I F*CKING HATE WINDOWS!!!

RichA3Turbo

RichA3Turbo

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My C: drive was running a bit low on space, but i had forgotten, so i extracted a reasonably large zip file to my desktop... i turn away for a second, and i hear a beep... OC restarted itself mid way through extraction... I try everything i can possibly do to get the thing abck into windows, but it wont have any of it... it was gone. i thought 'Ok, annoying but not a big deal' i try to install windows over the top, but it wont let me cos there is not enough space. again, not a big deal. I put in a empty HDD and install windows on that, and then put the main HDD in as a slave. in wondows, try to access the old C: drive and it wont allow it...cant access it. the file system has gone! its completely [censored]. Im hoping the drive itself is ok. its a 120gb drive...the C: partition was 25gb and the rest was my backup. THe backup side of it is fine...no problems at all. So, i've lost all my emails, all my documents from the last 6 months, saved games that i had got very far in (im WELL P*SSED AT THAT!!!!! 78/111 level of NFS Underground! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif) and god knows what else was on there. Luckily, the majority of the important stuff is on my backup (which ive also backed up now!) and im using recovery software to see if i can get ANYTHING back, but its not looking promising. As i said.. F*CKING WINDOWS!

A very annoyed Rich!
 
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
OC restarted itself mid way through extraction...

[/ QUOTE ]

Just cant think what OC is at the mo?

Sorry mate - trying to understand the cause of the problem a bit better. Didnt meant to be so insensitive. I've been there but its a good way of getting your inbox down!!

Hope its not a harddrive failure? Do you have heat problems. lots of accesses?

Just for the future - too late now.. keep all your user files on a seperate partition and if possible drive. eg you outlook.dat etc. bit of a pain when you first install, but well worth it. You sound like you know your stuff already, but in case anybody else if reading.

And you join the ever-growing list of A3/S3 owners up here suffering new year setbacks!!

Hope its a recoverable situ.

Cheers
 
[ QUOTE ]
IanL-S3 said:
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
OC restarted itself mid way through extraction...

[/ QUOTE ]

Just cant think what OC is at the mo?

Sorry mate - trying to understand the cause of the problem a bit better. Didnt meant to be so insensitive. I've been there but its a good way of getting your inbox down!!

Hope its not a harddrive failure? Do you have heat problems. lots of accesses?

Just for the future - too late now.. keep all your user files on a seperate partition and if possible drive. eg you outlook.dat etc. bit of a pain when you first install, but well worth it. You sound like you know your stuff already, but in case anybody else if reading.

And you join the ever-growing list of A3/S3 owners up here suffering new year setbacks!!

Hope its a recoverable situ.

Cheers


[/ QUOTE ]

Ian, not insensitive at all... Just not sure what you meant by OC... If you did mean OS, then its XP Pro.

I've got each HDD (2) in removable caddyy's each with its own fan so i shouldnt think heat was a problem. If it was a HDD failure, i think the backup partition would be inaccessible too?

Most of my files are backed up on the other partition, but its the more recent stuff that isnt. I have to figure out what i've actually lost. Still scanning the disk with recovery software to see if i can recover anything.

Thanks

Rich
 
[ QUOTE ]
DickyS3 said:
Sorry here about this Rich, it is really annoying! I think Rich ment to type OS instead of OC???

I've just built my new system and I have purchased a second hard disk and installed it into one of those external hard drive caddy's. Every now and then I just slide the disk into the system and ghost the whole primary drive onto the second drive (backup disk). If the primary drive goes tits up then all I do is plug in the backup drive and boot from this one, bringing the system back up immediately!

May be worth looking at Rich? I went down the caddy route to ensure the backup disk wasn't plugged in (powered) all the time. This will reduce wear on the drive and will also protect the disk in the event of power surges etc. The last thing you want is your second (backup) disk being trashed the same time as your primary drive!

Rich.

[/ QUOTE ]

I Ghosted the system back in august when i installed windows .etc. So i can get it all back easily. Just re-instate the backup, but thats not accounting for emails, documents, music, videos .etc .etc I need to have a regular backup somehow cos its so damn furstrating when this happens!

Rich
 
Ah OS! Doh! Should have realised!

Sounds like you are on the case in terms of self-recovery.

If is a hd failure - you can recover most of the data - however it is expensive (in the order of a few hundred quid - think audi labour charges!), so it is probably worthwhile working out if the data is that valuable.

There are quite a few very good backup solutions out there. but not having the cash for IT where i work, i just use
1)off line folders / briefcase type setup - so everytime i connect my laptop to work network it syncs everything - not great has a few bugs but still its free and easy
2) XCOPY is the other. With the right switches provides a simple back up solution. I use xcopy \\ashxp0001\data\ashgill\*.* \\ashxp0002\ashgill\*.* /S /F /Y /D /c
And every once in a while i delete the destination and do a full copy again. There a type of "COPY" which will delete files in the destination if they dont exist in the source. But i dont really need the space that badly.

