unaccessible files after XP re-install

E

ErwinRommel

n00b
Joined
Aug 16, 2003
Messages
19
hello again, my wired friends. this time it's quite a big problem i'm havin' here and this is totally because of my irritation (me and my freundin seem to be having some relationship problems- you all know how it makes ya feel); no matter- i just lost all my senses (incl. sheer logic) and when my PC just popped up with "C:\windows\sytem32\config\system is corrupt or missing, please start the repair after inserting Windows CD-ROM", i did that. yeah. this was the only good thing i did. THEN, i figured out that i don't reckon ANYTHING (well, almost) in the repair screen. as i was unable to get some help there, i decided that i could re-install windows. (i got some REALLY hard earned music on my HDD - bout 5.36GB, so i didn't even want to think bout formatting it out). i installed ANOTHER windows XP OS in the same partinion (i have only one) in "WINDOWS2" folder. JESUS!
then i overwrote my old OS...
:eek:
now i am in some really deep ... All the contents of my old user account are gone or COMPLETELY unaccessible - just as some of my music files are. i don't know why, but i cannot do ANYTHING with 'em - nor copying, tag editing, renaming, playing, whatever...

to hell with formatting - i'll probably do that, but how do i regain my "lost" data?

please help me, cos it's very ugly. and don't be disturbed by my amateurish actions - even i myself don't understand what in the world just happened to me. peace.
 
1st: the scolding section:
I'm sure your music was heard earned, so why didn't you burn something on physical media? I have 8 gigs of music, and over 60 gigs of music videos. I would cry if I lost them. I spent an entire day burning them, but ya know what? I got em now when stuff like this happens.

Ok, onto the "help" portion

Option 1) Do you have a second crap-ass 10 gig or larger drive around?
Easiest would be to set that to master, put your old one to slave, and install XP on the small HD. Then you could copy your music over.

Option 2)
You say you tried the repair option, but I have a feeling you got to the recovery console repair. (looked like a DOS prompt?) There is a lesser known Repair version that works 10x better for me.

Try this instead.
Boot from XP CD
when it 1st says press R to repair (while it's copying files) DON'T HIT R
let it run.
It will bring you the "setup windows XP" screen hit ENTER
at some point it will start scanning your hard drive for "previously installed versions of Windows". When it finds it, you can then choose to REPAIR THIS INSTALL, or delete and start a new one.

REPAIR it. This will overwrite all your system files and give you a pretty good chance. It will not change you installed programs or your music. I've had some good results with reapirs like this.

Good luck.
 
thanks.
but the thing is that i'll be formatting my hdd one way or another, cos we'll just sort this extra hard drive problem with my friend.
AND, say, like 1GB of those 5,36GB of data is like "lost"- repairing and stuff doesn't help. there is absolutely no way i can access 'em.
PLUS, as i awready have moaned about, my account folder in "Documents and Settings" is lost, too. as i have reinstalled windows on top of the old installation, i had to create a new user, so the old one is kinda turned into 'ghost'- it's there, but it takes up "0 bytes" of hdd space...
cos i was just so hot tempered- i have put some of my works (essays- cos i'm kinda a starting writer) in a forlder on the desktop- and as you might awready have noticed...

yup. stupid, ain't it?
but is it really over?
 
Your old files, what error messages do you get when you try to access them?
 
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