One Of Those Days-My Hard Drive CRAHSED

[ROMANTICGUY50]

I was on my computer Friday Night-Everything seemed fine. Went online Saturday morning- couldn't get the task bar to load or anything, couldn't sign in either, WHICH to make a long story short Sucked big time( How many others have had this happen to you) I had AVG anti-virsus. In the end I lost everything 600 songs 40 videoes and hundred's of picture's. One question I have is I had to refromant my hard drive. My computer came with (UCK)ME and I updated it to XP Home Upgrade. I downloaded all the updates but SP1, which I have heard contraversial things about. Some say Download SP1 and other computer tech's say, it's the kiss of death. I have put all other updaates in but that one. HELP Please. I have to download all my music again and videos. May be 80 by then (lol) I didn't have the full version of xp, just the home edition. Any help would be appreited. Thanks.

:devil DOWN WITH THE RIAA & MPAA-CONGRESS OR ANYONE WHO IS AGAINST FILESHARING :devil

[.::BeatFactory::.]

I was on my computer Friday Night-Everything seemed fine. Went online Saturday morning- couldn't get the task bar to load or anything, couldn't sign in either, WHICH to make a long story short Sucked big time( How many others have had this happen to you) I had AVG anti-virsus. In the end I lost everything 600 songs 40 videoes and hundred's of picture's. One question I have is I had to refromant my hard drive. My computer came with (UCK)ME and I updated it to XP Home Upgrade. I downloaded all the updates but SP1, which I have heard contraversial things about. Some say Download SP1 and other computer tech's say, it's the kiss of death. I have put all other updaates in but that one. HELP Please. I have to download all my music again and videos. May be 80 by then (lol) I didn't have the full version of xp, just the home edition. Any help would be appreited. Thanks.

:devil DOWN WITH THE RIAA & MPAA-CONGRESS OR ANYONE WHO IS AGAINST FILESHARING :devil

Did you ever try going to a friends house (with broadband) and downloading some Linux OS that runs on a CD (IE: Knoppix) and burning the ISO to a cd? Pop that sucker in (make sure your BIOS is set to boot from CD before HDD) and boom... you have access to all your files again, where you can A) burn your files to CD-R's and reformat or B) try to fix the problem from there...

Or ... can you get into SAFE MODE in windows? You could try a system restore from Safe mode and see if that works.

My 1.3 cents.

[cheapprick]

I think BeatFactory gave you "better than good" advice, but if I've read correctly you have already formatted your drive, installed ME and installed the XP upgrade on top of that.

If that is so, and it is a legit copy,yes take advantage of all of the MS upgrades you can. Make sure you get the plug for the MSblaster. (search the forum)

[King_Zamunda]

He said he's already formatted the hard drive.


If you never activated System Restore you could have tried using a Windows ME Start-Up disk to boot up the system and at the command prompt type scanreg/restore and select a cab file from an earlier date than when the crash occured.


As for SP1 in XP. The disc I have has SP1 intergrated, I haven't had any problems with it... yet.

[vipp]

There is a patch you can get if you prefer to avoid the Service Pack. It fixes the security issue that the SP1 does. I had major trouble with the SP1 myself, so if you worry about it, just get the patch instead. Unfortunately, I've long forgotten what it was. Hopefully someone else here can tell you what it is??

Edit: looks like you can get it from this site, which also explains a bit about it

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,104940,00.asp

[Psilaxs]

Before you go and re-download everything, I would HIGHLY suggest a clean install of just XP, rather then upgrading from ME.

Secondly, when installing XP, partition off your hard drive to prevent future data loss. it is NEVER a good idea to just have one huge C:\ drive, as this means you WILL lose everything when you have to re-format.

I have had my Windows drive partitioned off since i have been using computers, and all of my data has made it through innumerable re-formats, and some pretty nasty viri.

