Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and harddrive

WinXP Corrupt (this is news?) ...Desktop Disaster in Process

FauxScot — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:42:02 -0800

Win XP corrupted system and SAM files... disaster in process, need expert input and recommendation for a data recovery service I can trust. My backup strategy is to clone my hard drive periodically. Last time I did it in April, Windows told me I had changed hardware configurations too often and made me 'reauthorize' my installation, which I did, but with some trepidation.

This month, prior to installing some new development software, I went to do my normal tricks and while I am not sure what happened, after Windows asked me to reauthorize, apparently the operation did not complete.

Now, my backup is a broken and faithful version of my hard drive, and neither boot. Windows reports that the file \windows\system32\config\system is corrupt.

If I replace the system and SAM files with the last version I had, I have a computer that is a snapshot of my 4/2009 computer, with all the recent info that I stored on the desktop gone. If I were not in a quite literal frenzy of activity, I would simply tolerate this and go on, but the last four months have been a blizzard of work, and I am thinking that my only hope of recovering a lot of creative work is to send the drive out to a data recovery service.

I've only been experimenting with one of the two drives, so I do have one that has not been tampered with. I don't use restore points, and usually do this backup thing monthly, as it requires disassembly of my desktop machine, and I know I've been living on borrowed time, but that's life. The issue for today is recovery; punishment will come later!

The questions are:

Has anyone else here ever done this and how did you recover?

Who has the best (not cheapest, BEST) recovery service (with bonus points for Boston or NYC),

Secondary question:

In WinXP, where does the 'desktop' live... in the system file or SAM file? (It is there where a bunch of my most valuable files live.) XP needs both the SAM and system files to boot. Any way to extract its content if the OS won't boot?

Thanks in advance for uber tech advice....

Losing my hard-drive virginity

alona — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:14:56 -0800

n00bfilter: formatting hard drive, need all the help I can get! Specifically with Windows XP. everything inside... So I have a nice computer that is about 5 years old and is in dire need of a fresh start. I'm relatively tech-savvy but have never done this before.

Here is what I need:
1. My brother formatted this computer sometime in the distant past, or did something, and for this reason my computer is running an unvalidated copy of Windows XP Pro. I do not have a windows installation cd. How do I get one without paying? (Maybe this is a politically incorrect question to be asking; if so, I apologize).

2. Because of the explained reasons, my computer doesn't have Office, and I would really like to have office after I reformat, how do I do this if I don't have a CD?

3. You guys probably have a lot more experience, so other than following a lot of internet guides, what should I know going into this? What problems might I encounter and how do I know how to handle them?

4. My house is linked up with a wireless router. My computer is hooked up via cable, but there is another laptop in the house that accesses the internet wirelessly. Will it be able to surf the web even while I format my desktop computer?

5. Related internet question: How problematic is it going to be to get the internet up and running again on the computer after I format? Specifically, what are the steps to getting reconnected to the web?

Important information:
I have 512mb installed memory, 80 gig hard drive, 2.4 gigahertz Pentium 4, I have my current XP version's CD key but as I mentioned it's not a legit copy and I don't have it on a cd.
I do have all the cds for the hardware that's currently connected to my computer (mainly my printer). Also used Belarc adviser to figure out everything I need, and burned all the stuff I want to back up onto DVDs.

So, now what?

Moving old data to a new drive

Zaximus — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:19:50 -0800

I am upgrading my PC and I have questions regarding transferring my data. This is probably a total newbie question but I can't seem to find a straight answer anywhere. I will be installing a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card, RAM, and 640GB hard drive into my case. I am planning on doing a clean install of XP and SP3 onto the new drive.

Once the new system boots up, I want to plug in my old 160GB HD (also SATA) and pick off all the files I want to keep, which would mostly be several gigs of music and the entirety of the My Documents folder. The old drive also has XP installed on it.

As long as I ensure that I boot up from the larger, newer HD, this should work fine, correct? Is there much risk involved in this process? If the total amount of data to be transferred is less than 10GB and I don't need to clone the entirety of the old disk and old OS, is there a safer way to go about this?

Thanks in advance.

