totally fucked it up big time
 

I was cleaning out some empty folders and apparently deleted some rather important shit in C:

Now when I start up my desktop can't be found, my start menu is gone, my documents and settings folder is gone among others. I tried to restore everything in the trash and all but two .ini files could be repatriated. Those two produce a message saying they refer to a path or location that doesn't exist. (Documents and Settings)

Tried a dozen system restore points but they don't complete.
Trying Recuva now, but I just got a message saying it ran out of memory.

Am about to try to boot from a start-up disk but not sure what I'll do in that case.

Any ideas?

Recovery disc?

Not that it's going to help you this time around - but UT suggested in another thread that you might have hardware problems. Generally speaking, if you've got hardware problems, you want to leave the computer the fuck alone until the hardware problem is resolved.

Safety tip of the day.

software alone. Never fix software when hardware is suspect. And just another reason why better computer manufacturers provide comprehensive hardware diagnostics for free. All manufacturers have those diagnostics. Only the more responsible provide hardware diagnostics that you really need now. And do not change or fix any software.

Documents and Settings is a critically important directory (folder) for all users. If you deleted things in there without extreme care, then you were asking for trouble.

But first decide on which side of the line a problem resides. Hardware or software? Until you have that answer, do not be fixing anything (unless you want an new adventure).

I did not intend to fuck with docs and settings, I was just doing some house cleaning on other drives when I hit delete in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes stupid shit happens when you don't mean it to. I think I checked a box to delete ini files rather than ignore them.

I am doing memtest86 right now, but the two events were coincidental and unrelated. The real problem is that three .ini files cannot be removed from the trash because they refer to unavailable locations. docs and settings and two other folders are also missing, though their sub folders appear in searches. when you use the up arrow key to move up in the folder hierarchy you hit unavailable when you get to the top. There are now three new folders corresponding to the missing folders with "deltest" appended to the folder name.
e.g. C:\Documents and Settingsdeltest

I don't have my notes handy and don't recall the names of the other two folders right now. I can't rename any of the deltest folders by removing deltest because I get a message saying the specified name already exists.

So what it seems to me is that the folders are missing their ini files and without them they can't be located, and yet they cannot be renamed either.

I suppose worst case is I have to re-install XP.

1tb drives are like $50. Don't ever delete anything.

Doesn't help, I know, but neither does my standard advice: reinstall the OS, reinstall apps, & restore data from backups.

Yeah, I am biting the bullet right now...

I've had mixed results with recovery software. Generally, if you catch it right away, you have decent odds of recovering files when the Recycle Bin restore fails.

I just found this freeware tool on sourceforge.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freerecover/


O.K. Just downloaded and tried it. Very nice. I'm curious about the varying statuses though. It shows Excellent, Good, OK, Bad, Overwitten, and Unknown. I was thinking more in binary terms, can the file be recovered or not? I wonder what the difference is between Excellent, Good, and OK.

BTW, my 1TB and 320GB backup drives are %99 full. Since this is a 'sale' weekend, I guess it's time to upgrade. I usually backup personal data, (documents, e-mails, etc) to 2 different external drives. My PC does have RAID software, but I like external drives so that if there was some internal issue to the PC it would not take out a drive that isn't hooked to the internal power supply.

Boot off of a CD or another drive
 

Hello,

Boot off of a CD or another drive and run the recovery utility.

If you do that, you're going to have a great shot of pulling your data back.

Yeah, I really screwed the pooch. I booted in safe mode and tried to restore but something I had done earlier wiped out all my restore points. MF

I've run memtest and other diagnostics and everything seems to be golden. But I ended up having to reinstall the system and for some reason it didn't wipe the old one off and now when I boot i have to choose between the real boot.ini and the black screen boot.ini

I'm now working on removing the false boot.ini.

I should have just emailed you from the get-go, mbpark.

Just ordered a 2TB external that's on sale this weekend from Office Depot for $80. My 1TB backup drive is in the red (less than %5 left) and I noticed my picture folder was empty. Fortunately my other backup drive is has the picture folder but is also in the red.

I'm copying my picture folder to my C: drive until I can clean up my backup drives.

System Restore only keeps certain parts of the system
 

Hello,

System Restore only keeps certain system DLLs, and the registry. It's not in an intuitive format either.

When I've had systems go south and I've had the Ultimate Boot CD on me, I just go in and copy the registry back from one of its recovery points manually, as I don't trust Windows to do it for me. I did this yesterday to a machine that had XP Antivirus 2011.

Mac OS X and Time Machine, however, handle both user directories and system files. I've literally made a TM backup, put a new HD in a machine, formatted it, booted from a Mac OS X DVD, restored said backup, and booted a complete machine with a much larger hard drive. OS X Leopard didn't store the keychain (where your saved passwords are) in TM, but Snow Leopard can. I've already had a customer drop a MacBook Pro in an OR, buy a new one that night, restore his TM backup, and call me because TM in Snow Leopard didn't restore all his system patches the next day.

Until Microsoft gets this in Windows 8, get yourself a copy of Symantec Backup Exec or a similar product for Windows that backs up to an external HD (if you have little money, get Robocopy and run that to an external HD daily!). Or you can choose to get a Mac (Time Machine) or Linux (and just rsync your home directories) and get a much simpler solution.

Having a lot of problems doing a system restore. Still slogging through but only able to attack it in fits and starts.

About to give it another go. I hate working on this lap top.