you have to wait for SpinRite 7. All versions of SpinRite prior to 7 rely (or relied) on legacy boot, and that includes SpinRite 6.1.

PHolder said:

No, you have to wait for SpinRite 7. All versions of SpinRite prior to 7 rely (or relied) on legacy boot, and that includes SpinRite 6.1.

Click to expand...

In that case I'm definitely purchasing a zimaboard, that Steve recommended a while ago so I can use SpinRite 6.1.

Adam-F said:

In that case I'm definitely purchasing a zimaboard, that Steve recommended a while ago so I can use SpinRite 6.1.

Click to expand...

Yes! The ZimaBoard is slick hardware. It's going to become the official SpinRite (6.0, 6.1 and 7.x) hardware platform.