Clean me up, Scotty!

rhoticity — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:47:51 -0800

What's the best way to erase my hard drive for resale if I don't have original OS reinstall CDs to work with? I have a 1.5 year old Dell laptop running Windows XP SP2 which I'm selling in the next couple of weeks (getting a Macbook... YESSSS). I'm going to make an attempt to sell it here on campus or through Craigslist before I try other methods, and so as soon as I transfer everything I want to keep over to my new computer, I want to clean the hard drive off as well as I can. The problem is that, in a misguided money-saving attempt when I first ordered the Dell, I did not request physical Windows XP reinstall CDs. Obviously I cannot just completely reformat the hard drive, then, since I will have no way of reinstalling the OS.. right? What do I do to get this thing ready to sell to a stranger?

For the record, there's nothing terribly "sensitive" on here, just personal/academic documents and photos, but I'd rather get it as clean as possible just in case some total weirdo gets a hold of it.

Any other tips on dealing with the less-than-stellar electronics resale market would also be appreciated.

XP unusably slow after STOP errors and running checkdisk - what's going on?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:29:42 -0800

So it's come to this - I see no other option than to ask a "help me fix my PC" question. After some troubleshooting the STOP errors seem to have been resolved, XP now boots successfully but is excruciating slow to the point of being unusable. Details and specs below the fold. Specifications:
-Intel Celeron 2.4GHz
-1 x 512 MB RAM
-XP Pro SP2
-PCI Firewire card
-onboard: USB 2.0, VIA Gigabit Ethernet adapter

IDE config:

1M: HD Maxtor 80 GB U-ATA
1S: empty
2M: DVD Burner
2S: DVD-ROM

First, the BIOS would occasionally fail to find the boot device (HD). Setting the primary master to "Not Installed" and rebooting, and then back to "Auto" remedied this for the time being.

Then a few days ago the machine started throwing a bunch of BSODs during normal operation. I recorded some of them for your viewing pleasure:

0x000000F4, 0x00000003, 0x829FF020, 0x829FF194 0xc000000E, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000, 0x05357000 0x0000007A (0XC03E1128, 0XC0000185, 0XF844A074, 0X08195860) ACPI.SYS 0x0000008E (0XC0000005, 0X8054AE34, 0XF6505BF4, 0X00000000)

Eventually XP wouldn't boot at all: system32/config was 'corrupted', or something along those lines. I assume this happened as a result of one of the STOP errors.

For some reason CHKDSK wouldn't run on this machine, so I took out the drive and ran CHKDSK on it with the drive attached to another machine. It did find a bunch of errors and corrected them all.

I put it back in its own box, and ran CHKDSK again from the Recovery Console (ran fine this time, and found no errors) and also a FIXBOOT for good measure.

Which brings us to the current situation. The system32/config error is gone, and Windows does boot, *but*:

-The XP splash screen fades in very slowly and seems halted here and there.
-Upon logon, the desktop background loads but no icons or taskbar appear.
-I can load explorer and systray via taskmgr, and sometimes they eventually load on their own without intervention, but this takes a *long* time. Somewhere in the ten minutes order of magnitude.

So technically speaking, Windows now runs, but it's so excruciatingly slow it's basically unusable.

Additional details:
-I have run a Spybot Search & Destroy scan: it found some threats and removed them. No new findings upon further boots and/or Spybot runs.
-I would scan for viruses, but I can't install AVG Free: I just removed the old 7.1 version (had to anyway as it was no longer supported), and the 7.5 installer happily skips from "pick a directory" to "Installation Complete!" but never seems to have touched a file at all! Doesn't even create the specified directory in Program Files.
-Network now also doesn't work. The Network Connections window says "Connected" but the machine receives no IP address nor lease from router. Router and rest of network are running fine.
-I tried System Restore with a variety of restore points from the past two weeks or so, but after going through the process (which also takes very long) it reboots and tells me that restoring to the previous point failed.

In short, I'm confused and could really use your insight. What's causing this and how can I fix it? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed upon this. If you have any questions or need any further details, I'd be happy to answer and provide them.

How do I start from scratch with a new drive?

zardoz — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 05:58:50 -0800

I've bought a new hard drive for my PC (running XP Home). First I formatted it, then I hooked it up as the master drive. I put in my XP install disk and it started to go through the setup process, but came up with a weird error message, something like "A previous version of Windows was not detected. Your system is not eligible for upgrading" when what I want is a fresh install! "Insert the proper CD and hit return." I hit return and just get the same message. What gives? I must be doing something wrong, but can't figure it out. I've tried Norton Ghost but didn't have any luck with that...to complicate matters, recently my CD burner is on the fritz, so I can't make any boot disks (though I've always got my USB drive, tho I'm guessing that wouldn't work). Any ideas?