[shawners]

YOU SHOULDnt reformat youR HARD DRIVE!! You could do data recovery with some data recovery system. AND Recover your music and your videos.. I WOuld suggest buying a 80 gig hard drive, and installing it as a slave drive in your pc, and store everything there.. IN case something happens in your windows and your hard drive its installed on.
If you get the same program i have which is Norton and has 2004 subscription. I wont say how or anything my kazaa lite using friend.

[phalkon30]

I've never had a problem with SP1. I downloaded and saved the original SP1 though, not sp1b (or whatever the second release was). If you can find the original...I think you want that.

[ROMANTICGUY50]

I think BeatFactory gave you "better than good" advice, but if I've read correctly you have already formatted your drive, installed ME and installed the XP upgrade on top of that.

If that is so, and it is a legit copy,yes take advantage of all of the MS upgrades you can. Make sure you get the plug for the MSblaster. (search the forum)
My computer CD's are weird. The have the whole HP format and recovery on them. You have to use both of them them in order to put ME on. I don't have a seperate ME CD. I don't have the full edition of XP only the upgrade. I wish I had got the other one.I asked one of the tech's in town and he said I had to restore sooooooooooo.

[.::BeatFactory::.]

My computer CD's are weird. The have the whole HP format and recovery on them. You have to use both of them them in order to put ME on. I don't have a seperate ME CD. I don't have the full edition of XP only the upgrade. I wish I had got the other one.I asked one of the tech's in town and he said I had to restore sooooooooooo.

You can still do a clean install of XP ... although sometime during the installation process it will ask for you to pop in the cd of a previous version of Windows so that it knows that it is truly an upgrade. Just pop in ME when it asks and it'll verify it and it'll continue with the xp installation...

[ROMANTICGUY50]

You can still do a clean install of XP ... although sometime during the installation process it will ask for you to pop in the cd of a previous version of Windows so that it knows that it is truly an upgrade. Just pop in ME when it asks and it'll verify it and it'll continue with the xp installation...

I don't have a plain ME CD which sucks. HP has all their other shit on the CD's as well. Me is intregrated into the two CD'S that's the problem.. If I just had the ME CD that would be great.. I don't even know which CD has ME on in.
That's the problem, I have two CD'S so I don't know which one has just Me on it. The is one of the problem's with my computer.

[cheapprick]

I don't have a plain ME CD which sucks. HP has all their other shit on the CD's as well. Me is intregrated into the two CD'S that's the problem.. If I just had the ME CD that would be great.. I don't even know which CD has ME on in.
That's the problem, I have two CD'S so I don't know which one has just Me on it. The is one of the problem's with my computer.

I get what you mean, unfortunately neither cd has just ME on it. HP, like all of the big companies, has/had arrangements with MS to provide an integrated recovery system on two cd's so that you are automatically getting the included software that came with your machine. There isn't much you can do about that.

I wouldn't tell you that the ME to XP upgrade is ideal though, so maybe someone could pm you with some sort of link or info about where you could get the full XP OS at a cheap price.

Anyone?

[collideous]

I don't have a plain ME CD which sucks. HP has all their other shit on the CD's as well. Me is intregrated into the two CD'S that's the problem.. If I just had the ME CD that would be great.. I don't even know which CD has ME on in.
That's the problem, I have two CD'S so I don't know which one has just Me on it. The is one of the problem's with my computer.

I had to do the same thing about a year or so ago. Fortunately, I was able to boot, saved all my data to a portable hard-drive, and only then reformated. As far as having XP check for a valid previous OS, just pop in your HP installation disk. If ME isn't on the first one, it'll tell you that a valid product couldn't be found. If that happens pop in the other disk and let it check again. I would highly recommend to do a clean install of XP. If you install over ME you're bound to run into future problems. It leaves a lot of garbage on your disk. And while you're at it, reformat in NTFS rather than FAT32.

