last word syndrome Ya_know? :D
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last word syndrome Ya_know? :D
What, you think you can top me!?! http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/packin.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by NooNoo
Now now you two play nice
:D
:p :p
the fdisk /mbr is not a windows 98 utility...its a standard dos one..that has nothing to do with what os u use..........fdisk does recognize ntfs, and besides, rewriting it has nothing to do with what os you use. For some reason fixmbr under win2k and winxp, do not do anything what so ever for me...and yes i've gotten fdisk /mbr to work in an IDENTICAL situation........please have something to backup your claims, when you shut down someone else's.......
Scorp, you might want to read the following: http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;q314058
and http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;297185
Ok, some of you guys have me a little confused. I can understand the take it back and have Compaq or the place I bought it from deal with my laptop. I did call Compaq/HP and got some guy with a British Indian accent trying to help me through the problem after trying to explain to him as slowly as I can the problem. Apparently there were some language issues. Anyway, it came down to him saying that I did something to the computer like deleting some shared files. That is a possibility, but frankly, I don't recall doing that. And, my computer was not being used at the time it went dead. He sort of treated me as if I was somewhat of an idiot, which I didn't really appreciate. He said my alternative was to do a Quick Restore, which would reformat my hard drive.
The Quick Restore might have been an option had I not had a bunch of files on there that I needed that I didn't have a backup (yeah, a no-no...but I was planning on doing my first backup this weekend....too late...I know). I can't redo the files, and if I cannot get them back, they are lost forever. If I chose to do the Quick Restore, I wouldn't have called HP nor written here and just did it.
He then said I can take it into a HP center and they can try to get the files off my harddrive, provided they can, but it will cost me. I'm thinking, what the heck. A few choice things popped into my mind, but I held my tongue.
So, I decided to take it to a friend's computer shop and he told me that nearly everything was wiped off my hard drive with the exception of a couple segments of the XP OS. Great. He says the files I was wanting are long gone. He said that it was not a virus that caused it. He sees these types of things happening all the time to people. He couldn't tell me what happened to cause this.
My question is, what is this happening all the time and how did it happen? Later when I had come home to look at the laptop before calling HP or taking it into the computer shop, I didn't see the unmountable boot volume error, rather something called a Missing NTDLR or something like that. I can't remember. What a mess.
So, it's my understanding that even when a HD is reformatted, it isn't totally wiped clean of its previous files. There is still a way to recover files, possibly. So, I'd like to understand how I can do this. Someone at work said that this can cost me in excess of $1k. I don't have that kind of money. I want to recover these files and then take the laptop back to Best Buy and have them remedy this situation.
I can't accept that my laptop can just crash like that under normal usage. I didn't do anything weird. I'm not a first time computer user and am a reasonable user. I've taken apart my desktops and rebuilt them (5 yrs ago). I just don't see how this happened. If need be, I'd want Best Buy to replace my laptop, and if it means spending even more on a better system like a Sony Vaio, I'm prepared to do so.
Ok, sorry this is long winded. I've hardly had any sleep (have a newborn who is a heavy feeder and does not sleep through the night), coming down with something, and totally stressed out at work...on top of my laptop and other issues. Please bear with me. Any other helpful suggestions?
Thanks,
Molly
Molly, do you have a floppy or CD in any of the drives?
Sorry you're having all the computer problems, but congratulations on the offspring! Anyway, you say your friend looked at the drive and it appears to be toast. Well, I'm not sure what exactly was done to the machine, but here are a few suggestions. These are things I would do if I had the drive in to troubleshoot.
1. If your friend hasn't run some drive diagnostics like Microscope, Troubleshooter, Drive Fitness Test or whatever, he should do so to eliminate a failing drive as the source of your problem.
2. If the drive passes, he should use an XP CD to boot from and use the recovery console to repair the disk. If you have set up a password for the Administrator profile he will need it to perform the repair. Once in the recovery console, he should run chkdsk /r , exit the recovery console and then attempt a normal start.
3. If the system still does not boot into Windows, go to the recovery console as above, but instead of of chkdsk, run fixboot c:
4. If the system is still not running, or it has been reformatted, etc. it may be necessary to perform some data recovery operations on your drive. This doesn't mean you need to send it to a clean room or a data recovery service.
Your friend may have his own preferred recovery software, but I like Get Data Back from: http://runtime.org/ Ideally, this software works best if you remove the hard drive from your computer and install it in a system that has the data recovery software installed, but you can run the recovery over a network, too.
Why do these things happen? Well, first of all humans make the parts, so they are by nature imperfect. More to the point the computer industry has become so price-focused that there is almost no quality control left in the industry.
