INPUT? IDEAs - help

[CanadianTek]

Was not sure where to post this.. but..

Toby upgraded from win98se to win xp a couple years back

has a 37 gig hd with a fat32 partition

late last week - he was checking email (hotmail) - slipped away to grab some supper... came back.. jiggled the mouse, it would not come out of sleep mode.. he was a loyal nav 2003 user and kept it up to date

rebooted..

tons of errors on the screen.. (dos like commands.. no gui)

rebooted.. and much to his surprise.. got it to launch win 98

broke out his norton.. rescue /recovery disk..

it gave him a couple options.. from a menu of 4.. not sure if restore was one of them.. but upon following the instructions on screen and all things indicating he was on a path to pc bliss..

worse

it wouldnt reboot..

soo Toby went out.. got a new hd, put it in as master, put old in as slave... and now when you look at slave.. it says...

22gigs used... 15gigs free.. fat32

BUT when you actually go in under windows explorer to look at the contents of the drive.. no files, folders, nothing..

oddly..

Toby had a D: drive in his original configuration.. (40gig C: 1gig D:)

Where he had tossed a few files along the way.. just to make back ups..

Low and behold when he mounted this drive in ... he could see 2 NEW pieces of info...

a 39 meg file... the he believes to be a back up of his registry.. and a folder called incinerator

did the net search on incinerator.. and related viruses.. nothing like that out there.. i know there is an incinerator program for nt users to securely delete sensitive data files.. but.. he doesnt own it..

...most would say.. live and learn.. have new hard disk life goes on...

EXCEPT...

11-17 of those gigs were downloads from their digital camera and camcorder... of their precious 11 month old baby.. no back ups.. (ok.. they had emailed a dozen or so pix to friends and relatives.. but that was it.. )

Where would you recommend i go from here?

wanted to try and help.. rather then have him fork out.. $500 - $1200 at CBL or other Data Recovery :Labs - neither of which is offering any guarantee

thx CdnTek

[Geekgirl]

Hello,
First off I always encourage a clean install of an O.S. Alot of times you run into problems when using an upgrade.
Now you stated that he got it to boot from 98? What happened to Xp?

At the time you couldn't boot you could have tried from the Windows Advanced Options Menu.
Now setting the h.d.d. as a slave you should be able to retrieve any important files that you want to keep.

[CanadianTek]

[Geekgirl]

Norton has also disappointed me and I have been seeing alot of viruses getting past it.
I myself have just purchased because Norton has failed one of my computers. NOD32 has not missed an in the wild virus for 5 yrs running.
I heard of a trick that you can put a h.d.d. in the freezer for a period of time and it will allow you to retrieve you data but I'm lacking the whole information if someone in the forum knows of this please post.
Otherwise by the looks of it you cannot get your info from the h.d.d.
Theres got to be something I'm overlooking.........

[liljim]

Hey CanadianTek,

I cant offer a guarantee either but here's something you might want to try.With the drive installed as slave,in a XP enviroment,pull up the command window (start>run>cmd>enter) and change the directory over to the slave drive (ex: d: press enter) then type dir and hit enter again,can you see the files on the drive this way?


*also note that installing an infected drive in a healthy machine causes a risk of infecting your "good" drive.Im sure you already knew that but...gotta post it anyway