I just screwed up my system royally

R

rusty12

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 2, 2007
Messages
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Well.. I think I am another prime example of why people should backup their systems. I just lost practically everything. Its soo fubar. I was using JKDefrag for the second time and before I defragged, I saw an option that I could use where JKDefrag would clear out my temp files etc. Well, I must checked off some box without thinking it through or realizing exactly what I was checking off for JKDefrag to clean out. Next thing I know, EVERYTHING is gone. My desktop lost all its main icons except recycle bin, My Documents, and My Computer. Everything in My Documents is gone (Movies, Music, Documents, Downloads, etc.) All my FireFox/IE bookmarks or links are gone. My quicklaunch bar down at the bottom...gone. I'm still in crisis/panic mode at the moment. It hasn't sunk in that I've lost practically everything. The only thing I have backup thankfully are my College files.
Certain applications are still installed on my computer like my games strangely enough. I feel like a complete jackass for never truely backing up.

I don't even know where to freaking begin in trying to recover my documents. Anybody have any suggestions for how I could possibly recover my files?



I'm at the point of thinking that maybe I should just install a fresh copy of Vista back onto my hard drive but I'm not sure how you do that since I've never done it before.
 
Holy crap, what setting did you click! :eek:

I'd suggest looking for recovery software (google it) to see if you can get anything back. Good luck!
 
dekruyter said:
GO SLOW....DON'T PANIC
Click to expand...

Yea, easier said than done.
To be honest I'm not sure what I hit. All I know is when JKDefrag was all done, practially all my data was gone. Now thankfully, I'm not a huge data junkie. The stuff I've lost is replacable from what I can think of that I've lost. This isn't like my life's work gone here, but it is months and months of data that I've accumulated that is going to be the biggest pain in the butt to replace.
What I'm afraid of is what any possible damage I could have done to Vista.

I had been previously always thinking about installing a fresh copy of Vista onto my hard drive because I like that look and feel of a brand new computer, but I'd never done it before so I never did do it. Now with everything looking like its adios mi amigo on me I feel like I might as well attempt it. Not exactly sure though on that idea though since this happened like an hour ago and I'm freaking out. I think I'll decide on that issue tomorrow.
 
JKDefrag has no options, just doubleclick the .exe and it starts doing its job, even running from command line has limited sorting options or defrag methods, not junk files removing, perhaps, you ran JKDefrag with a custom made GUI with different options?
 
I recommend GetDataBack from Runtime software:

http://runtime.org/

Saved my ass more than once. Had a RAID failure from a Power Supply brownout (damn you antec!) and used RAID Reconstructor and GetDataBack to recover. Also, I had a Linux bootup go awry and when I rebooted back into Windows, one of my drive's NTFS partitions was gone..... (Damn you linux!). Wasn't even in read/write mode... hah. I used GetDataBack for that too and I recovered everything.

You will need a spare drive or another computer to recover to as it creates an image. Also, it can be integrated into a WindowsPE (BartPE) disc to recover with.
 
Unless you zeroed the drive then your data is still there. I'm guessing you havent zeroed your drive. So just relax and use one of the undelete utils that have beens posted. It's actually really hard to completely wipe out all your data. ;)
 
Who defrags!? Who still uses a 3rd party defragger!?

What is this NT4?

Backups are your friend, sorry mate.
 
Alright, I'll give these tools a try and see what they can pull up. I'll let you know the results. I just hope I haven't written over too much of my data. Thanks guys!
 
All of it should be easily recoverable unless you zeroed your hard drive as previously stated.
 
Stop using the drive immediately (to prevent more writing and possibly making things harder to recover) and get something like GetDataBack. GDB works and works well!
 
Devilotx said:
Sounds like you blew out your profile man
Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking. It's entirely possible your profile got corrupted and everything is still there under another folder beneath C:\Users. If just a few key files in a profile become corrupted, Windows will create a new one.
 
Well I ran "GetDataBack for NTFS" and it allowed me to view which files were recoverable and which weren't. A whole lot of stuff is corrupted. I don't know if I wrote over it or what. From what I can tell though (and I'm not expert at all at this data recovery stuff) most of it is lost data.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'll just reinstall windows and begin with a fresh start. This time though I won't be a complete jackass and not backup.

I have a question though. This is my first computer that I've built with my hands and I was pretty pleased with myself that I did that. Reinstalling windows though makes me sort of nervous. I have no idea how to do it. I've googled guides on how to install windows and I pretty much get search results that discuss how to install it on a clean HDD or how to upgrade but I haven't found a guide that discusses how to install windows over a currently working version of windows. Is it easy or simple to do? What about my activation key or other programs like MS Office where I have used one of my 3 licenses for this PC. I don't want to waste another key when I reinstall it.