I'm not in IT for 5 years now - so what hot and whats not i couldnt tell you in the backup world. I'm an expert on NTBackup though /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Best of Luck mate
 
Oh and i meant to say with XCOPY just create it in a batch file and add it you RUN Key in the registry. So it runs everytime you reboot. The good thing about this is that it should catch most of the files that will be 'open' when you start Outlook etc. Unless you have them all as auto-starting!

And you could also run it scheduled at 3am for example if you leave you computer on.

Pipe everything to a nice log file and voila. cheap and nasty backups.

It will take a while first time, but after than it is pretty quick and not very processor intensive.

Hope you've made a breakthrough at your end.

cheers

Ian
 
Deep breaths, deep breaths. As long as you havent done a full format on the OS drive then you should be able to recover everything on it. Best of luck. Its interesting how windows doesnt prevent you from filling the disk to the point of failure though???
 
S4sh -Have you had experience of filling the system disk on XP to failure before?

Just interested as its something that was never the case with NT.

Rich - before you format you old drive. Can you put it back in the original config. And boot with a bootfloppy and access the c:drive that way?. I'm not up on master/slave setup (is it only a jumper switch to change0?
 
[ QUOTE ]
CJ B6 2.0 said:
Was it XP on the hdd that crashed or a later OS?

[/ QUOTE ]

XP Pro
 
If you boot up using the XP disk. THen when you get to the point where it says installing new os press R and go into the recovery console
once in there you might want to type "Help"
this will give you a list of commands which you can use to help you repair the hdd.
I think what you should try is repair the MBR (Master Boot Record)
There is another option to do with the boot table or something which should be fixed. Then try to reboot mate and see what happens.
 
CJ: Once i've recovered as much as i can, i will give it a go. If not, its done and i will format and start again.

Marc: No! Apples are good, but cant run games, and software compatibilities are crap.

Rich
 
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
Marc: No! Apples are good, but cant run games, and software compatibilities are crap.

Rich

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I have Halo for mine and it works quite well and they are about to release Doom 3. I have the full MS Office Suite and have never had any trouble with compatability. And the best thing is, it works!
 
[ QUOTE ]
marctwo said:
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
Marc: No! Apples are good, but cant run games, and software compatibilities are crap.

Rich

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I have Halo for mine and it works quite well and they are about to release Doom 3. I have the full MS Office Suite and have never had any trouble with compatability. And the best thing is, it works!

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough.
 
Apples are fantastic i can barely use one being a windoze man but for multimedia and sound there is nothing better out there! They do work well and rarely brake down but just not as user friendly as a pc. Maybe when they become more mainstream and get some of the bigger developers behind them will we see a shift in the balance between Apple and Microsoft but thats a long long way away!
 
Hi rich, when i say format i meant doing a full NTFS format from the CD Boot install screen. Usually doing a format in window etc like you said doesnt actually delete the file info.
Sometimes the MBR gets corrupted if the crash happened in the middle of a file operation which is why the drive appears unreadable. As well as file recovery look into MBR recovery as well, may help.
All the best.
 
I already told him to repair the MBR read the last couple of posts. Richoe dont format anything mate otherwise YOU WILL LOSE the lot! s4sh the guy wants to try and recover some of his work please dont give advice like that which will wipe his drive. Thanks
 
[ QUOTE ]
s4sh said:
Hi rich, when i say format i meant doing a full NTFS format from the CD Boot install screen. Usually doing a format in window etc like you said doesnt actually delete the file info.
Sometimes the MBR gets corrupted if the crash happened in the middle of a file operation which is why the drive appears unreadable. As well as file recovery look into MBR recovery as well, may help.
All the best.

[/ QUOTE ]

Its not looking great... even the fil recovery software which is great in the past, cant read the drive properly... Its very strange indeed. I've weighed it up and i've just started a format on the drive. Once windows can see it again, i will try the file recovery again, and if not, then ive lost what i had on there. Its not a huge deal, more of an irritation to be honest!

Rich
 
CJ B6 2.0, i wasnt telling him to format his hard drive i was clarifiying a point made in an earlier post by rich regarding a comment i made (its hard to express vocal tone in an post)
. Sorry if it sounded like i was asking you to format Rich.

Generally doing file operations on a drive that he you are trying to recover data from is a big no no, i wouldnt go deleting files (cookies) etc, that the worst thing you can do.

PS with apples, pray to god nothing ever goes wrong with them. Has anyone here who owns an apple had to replace a motherboard or some other compoenent in the case?
Apple dont believe in their customers upgrading components, they want you to buy a completely new system. Hence the ~ £400 cost of a new g4 mobo (this doesnt include the cost of labour that you have to pay an authorised apple repair centre to replace the mobo for you).

 
audi upgrades
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
Im using XP so its primarily NTFS. I cant get into windows AT ALL... No way will work... its completely screwed. My plan was to install windows on my other HDD, boot from that, and then go in and clean the main HDD out and then it would work...no such luck! So here i am.