If you have data that must be recovered and none of the suggestions above worked, (or any of the alternative posts) send me a private email and I can refer you to some recovery services that charge you a flat rate with no minimum charge
If you have nothign to lose , edited by NooNoo - Scorp, we are here to help not tout for business........christ..it takes 2-4 hours to do this....add the drive to a working system, and use some software that recovers from formatted volumes...........then burn it onto a cd and ship it back.....big whoop......even at 75 an hour its still 300 bucks at most............unless the driev is failing mechanically, there IS a way to recover data......very easily.......
This happened to my ex gf btw.......her hard drive failed, and compaq said her stuff was unrecoverable, and sent back the drive to her, and a new one with a fresh os install...i spent 4 hours with pc inspector (the only utility i knew at the time, and it being my first time doing this type of thing), and was able to find the partition that had her stuff (even though there were like 8 bogus ones......and was able to pull her docs off of it....admittedly, the drive slowed down my WHOLE system...and crashed my computer twice (on windows 2k server), BUT it did have the files.........its DOABLE...no matter what these shops tell you......its all about how much effort they wanna put into it....and how (in)competent they are. Remember, most people in IT, are money-grubbing idiots, just like anywhere else in the world......
remember.... the phrase "it can't be done" = "offer me more money".....
Getdataback is a great utility, but this free one has got me out of a hole before pc inspector
There might be physical damage to the drive, the thing is that doing this sort of stuff you are going to head up a steep learning curve.
If you want to do this, we can teach you, I suggest you download pc inspector and see what it can find on the drive. Do you have another computer connected to the net? If so we could talk you through this in chat.
Is your friend sure your files are gone? Did he attempt any file recovery? To be honest if he was your friend and s/he is any good at his job, s/he would have downloaded a file recovery trial to see what could be got back and shown you.
You are right not to take this at face value.
Your decision now is, how badly do you want those files back, is the work re creating them more or less than trying to recover them?
Compaq lappies are no worse than any other laptop. Swapping to a Sony would just buy a more expensive laptop which does the same things and can break the same way.
Wow...you guys are really responsive. I've never been in a forum with so many responsive people. My friend's shop that we took the laptop to...it was one of his employees that dealt with me. That's neither here nor there because he failed to explain to me what happened, blah, blah, blah. I can't accept his explanation. He didn't say my harddrive was bad, so I'm assuming it isn't. I'll call him and ask.
I know that there have been hard drives that have faced fires and other things like that and data has been retrieved. Plus, the comments you guys (or gals) have made makes me think my friend's employee, HP/Compaq were just giving me a pat answer and not really wanting to help me further with this problem because it was the quick answer.
Yes, I do have 2 other computers (desktops) hooked up to the internet (cable modem) through a wireless router; however, none of the computers are networked. My husband does not want my desktop to be networked to his desktop (doesn't want anything I do to screw up his video projects for his clients). So, for now, I'll assume we only have my Compaq desktop (350 MHz....ancient) to use.
Yes, I'm willing to go through whatever steep learning curve to get those files from my harddrive. Why not? If you guys are willing to help walk me through, I'm willing to learn & go through it. I'm not sure what your (whomever that is) time schedule is, but I'm leaving for work shortly. Will be back later in the afternoon and I should be here for most of the day Saturday. I'm in Arizona (Mountain Standard Time).
Thanks,
Molly
Doc PC, NooNoo, Slgrieb, and others,
The laptop does not have a floppy, rather a DVD+RW. I do not have an external floppy. Is this what you were asking or were you asking if I physically had a floppy or CD in the drive? If it is the latter, no there are no CDs in the DVD drive.
And, in response to a different post. I do not know what diagnostics software was run at my friends' company to check to see what was left on the HD. My husband last night ran a data recovery demo software on the laptop and it came up with nothing. The software he used was at: http://www.data-recovery-software.ne...oad.shtml#demo
He was able to load XP Home back again onto the computer, but right now I have to leave for work and don't have time to see what else he did.
When I get back home, I'll try PC Inspector and see what that says. If it comes back with nothing, I'll try the other suggestions that were posted.
Now is as good of a time to learn as any. See you guys later.
Thanks,
Molly
Oooo ! Everyone is already confus-ed ! :D
Errr ummm, my this all seems like 'muchos hard man' ! :D :D
My take on it :-
Since we have a 'friendly computer wiz' in the wings get him to make an image of your drive as it is now, with ghost or whatever (he'll understand that) ... then either send the bloody thing back, or restore it with the recovery disk, but make sure you at least tell 'em (in case it is hardware & we have future problems lurking - just like Ya_know said)...
Then it should be perfectly feasable to attempt data recovery on the image (again the friendly wiz can do that or diy ...)
& good luck with your newborn, I unlike most guys (having to do it all myself) remember sleepness nights & 'squarking' very well indeed ! :)
Edit: too damn late I see :rolleyes: - if Hubby has got xp back on it, whatever was there before is almost certainly 'effectively' gone (none of those online proggies you find will get it back anyway ;) ).