OT - Computer help

Have you ran scandisk on the drive? It sounds like the FAT (File Allocation Table) is messed up. I am running SP2 both at work and at home, and i have not ran into any issues yet...I have been running it for over a month now, and no issues. Anyways, are you sure you didnt have a virus?

Not yet. It's using the NTFS file system btw. No virus, I'm pretty sure of it.

///Mike TS #63

Isn't XP a NTFS OS? Probly can do FAT32 also but Iwould think NTFS owuld be the default., Check disk would be the ntfs version of scan disk.

Dave

So how do I run check disk on the trouble drive?

///Mike TS #63

you can also do this from start\run Dave

I'm having issues with SP2 also. Stupid POS made my 'puter way slower and I can't run any streaming media through mediaplayer anymore. It just won't run.

Update: Although the drive appears to be empty in My Computer, after examining it with a couple of different data recorvery progs, it's all there, I just can't recover it. The programs are Freeware and require you to buy in order to recover. GetDataBack is one of them. So, looks like i'm screwed for now as I'll have to buy another HD at least 100g to save all data to and have a recovery program to actually recover.

F-ing Microsoft :-(

///Mike TS #63

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (TurboMike) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m16.aol.com:

You should check out a newsgroup like alt.binaries.test...I have a feeling versions of those programs (one for FAT, one for NTFS w/keygens) might be posted soon. This way you can really evaluate the software

Sort by author...look for tessterr...

Gotcha..

///Mike TS #63

Mike, remove the hard drive from the box and install it in another NT/XP machine (should be NTFS) as a slave or 2nd drive. You might be able to copy files from your HD to wherever (network or other HD). If the file allocation table's fried, then you'll have to get a disk recovery utility. Of course, if you don't care about losing stuff, then just reformat the HD and start all over.

I've found that when you do the SP2 install, it's good to deactivate everything that's running on your computer first (firewall, spyware, virus, etc.), and also whatever wants to run from SP2 (firewall, security, etc.). You can turn stuff on later if you want. I've installed SP2 on three boxes so far with no problems. They're all Intel boxes though - haven't done an AMD yet.

Good luck!

Joe Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (TurboMike) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m16.aol.com:

Nope. They show up as empty.

Yup, data's there, just can't recover it until I find a utility that is either free, or "otherwise available"

Everything I have ever saved is there. 160gb worth. Gonna buy some sort of a backup system after this fiasco is over with :-(

///Mike TS #63

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (TurboMike) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m16.aol.com:

Yeah, experience is the best teacher, right? So break down and buy a recovery util along with a new 160GB HD. Don't do your old HD until you load Windows (with all the patches including SP2) onto the new HD. Get the machine up and running so it's current and then do the util on your old HD. Once your old HD is readable, copy whatever you need to the new HD and reformat the old HD. Then you can use the old HD as a backup drive. The whole thing's a huge PITA, but all problems (including backups) will be solved once you go through it.

Joe Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC

I was at my mom's house when my stepfather crashed his Gateway real bad installing SP2. It wouldn't boot to *anything*... just kept rebooting over and over. Gateway techs couldn't help him and he had to dump everything and start over. At least the techs got him to a command prompt where he could unload his pictures to a zip disk or something.

I'm running an AMD Athlon @ 2GHz... no problems whatsoever with the SP2 install (XP Home). Nothing's slow, nothing eventful happened. It would be transparent if it weren't for the pop-up blocker and OE blocking pictures from e-mail. I did have to configure the security window to shut off the warnings for firewall and virus protection as I have a hardware firewall and never have had virus software.

I believe the other AMD box that I built (Athlon running at around 1.3GHz) has gone through the SP2 install (also XP Home) as well with no problems.

JS

That's the plan I suppose. Don't think I'll be doing the SP2 thing though. That's what f'ed the whole mess up in the first place :-)

///Mike TS #63

That's EXACTLY what mine did. Mine is the AMD 2600+ running on an ASUS board and 512 RAM. Built it myself and it's ran flawlesly since I put it together. Problem is that I have a 20g hd in it now so tha tI could reinstall XP and get it back up. Can't exactly copy 160gb of crap onto a 20gb hd :-) So...it's off to buy another HD I suppose.

///Mike TS #63

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 23:59:06 +0000, TurboMike rearranged some electrons to form:

Try Linux. It's Microcrap free.

David M (dmacchiarolo)

You'll probably have to - Microsoft will probably make that first and foremost for any other Windows Updates in the future.

Do it on a clean system without everything else running and you should be fine. After my stepfather reinstalled, his SP2 install went flawlessly.

JS

Or ask on the SS Forums :p