Another potential disaster using XP Pro

Look in Event View to see if there are any error messages. Right Mouse Click on My Computer Pick Manage Click on Event Viewer Click on system

Look for red flags and look for the event code.

If you find event code errors You might want to go to the support page on www/microsoft.com and search the Knowledgebase for the error mesage and event code.

Go to microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support and post the question and anything you've discovered.

Get a Mac? ;)

You may have some underlying hardware issues.

Thanks Al, but where do I find event view?

Harry C.

Hard drive is TU!

Lane

Event viewer can be accessed a number of ways, but I generally right click on 'My Computer' Left click on 'Manage'. You'll see it in there. You may or may not find anything of any use, so don't get your hopes too high.

you might try a utility to look at the drive. XP has given more than one of us a fit as it makes decisions such as this. I'd Google your issue. There's a site called nonags.com that has a lot of good, free utilities. They make sure there isn't any spyware & such in them.

Jim

I would download a copy of Knopix. It is a free Linux operating system that can be run from a CD. It can read NTFS formatted hard drives. It boots and runs from a CD. Shut down the computer, remove the CD, and reboot and you are back to your original OS.

Also look at

They have a DOS program (free) that will read NTFS drives.

Like I said before....

get easyrecovery professional

it has worked every time I've used it, even on disks with physically damaged sectors

Isn't cheap, but works great

-Tom

Thats what its starting to sound like, more and more. Either a bad drive cable, or a bad drive controller chip. Or a rapidly fading FAT table.

Reseat your drive cables, or replace (they are cheap) and if it crops up again...either try another drive controller care (turn off onboard controller), or replace drive with a known good one.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Sorry to be blunt, but:

1. Learn from your mistakes
2. Back up your freaking data regularly if it's important.

As far as your immediate problem, lots of good programs were posted here in the last week that should help with your problem. Obviously, don't let Windows format the drive. Find one of the programs mentioned here that talk specifically about your situation, & pay the man for the software.

...and FFS, buy a CD-R or DVD-R drive and start backing up your stuff. Windows, being Windows, will eat data from time to time.

I've been using DFSee to recover NTFS drives and partitions,

Registered users can get help from the author via newsgroups or email. I've had several instances where Windows nailed the partition tables and boot sectors on my 250 G work drives, I was able to recreate them and recover my data with little or no loss. The author now provides a bootable CD disk image to registered users so even if the machine is in a nonbootable condition, you can poke around on the disks.

Downside is you HAVE to know what you are doing, patching disk structures isn't for the tyro. The DFSee author has a number of tutorial links on his site, these may or may not be enough to help you out. He's made the latest versions a lot easier to use with menus, before, it was strictly a command-line thing. You can use the program to clone a drive so you can noodle around without messing with the original, one way to develop the knowledge. Takes about a day and a half to clone a 250 G drive, just did it last weekend.

Stan

I'd suspect the power supply or something in his environment - flaky printer, AC power, hot room, flaky monitor, something.

Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin

-- Posted via NewsDemon.com - Premium Uncensored Newsgroup Service ------->>>>>>

Generally, windows only break when you thow something at them. Same is true of XP, by and large.

Put another (new) drive in its place, and rebuild it from your backups.

If you don't have backups, you most likely have just got lesson #1 of computer work: backup early and backup often. Most people don't need more than one such lesson.

Ontrack (ontrack.com) is a big dog in the data recovery business. These days they seem to have application you can d/l and run to analyze the data and show what can be recovered. If you think it's worth it you pay (ISTR $79).

Years ago a client of mine paid Ontrack $4000 to recover financial data from a failed server disk rather than put a daily tape in the tape drive I set up for him (and he paid for).

Good advice, but not limited to Windows. Hard drives fail, software screws up and power hits wreak havoc. In my experience (over 20 years), there is no statistically significant difference between MS-DOS, Windows, Unix (including Linux), VMS, or any other OS when it comes to data loss. RAID and mirrored drives are not immune. It happens. Be prepared.

For important data, use a rotating set of removable media with at least one copy kept off-site in case of fire, flood, theft, etc. A safe deposit box is good off-site storage for individuals and small business.

-Ron

Well, his loss seems to be OS related in this case.

Of course. I didn't mean to imply that other OS's don't need backups and archives - I do my important data regularly on my own systems.

Or even at a trusted relative or neighbor's house. I use CD-R or DVD-R (depending on the platform), keep the most recent disk on-site in a secure fire-protected location, and keep older copies offsite at my parents' house. The one on-site is the backup, the old backups become the archive.

Media is cheap. Lost data is not.

[ ... ]

Just be sure that the person entrusted with the backups knows how to safely store them.

Once, many years back, when I was doing the membership and mailing list for a local folklore organization, I used to bring the latest set of backups (8" floppies at that time, one for the data, and one for the programs) to the president of the organization. Once, I got the previous set back looking somewhat like small pillows. It turns out that he had stored them in the big "glove compartment" in the back of his station wagon -- in a Washington DC summer. The heat melted the creases out of the jackets.

Just out of curiosity, I tried surgically removing the floppies from their jackets and installing them in the jackets of other, already dead, floppies. Amazingly enough, I could still read everything on the floppies -- but I am very glad that I did not have to use those to recover data.

Later versions moved to 9-track reel-to-reel tapes, and eventually, QIC-150 tapes before the process moved to someone who was willing to use a Windows box and software to operate things. (And that was a painful conversion. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.