The weather forecast calls for interrupt storms...

perissodactyl — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 10:01:37 -0800

Help! I added an internal IDE hard drive to my late-model Dell desktop, and accessing it pins my processor! I've got a Dell XPS 400 with Windows XP MCE. Because the computer's main internal drive bus is serial ATA, I attached a plain old Maxtor IDE to the computer via a PATA interface designed for a removable drive.

Now, whenever I access files on the drive, one of the processor cores pins at 100% utilization, my desktop becomes rather unresponsive, and file access takes *forever*. I suspect there's some sort of "interrupt storm" going on.

So... what is wrong, and how can I fix it?

How to format a linux'd drive

Satapher — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:16:25 -0800

How do I format a Linux'd harddrive with XP? I have a spare 13gb harddrive with Ubuntu installed. I'd like to format it and use it for space. I can boot into Ubuntu from the harddrive, but when in XP 'My Computer' doesnt designate a drive letter for it. Also, the harddrive shows up in the Device Manager. What gives?

Re-connect to HDs after XP re-format

panoptican — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:41:16 -0800

In an emergency situation, facing a serious deadline, Windows decides to stop working. Not knowing what else to do, I reformat the harddrive. Crisis averted. Now, how do I re-connect to my second and third harddrives? I can see them, but I only get the option of formatting the harddrives completely thus losing all data. They work(ed) fine. One is a SATA and one is an IDE. Both only have data (music on one, videos on the other). I have a feeling there are some steps I should have taken to make this process a breeze, but like I said, it was an emergency and I didn't take much time to figure it out. Thanks for your help.

Computer specs: Windows XP (which is installed on C), two additional harddrives H and I. H is a Seagate Baracuda SATA drive. I is a Maxtor drive of some sort.

Combining and changing partitions

punishinglemur — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:40:08 -0800

I just received a new Acer laptop. The hard drive is 100GB, but it arrived divided into two partitions. According to the Windows XP Professional disk management window, the drive is divided as follows ... PQSERVICE: 2.25GB FAT32
ACER (C:): 45.26GB FAT32 [System]
ACERDATA (D:): 45.65GB FAT32

I want to combine the ACER and ACERDATA partitions, and then convert to NTFS. The ACERDATA partition appears to contain nothing more than a handful of system restore point folders. How can I do this?

Setting up my new HDD

jewishbuddha — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 06:00:06 -0800

What should I do with my new hard drive? I just got a new 80gb drive for my laptop that I'm planning to install in the next few days, and I'm looking for advice on how to set it up. Should I partition? Do you have a good method of organizing/managing your files? Recommended disk utilities? Back-up or maintenance routines?

If it helps, I currently have about 25gb on the 30gb drive I'm replacing. It's 14gb of music, 1.5gb of pictures, another gig or so of misc. documents. The rest is windows bloat and applications. One of the motivations for the new drive is to have storage for higher res pictures. I'm a student (for another month!) and my future employer will be providing me a new computer, so this is just for personal use.

I'm running XP Pro on a Dell Latitude x300. I'll be keeping the 30gb drive in a USB enclosure and can use it for back-ups, emergency booting, etc.

I got some good tips in these threads, but would like to hear more. I figure if I'm starting with a clean slate, now is a good time to pick up some good habits.

Separation of data and program files

parma — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:55:28 -0800

Is it true that good practice dictates one ought to separate program files from data files (onto different partitions)? What are some good ways you accomplish this? What about the problem of WinXP putting the "Documents and Settings" folder (containing user desktops, outlook .pst file, etc.) in the same partition as the "Program Files" and "Windows" folders? (Got a new SATA hard drive and trying plan the partitioning / future file organizing.)