Rich

[/ QUOTE ]


Oh man!

I feel for ya Rich...

You know what, I had exactly the same trouble with my PC right after Christmas, I think I remember telling you in one of my mails Rich...

I'd had a bit of trouble with it since building the new system a few months ago and it never really cleared up, would run ChkDsk every other bootup or so but would then run fine and be ok for a few days until it happened again...

The funny thing is, I used the Backup/Restore facility in WinXP to backup all my stuff the day before it finally bit the bullet. So I thought I'd be ok... wrong!

To cut a long story short, after trying every method known to man, including the Restore Console in the WinXP setup (THAT was crap, it couldn't even detect my HDD, only the other slave drive. Couldn't even pick it up when I disconnected the slave.) and System Restore didn't want to know, I had to resort to getting a mate to put the disk in his machine, do a Low Level Format and start again.

Same situtation, I lost all my e-mails, pictures etc. etc. that I didn't really NEED but WANTED. Damn inconvenient!

To top it all off, when I tried using the Backup I had made to Restore the now new operating system to it's previous state it completely f*cked it up! Which meant I had to format and re-install the OS about 4 or 5 times before I decided it was completely dead... damn man, I was fuming! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/burningmad.gif

The other thing with that crappy Restore facility is, it will only Back up about 1Gig of your stuff... what a crock of sh*te! It's still on there but I dare not try restoring it again. I'm still pi**ed off with it cos the system is still behaving the way it did before it snuffed it. ChkDsk every few days. No idea what's wrong with it. Could be duff Mem boards but I'm guessing...

Hope you get it sorted Rich, it'll make me feel a bit better if one of us managed it!

Cheers

T
 
[ QUOTE ]
CJ B6 2.0 said:
I think what you should try is repair the MBR (Master Boot Record)
There is another option to do with the boot table or something which should be fixed. Then try to reboot mate and see what happens.

[/ QUOTE ]


I tried that too, made the disk unbootable... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/burningmad.gif
 
Guys i realise this is off no consolation to those of you who have lost so much time and data "due to windows" but let me draw a few comparisions....*this was told to me by a tutor when i had a similar experience when i was a IT student.

The reason corporates use Dell, Compaq, etc is because they are like Audi, Merc, BMW. Expensive when you compare with other manufacturers. But having run IT departments using Compaq's which were doing serious number crunching all day everyday..i would swear by quality components.

So when you buy hard disks, memory ,raid controllers etc a) are they tested with XP? b) And are they quality products? and c) do they work together
i like epinions and ebuyer for reviews. there are plenty more.

You cant just buy any turbo for any engine analogy and if you were to put cheap parts into your Audi's and other things went wrong you wouldn't blame the car/windows

Inherently XP is pretty stable. As good as NT with SP5 in my experience. In fact my PC has been running 24hours a day for 6months with a reboot every 2 weeks - due to badly written software running on it.

Never use software RAID. If you want raid use an external controller. Saying that i'm trying Apples OSX implementation at the mo! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I have never put my own system together because i couldn't be 100% all the components are compatible. would rather pay somebody 50quid to build and test it for me after spec'ing it.

Take as much care of you computer as you do of your car and you'll have few problems. Watch my laptop die as i post this!!


 
It appears something is wrong with the disk. I removed the partitions, rebooted. Partitions were gone. Good!

So i try and put them back...uh.. no. wont let me! It wont verify the drive integrity!?

So i boot from Win2K cd, and put in the partitions that way. No problem.

Try to format the disk, it wont let me! Get to like 2% and then stops...

What the hell?!!

Rich
 
Does the BIOS recognise the drive if so are you setting it up as a slave properly. Then try using admin utilities in XP and doing format that way. If not you might have to try to fdisk it and format c: /s to see if you have any luck.
 
What does the /S do? I tried /U with no luck. Couldnt format it in windows either.

Rich
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
RichA3Turbo said:
Marc: No! Apples are good, but cant run games, and software compatibilities are crap.

Rich

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I have Halo for mine and it works quite well and they are about to release Doom 3. I have the full MS Office Suite and have never had any trouble with compatability. And the best thing is, it works!

[/ QUOTE ]

I use with both, usually at the same time (1 Mac, 1 PD and a laptop - it gets interesting and makes me look like god in the office! heheh). Both have their ups and downs, general use it would be a PC all the way, graphics would be a mac. I really like the look of the new mini mac, cool as!

Sorry that's off the subject there Rich - I read most of the thread, but not in great depth, is it possible the primary disc has a scratch on it? I hope not and u get it sorted one way or the other - at least you got what you NEEDED saved in backup though fella /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Rob
 
Problem solved. Used a Maxtor utility and did a complete low level format which took 15 hours and re-writes the MBR and 'zeros' the whole hard disk so its good as new. And it is... all fine and dandy now. Still lost stuff though /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Yeah i have version 9 at work ,have it installed on one of our test servers but i have never actually used it so know ****** all about it but i must say it looks very nice!
 
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