[phalkon30]

www.kazaalite.tk has a verified section. I think XP Corp is still in there somewhere. If you don't want to use kazaa find it on DC++, or in a program like shareaza with sharereactors website links. Just about every program out there has the ISO....its so easy!

[crackerjacker]

I was on my computer Friday Night-Everything seemed fine. Went online Saturday morning- couldn't get the task bar to load or anything, couldn't sign in either, WHICH to make a long story short Sucked big time( How many others have had this happen to you) I had AVG anti-virsus. In the end I lost everything 600 songs 40 videoes and hundred's of picture's. One question I have is I had to refromant my hard drive. My computer came with (UCK)ME and I updated it to XP Home Upgrade. I downloaded all the updates but SP1, which I have heard contraversial things about. Some say Download SP1 and other computer tech's say, it's the kiss of death. I have put all other updaates in but that one. HELP Please. I have to download all my music again and videos. May be 80 by then (lol) I didn't have the full version of xp, just the home edition. Any help would be appreited. Thanks.

:devil DOWN WITH THE RIAA & MPAA-CONGRESS OR ANYONE WHO IS AGAINST FILESHARING :devil



damn man you lost your stuff, there could of been away to back it up.
This happen to me as well. I did have avg installed at the time and this might have been the culprit but to be honest I do not know.
I couldnt have access to my desktop so I had to boot into safemode, and go to system configuration utilities and recheck some stuff that i had uncheck specifically rundll.32 and load power profile and some other stuff. Somehow something changed your settings to mess with your desktop and icons.

After a simple reboot from safe mode, I was able to see my desktop again and everything was back to normal. Now I am not going to seat hit blaming avg for this problem but systematically I had this program running at the time this problem arised.

This happen to me like twice. Best thing to do is have a second harddrive so every now and then you can back up your stuff. What I do is basically keep my other stuff on another harddrive put it in another folder, and put read only access to it so I wont have any corrupted files or what not.

If you have only one hard drive I recommend u do what others said here to and that is partition your harddrive. I was running windows 98 first edition when this occured.

hmm damn if only u had a second computer to post on here and maybe others could of help u so u didnt have to lose your stuff.

anyway i am sure u will get your stuff back.
peace

[Wolfie]

YOU SHOULDnt reformat youR HARD DRIVE!! You could do data recovery with some data recovery system. AND Recover your music and your videos.. I WOuld suggest buying a 80 gig hard drive, and installing it as a slave drive in your pc, and store everything there.. IN case something happens in your windows and your hard drive its installed on.


Having a separate storage drive is a good suggestion but it would be a better idea to back up your stuff off your computer too. I have 2 80 gig drives and one is a storage drive with no software on it. Yesterday the fat sector on my storage drive somehow got erased (I thinks its hardware problem with the drive but its still in warrenty) and now it comes up as empty drive. Currently, I am in the process of trying to do some fancy data recovery and then gonna burn everything I recover to DVD-Rs. I guess my point is that even a dedicated storage drive can crap out on you. IMO, backing up to CDs is still a good idea even though it gets a bit expensive for large sharers.

PS. Any recommendations on good data recovery software would be appreciated. :)

[lizardsforall]

I was checking prices lately, and (this is so wierd) Windows 2000 Pro was like 150 dollars. I was thinking about buying it in lue of getting a copy from my company :gj I find xp a little less oriented for networking environments, like my house, so I use 2000 and 2000 server so i can specify what users have access to which shares. It has always preformed when I needed it to.

BTW If you can't get another hard drive to run the os or backups on, Partition the hard drive for at least 7 gigs for os and other programs and the rest for you mp3 collection movies and p2p prorams.

Sorry man, it happens to the best of us!

[MikeHunt]

Lots of good advice in this thread.
I want to offer a site that has some good advice about XP and the Sp-1 patch.*
It also has some other useful FREE tools and programs for data recovery.
(*make sure to scroll all the way down the homepage)

www.brainwave.is.dreaming.org

hope this will inform & help you ...Mike