My userinit.exe is gone and I can't log in to WinXP or access my hard drives.

tumult — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 13:26:27 -0800

SoftwareRAID0AndCan'tLogInToWindowsXPFilter: My userinit.exe is gone after a routine Windows update, and I can't use the recovery console or a boot disk to access my hard drives [+] When I try to log in, I'm immediately kicked back to the login screen after Windows fails to run userinit.exe. No error message is given, but I know this is the problem (the file was deleted during an update and it wasn't recreated when I inserted my SP2 CD in accordance with Windows' instructions). Everything else is fine. I can't use the recovery console on my Windows XP CD because my hard drives are unrecognizable garbage if I don't boot off of my hard disk with the software RAID 0 drivers. I tried booting into safe mode with command prompt. However, Windows tries to log in before it gives you the command prompt, so I'm kicked back to the login window before it before it shows prompt to me. Everything is fully functional, except I can't log in. I need a way to move userinit.exe from either my SP2 CD or my SP2 directory on my hard disk to my Windows directory.

Any suggestions? Running Windows XP Pro SP2, Intel 875PBZ motherboard with Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition (via two SATA hard drives). Also, when I first installed Windows XP, I used a floppy with the Intel software RAID drivers on it by pressing F6 during the pre-install sequence. Is there a way to get the recovery console to use these drivers? Or is it already able to do this and I just don't know it? I thought of that a few minutes ago, but I can't test it at the moment.

E-mail capable disk space monitor?

Cosine — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 12:12:32 -0800

I'm looking for an application that can monitor the free space on several hard drives and generate email alerts if certain conditions are met, I've googled but haven't been able to find any capable, free software for this, little help?

Is there a way to use a (USB 2.0) hard drive that is formated as HFS Journaled (MacOS X) under WindowsXP?

symbebekos — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 12:19:18 -0800

WindowsFilter: is there a way to use a (USB 2.0) hard drive that is formated as HFS Journaled (MacOS X) under WindowsXP? I've tried the otherwise excellent MacDrive and it can't handle it.

Security fits

caution live frogs — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:42:13 -0800

WindowsXP, 250 gig shared backup hard drive, and a lab full of people with sensitive information that needs to be backed up on said drive but shouldn't be accessible by anyone other than the user who put it there. Security is giving me fits and I'd appreciate some helpful advice. [more gory details inside] we have a lab full of computers. all of us need to back up our stuff but a lot of us have sensitive documents we'd rather not share with everyone else (student/co-worker evaluations, course material, test banks, etc.) we have only one spot to back up, a 250 gig USB hard drive attached to our lab server. we all have our own designated back-up folder on this drive. here's where it gets fun:

the drive is shared on the network to our lab computers only. we're not in a domain, just firewalls between us and the outside, access limited by IP range. there's probably not much i can do about this as we don't have control over the network, just our computers. so far anything i copy to this drive is openly shared with everyone else in our lab, and i can't seem to lock it down such that any one network user can only read/modify one folder. everyone in the lab is currently using Win2K Pro or WinXP Pro.

using my own stuff as a test case, i tried creating a user on the lab server, encrypting files, then logging off. when the system restarts the default account has access to all my encrypted files. i don't know why. if i do the reverse (encrypt then log on with my settings) i can't open the encrypted file.

i tried limiting access for that file to my user account only, ocking out the default lab account we normally run on the machine. no luck. if the default lab account is locked out, nobody can access the files through the network.

only thing i can think of is that the default lab account used to be the old Win2K administrator account before i renamed it while upgrading to XP.

so... anybody else actually get something like this to work? any third-party solution that will cost us as little as possible? oh, i ought to mention that my PI is very non-technical, so whatever solution i come up with will have to continue to work after i've left the lab. any help at all here is appreciated.

(and yes i do realize that "secure" in this instance ain't really so secure - we're not trying to keep out hard-core hackers here, we're just trying to make sure we have a simple data backup solution while also keeping the people in our lab from having one-click access to their own employee reviews.)

Can I rename my new partition?

keswick — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:36:27 -0800

I have a new 160 gig HD that I partitioned into two drives. One of the partitions is exclusively for mp3s. Unfortunately, when I open the drive, XP treats it as a "My Pictures" folder. How do I change it to a "My Music" folder? Ordinarily, I'd go Properties>Customize, but when I go Properties on the root folder, I get hard drive properties. (General / Tools / Hardware / etc.)

Windows XP

drezdn — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:28:27 -0800

Windows XP question... My parents computer is set up that most items are stored on a 20 GB harddrive (or possibly a partition- listed as c:) while they have 100 GB available on d:... When I install software, is it perfectly acceptable to run it off the D drive, and is there a way to switch the set up so most items save to the d drive? And yes, I realize there is probably a simple solution that I've been unable to find.