Please Help Me!

[Marius24]

My sister was playing on the sims as she always does before I get back home from school. Once she had got of the sims i tried opening some programs firefox, msn etc. Nothing was working so i turned my pc of from the wall and it began to load up. All seemed fine until the XP logo comes across the screen and then the pc restarts itself. I then tried to run my pc in mandrake and could not get it to work. So in the mandrake installer i wiped my linux partitions and then used my sony PC recovery disks to reinstall windows and restore my pc to its normal settings.(by this state i was really upset that i have lost all my music, documents COURSEWORK. The recovery disks said that it needed to partition the drive that i had my C and D drive on so i did wiping the drive clean. and adding the new drives. Then i reinstalled factory settings from the disks. After I did that I turned of my pc to get the usual black screen whitw writing saying stuff about masters and slaves etc... Then before windows loads up i get a black screen with the text

  Press A key to reboot

i have tried disconecting my second hard drive and am now currently partitioning the drive again and trying to get my pc working again. I need help guys this is a real big problem if i cannot get my pc working. PLEASE HELP ME!!!

[Marius24]

guy it would really help does anyone know anything of the sort? Is there a way to manually wipe the hard drive or so that i can write to it again? PLEASE?

If formatting my pc doesnt work i am going to remove the maxor drive and try with just my digital western drive and try to get the sony disk to write onto that. Anyone know anything i can do?



maybe its not that bad xp seems to be ok just now *taps wood*

[Marius24]

thanks for all your support guys, you have all been great help! My maxtor drive was wiped and everything lost, is there any way to retreive the data?

[RGX]

So you repartitioned it? Did you do this by low level format or standard format by any chance?

Oh and by the way, this should probably be in software world.

[firefox]

forget the recovery cd, get a hold of windows xp pro cd, boot with it and format the drive during the install and all should be fine.

[Marius24]

i couldn't find my xp cd. and i didn't know how the CDs partitioned it. I have my pc back now but i have to install all my software and stuff. I;m not that bothered now i have gotten over it.

[atiVidia]

Originally posted by Marius24@21 April 2004 - 11:29
i couldn't find my xp cd.  and i didn't know how the CDs partitioned it.  I have my pc back now but i have to install all my software and stuff.  I;m not that bothered now i have gotten over it.

find something like file scavenger if u want ur course work back.

i can send u a copy if u cant find 1.

oh yea this only werkz if u did a low level format not a full 2 hour format

[Marius24]

i managed to find a copy and find the files are there. Could you send me the copy?

edit, the copy i have is a demo

[3RA1N1AC]

just to reinforce the earlier advice: you should ditch the "recovery" discs and get a plain Windows CD. recovery discs are usually hard drive images on a CD (or set of CDs), and they will want to reformat your drive in order to restore it to factory condition. it's a totally different thing from a regular Windows installer, which gives you the option of simply repairing the Windows folder and leaving the rest of your stuff intact.

[Marius24]

Originally posted by 3RA1N1AC@21 April 2004 - 21:37
just to reinforce the earlier advice: you should ditch the "recovery" discs and get a plain Windows CD.  recovery discs are usually hard drive images on a CD (or set of CDs), and they will want to reformat your drive in order to restore it to factory condition.  it's a totally different thing from a regular Windows installer, which gives you the option of simply repairing the Windows folder and leaving the rest of your stuff intact.

i now know that. My first opinion was to locate the XP disk but did not managed to find it (and still haven't). I have and XP disk next to my case ready for the next time it fks up and i am now planning to network all my documents to a second PC and keep regualr back-ups saved on the second PC... Next time i will be prepared B)


After all this is a learning experience, a chance to realise from my mistakes and time for me to prepare.

edit, i dont think a XP disk would have helped (have not tried it) The drive seemed to have been wiped and it wasn't partitioned (wasn't when i reinstalled, was before) :fugley:
i have no idea how though