1984 Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 So last night i downloaded a page defrager that i found (either here or ccleaner-cant remember which) and i restarted my computer afterwards, and blank! no windows! couldnt find it for the life of me! spent a couple of hours dinking around, so finally just said f it and put all new windows in. i guess my comp has a version of windows stored somewhere within it, so it wasnt that hard (though my first time personally) putting windows on a comp. have spent all day installing drivers, programs, fixing settings, etc. the only thing that bothers me is that i lost some great pictures of the kids that were transfered from my camera over the last couple of months that i didnt get around to burning. everything else is replaceable but those are priceless. :( Quote
Administrator Tarun Posted January 9, 2006 Administrator Posted January 9, 2006 Noticed you hadn't been on; sorry to hear this happened. Do you happen to know what the application was called? I'll try and gather some Undelete applications so you can try to recover those pictures (hopefully!) Here's some data recovery links. Active@ File Recovery BadCopy Pro GetDataBack for NTFS PC Inspector File Recovery ...More Quote
1984 Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 Stuff happens. It was: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html that i used. Usually after installing something new, i cclean, and then restart. Just a habit. I cant see how it was that program, but it happened right after that. anyhow, thanks for the info, i will try some of those- hope i can get the pics back-they were stored in picasso. by the way, it was VERY convenient having your anti malware package here for download, and (coincidentally), the freeware list all here-saved me a bunch of time. special thanks to yourself, capman for doing the freeware list, and (once again) djlizard. when i went to install the disk that came with my soundcard, it wouldnt install (for whatever reason). on a hunch, i tried dial a fix by dj, and **** it if it didnt fix things up and i installed the card! i dont know what it did, but man it worked! it took me all day and a bit of last night, but im almost there..... Quote
corjello Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 sorry to hear about this, what exactly does page defrag do? I dont want to run into the same problem you did! )corjello( Quote
1984 Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 I dont know. I just thought it would help speed things up. I guess computers are like cars-regular wear and tear, and sometimes they crash! :( except for the pictures, everything is reinstalled and configured the way i want it. just have to log into a few forums and maybe defrag, but otherwise everything is cool. i actually learned a few things in the process, so it wasnt all for nothing. :shocking: Quote
Sniper Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 Hey LOTW, Here is a site with some demo programs for file recovery. If you can't recover the pics from the computer, they have a program that may let you get them from your camera card. LC Tech Quote
greenknight Posted January 9, 2006 Posted January 9, 2006 That's terrible! I had something like that happen to me once, so I know just how upsetting that is. In my case, when I tried to boot up, I got a message that the file <windows root>\system32\hal.dll was missing or corrupted, repair or reinstall it. That problem (a bad boot.ini file) resisted all attempts at repair, had to reinstall WinXP. I think it's very unlikely that PageDefrag caused the problem you had, it's a widely used and highly recommended app. In researching it before I installed it, and again just now, I couldn't find a single case where it caused any harm to anyone's system. Did you just download it, or did you actually set it to run? The way that program works, it doesn't remain installed on your system. During the blue-screen phase of the boot-up, it installs, defragments, and uninstalls. So if nothing happened when you tried to boot, it never even got a chance to install. But anyway, the most important thing now is to recover what files you can. Good luck with that, I hope it goes well. Later you can try to puzzle out what went wrong. Quote
1984 Posted January 9, 2006 Author Posted January 9, 2006 page defrag ran once upon reboot, and then after i rebooted again, nadda. i didnt think it could be that program, but it was the last thing i did before black screen death. other than the pictures, everything is back and running. i couldnt find my xp pro disk, so just used the xp home built in to the comp. i have yet to try the programs listed in this thread, but i will try them out to see if i can find my pics. :shocking: Quote
1984 Posted January 10, 2006 Author Posted January 10, 2006 i never realized that my computer had a built in xp when i bought it. i bought it directly from ibm, and it didnt come with a physical xp home disk. Quote
1984 Posted January 10, 2006 Author Posted January 10, 2006 etrust started my year over again. :shocking: Quote
Synapse Posted January 10, 2006 Posted January 10, 2006 sorry to hear that lotw! i suggest the tool PC Inspector that Tarun posted. I've used it before and recovered around 500 pictures off my sisters old hard drive. @rr, being an XP Home user here, on 3 of the 4 computers in my household... i can say XP Home SUCKS! lol. but this is only because i do more then the average home user. for example, i can't make a domain nor Join a domain on XP Home, I can't set permissions of files (without the use of a 3rd party tool) I can't make my server have permission shared folders (ie.. make a folder for you that only you can access on the network.. unless you're physically at the server).. etc.. Quote
greenknight Posted January 10, 2006 Posted January 10, 2006 i never realized that my computer had a built in xp when i bought it. i bought it directly from ibm, and it didnt come with a physical xp home disk. Pretty crummy they don't give you an XP Home disk with the machine, then if XP breaks you're just screwed. Gotta go buy the OS again, even though you already bought it once when you bought the computer. Here's the address to send a PageDefrag bug report: mark@sysinternals.com Quote
Administrator Tarun Posted January 10, 2006 Administrator Posted January 10, 2006 Pretty crummy they don't give you an XP Home disk with the machine, then if XP breaks you're just screwed. Gotta go buy the OS again, even though you already bought it once when you bought the computer. Here's the address to send a PageDefrag bug report: mark@sysinternals.com It sounds like they did what Gateway now does. They put it on a recovery partition and you press a certain key on boot to "recover". Quote
1984 Posted January 10, 2006 Author Posted January 10, 2006 It sounds like they did what Gateway now does. They put it on a recovery partition and you press a certain key on boot to "recover". <{POST_SNAPBACK}> thats exactly it. Quote
Administrator Tarun Posted January 10, 2006 Administrator Posted January 10, 2006 thats exactly it. I hate and despise it. I'm trying to see if you can burn a recovery cd/dvd, then trash the "recovery partition". I've called and complained several times and told them I want a recovery cd/dvd. But they just offer a replacement hard drive. Idiots. :\ Quote
Synapse Posted January 10, 2006 Posted January 10, 2006 if i had the knowledge of computers that i have now back when i had my HP 310n.. I would still have my recovery partition.. I wanted to try linux, so i got out my redhat 9 cd's.. didn't know what that partition was so i deleted it... so now i'm using a...... "modified"...... version of windows on my server lol. Quote
1984 Posted January 11, 2006 Author Posted January 11, 2006 yeah i agree tarun. if i could, i would rather have a disk. bio, if i knew 4 years ago what i knew now, i would not have bought my comp from ibm in a package like i did. i spent 2 grand 4 years ago and got 40 g hg, 2000 mhz and 256 ram with a basic system. have added stuff since, but i probably could have got better for the same price. but i didnt even know what a gigabyte was back then......lol Quote
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