Any and all advice is definetly welcome at this point. Thanks guys.
 
Installing Windows over current Windows with a fresh format:

1 - Insert Windows disc.
2 - Change BIOS options to boot from disc first.
3 - Press the key it asks you to press (or none at all if it doesn't ask you) to boot from disc on startup.
4 - Go through the setup options and select the partition you want to install Windows on. If you only want one partition, delete all the partitions and create a new partition using as much space as possible on the hard disk.
5 - Wait for Windows to format and install, while going through occasional setup wizard options.
6 - Use computer.
 
whoa whoa, slow down.


This is Vista? Do you have system restore enabled? If so, try that first!

Always, always, always, try a chkdsk /r... always. I seriously doubt all your data is gone.
 
I think what has actually happened is your profile got corrupted, and Windows made a new one.

Look under c:\Documents and Settings and see if you have your original profile, but now also have the same profile with .000 on the end of it.

If you do, that's what happened. Don't Dispair, your data isn't gone :)

Windows is using the new .000 profile instead of your original. That's why all your stuff isn't showing up.

Fixing this is easy...

Just migrate the data from the folders in your old profile to the new one. The minimum 3 folders are:

1. Documents
2. Favorites
3. Desktop

You may have data in one of the application settings folders to move as well, but most of that stuff is preferences, add-on's, etc... To be honest it's usually easier to reinstall the app and let it re-install this stuff.

Also, if you are using outlook and use the autocomplete feature (where it remembers email addresses and auto-completes them when you type them in to outlook), you will need to copy over the .NK2 file that corresponds to your Outlook Profile.

It is located in c:\Documents and Settings\<old user profile>\Application Settings\Microsoft\Outlook

Just copy it to the same location in your new .000 profile folder.

There is NO NEED to create a new profile! The .000 profile folder will work just fine, and is now the one officially attached to your windows login.

After all is done, I would add the text "(broken)" to the old profile name so you know it is bad.

DO NOT THROW THE OLD PROFILE AWAY! You never know what may be in there that you forgot about and have to grab some day!

You would have probably gotten a warning from windows when it did this. You probably just didn't see it.

I see this issue several times a month with my users. No one on the planet can explain why it happens as there are so many possible causes.
 
Ok, this is Vista. I missed that. No worries, just replace all instances of "c:\windows\documents and settings\" in my message above with "c:\users"

You will also need to add some more folders to your data transfer list (thanks to Vista taking a nice, tidy single-storage area for data and needlessly busting it up into half a dozen friggin' folders!):

Links
Music
Pictures
Saved Games
Searches
Videos

And there may also be some other third-party folders in there.

Also, the "Application Data" folder is now called "App Data"
 
Everyone is so helpful, its kind of sweet :D

The only two cents I'm going to throw in here, since it is obvious you do not have a lot of experience working with Windows installs, is that you should disconnect any other hard drives you have in your computer before installing windows again. Its really easy for it to wind up not setup like you want, and if you remove the extra drives you're unlikely to screw up. Granted Vista's installer is a little better than previous versions, but still... I've been doing Windows installs forever, and I still do that (better safe than sorry) :).
 
Yeah, like when you install windows and you have 4 hard drives. You install it on "C" in the XP DOS installer window, and when you boot the system your system drive ends up being drive "G".

Drives me insane...
 
TechLarry said:
Yeah, like when you install windows and you have 4 hard drives. You install it on "C" in the XP DOS installer window, and when you boot the system your system drive ends up being drive "G".

Drives me insane...
Click to expand...

Unplug your usb card readers, thumbdrives etc etc.
 
TechLarry said:
You install it on "C" in the XP DOS installer window, and when you boot the system your system drive ends up being drive "G".
Click to expand...
If the installer grabs C during the install routine, that's what your drive letter will be when you finish the install. If it's not grabbing C, you have something else that needs to be disconnected first. Sooo many people breeze through that point without checking the drive letter, only to find it isn't C after it's too late.
 
I just wanted to point out one additional fact about the Application Data folder - as pointed out by TechLarry. They moved all the folders into a sub-folder: Roaming.
So if your username was newegg, all your bookmarks for Firefox will be located in:
C:\Users\newegg\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\etc...
 
Been using JKdefrag for a long time NEVER had this problem. I think something else went wrong but I could be wrong.. It sounds like your profile got foobared.
 
Yep, you're right. I didn't have the folder open so I forgot about that part.

The biggest adventure of Vista is re-finding stuff LOL



ksoze said:
I just wanted to point out one additional fact about the Application Data folder - as pointed out by TechLarry. They moved all the folders into a sub-folder: Roaming.
So if your username was newegg, all your bookmarks for Firefox will be located in:
C:\Users\newegg\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\etc...
Click to expand...
 
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