PC restored to factory settings..HELP!!!

Lex Luthor

Yesterday evening, while my PC was booting up, I got an error message saying file SYSTEM.INI could not be found. Please Insert system disk and retry....something along those lines.
Couldn't find a disk so I found a System CD.
Put it in and re-booted.
Came up with 2 options, boot from Hard Drive or CD, so I selected CD.
Many options came up....can't remember them but some were to do with formatting hard drive....I STAYED WELL CLEAR OF THEM.
Picked something along the lines of restore pc to factory settings...in hind sight now it probably wasn't a good idea, but I thought it would juest set the desktop up like factory, and I could start setting it up again with the way it was.
When it did what it was supposed to do, everything on my hard drive disappeared. :eek: It's like a virgin PC straight out of the box.
Now I know my hard drive is an 80GB drive and the pc in Explorer is showing it only has 53GB...would I be right in thinking the other 27GB is what I had previously and it's missing in there somewhere and is recoverable? PLEASE SAY YES?
ANY HELP PLEASE..........DESPERATE.
I have 5 yrs of info on this PC with all my kids pictures and videos and tax info going back also.
I hope it's recoverable...

I tried to do a System Restore, but it has nothing saved before the error.

newgrange

It 'may' have put your files in a seperate partition, but there is a strong possibility it has written over them.

I would take it to a good computer shop/expert and see can they retrieve stuff for you. If it 'is' in a new partition this will be easy enough, if it's been deleted and over-written it will be more difficult.

As always, the value of backup is demonstrated, in fact your story has prompted me to do a proper backup today, not that that helps you, I know.

Try not to use the PC too much before you take it to the shop/expert.
Sorry for your troubles.

Lex Luthor

Thanks Newgrange.....that's what I was thinking I'd have to do.
I immediately got up this morning and backed up my laptop for work.

zoro

Why do I have a horrible feeling that that 53GB is the upper limit for a partition space in XP/2000 pre-SP2?

I remember having a similar problem with my external harddrive (200gig) until I upgraded to SP2. Repartitioning it into smaller drives also worked fine - but I wouldn't hold much for that theory of the restore somehow "saving" your files in a separate partition.
Those "factory restore" cd's are only to be used in emergencies, or when you're sure that you just want to restart with a clean slate - Your best bet is to recover some of the data that hasn't been overwritten, so don't install or download anything until you get the machine looked at by a professional

Good luck

Lex Luthor

It's Windows ME

zoro

Well then good luck - I haven't heard of support for big hard drives in Me. I may be wrong - and I hope so

KdjaCL

Do not pay more than €70 for nothing less than a full recovery.

Restore discs usually do a quick format.

To recover your data the drive must come out and get put into another pc, using certain software to recover the data DO NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF unless you have added the HD to another pc.

If you try this whlst only 1 Hd in the machine your data will soon be gone.

Then the software will read previous layers so to speak of the HD finding all files ever written to it, some will be recoverable some will not. More often than not files over 5mb are the hardest to recover so text/word/excel/jpegs etc usually come back.

Its not hard to do but PC World and the like will give you 3 answers.
"cant be done"
"€350" and then proceed to **** up your HD even more
"It direct do that"

kdjac

zoro

KdjaC wrote:

Its not hard to do but PC World and the like will give you 3 answers.
"cant be done"
"€350" and then proceed to **** up your HD even more
"It direct do that"

ROFL

The man speaks wisely about self-recovery .. don't do it yourself, and if you do, then get another HD to do it from

Lex Luthor

Ok guys, so you are saying, STAY away from PC world and find a better alternative....any suggestions in the Dublin/Nth Kildare area?

I hope you're right about the smaller files being easier to recover, the ones I want are mostly spreadsheets, but I would like to be able to recover my music collection that has taken me nearly 3yrs to load up...

I had gotten a suggestion to use a file called Free undelete, but if you say not to try it without being in another PC, then I'll stop NOW.

d22ontour

Lex Luthor wrote:

stop NOW.

Do that, you cannot recover files from a HD whislt using the HD (makes sense if you think about it) Think of it this way , you have a dirty glass of water you want the water clean, you cant do it with only one glass.

It has to be secondary drive to recover from.

Easy Recovery Pro is the best tool for this but HD must be seperate.

SparrowHawk

Hi,

I used PC Hospital in Dublin (nr. Stephens Green Center) for laptop repair (not related to HD recovery). He had a lot of boxes there - & said most were there for data recovery - maybe an indication of how good he is?

I use Disk Commander from WinInternals - it sames to have had it name changed, but it got me out of a serious hole.

Hope it's of some help.

SH

McClane

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Lex Luthor

McClane wrote:

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

Question for you on this file.....can I put this file on my USB backup HDD and run the appliaction from there and apply it to my PC HDD? Or does the PC HDD still have to be setup as a slave?

KdjaCL

Lex Luthor wrote:

Question for you on this file.....can I put this file on my USB backup HDD and run the appliaction from there and apply it to my PC HDD? Or does the PC HDD still have to be setup as a slave?

If youi run it from there its still being run by windows which is on the buggered drive.


kdjac

Lex Luthor

I ran recovermyfiles.exe last night and the results were not great. I didn't see anything I recognised...I'm starting to fear the worse

I ran the System CD this morning just as far as I went the other night before I started the restoration and the option I chose was "To Restore your System Backup Image"

Also, checked the hard drv last night and its actually saying its a 55GB drive with 60+,000MB....I'm having doubts now as to whether I got a 80GB drive....I can't find the receipt and now think all I got was a 60GB drive...

Looks like I'm doomed......at least all the pictures I had were scans of the originals....they may have taken 5 yrs to put in, but at least I have the originals somewhere..same for the videos...they came from a tape somewhere that I had the sense not to write over. I had paper copies of all my tax returns filed away....still doesn't take the pain away that 5yrs of work gone down the pan.

Blub2k4

It is pretty standard that these restore disks put a ghost image ( or other imaging) software so that you do indeed have a very clean disk when it restarts.
You will not have a lot of luck recovering stuff would be my fear.
There is a possibility if you use a piece of software called "Encase" which is what the cops use to track pedofiles and other such forensic work on a pc.http://www.guidancesoftware.com/

I would not hold out a lot of hope for your stuff as it was not just a standard recover which you did as in reinstalling.

If it is worth a lot to you then you could always contact www.ontrack.com and they can no doubt help, but that comes at a pretty steep price, normally too steep for home stuff.

Good luck.

Lex Luthor

Well, I've almost resigned myself to the fact that I've lost the contents of my hard drive, so I'm thinking now would be a good time to upgrade my OS to something a little more stable.

I'm not a fan of the querky graphics & colours associated with XP, but I have Win 2000 on work laptop and have never had issues with it.

Any suggestions?