The other day my computer suddenly ran VERY sluggishly so I restarted it and it immediatly booted into the windows Checkdisk…ran through and said there was at least one problem but then windows loaded. Once windows loaded, I started getting pop-ups saying this couldnt load, that couldnt load….and I had to restart. Checkdisk ran again and this time a bunch of files I’ve never seen started being deleted…”M$01″ or something like that. Once about 50 files were deleted, it then started “restoring” 50 more “Orphan” files but before it finished, it said there was “insufficient disk space”. I have a 640GB Western Digital HD with only 100GB used on it so I had plenty of free space.
The next time it tried to load, it didn’t even make it to checkdisk, it said something along the lines of can not load windows, can not find file “c:windowssystem32configsystem”.
Soooooo…I spent 15 hours trying to use the windows restore disc and run the restore option through the dos prompt and when trying to reload an old restore point, it kept telling me the information was invalid. I then tried to get a LiveOS (Knoppix and also MEPIS linux LIVE OS CD’s) but knoppix wouldnt even load and MEPIS had about 15 errors but would eventually load. I could get into MEPIS but not see my C drive or D drive. (although it did show C drive but did not show how much space there was or anything else…and the only option I had was to “mount” the hard drive.) I did not try mounting the drive because I am afraid I would erase the information I am trying to recover.
I have a second hard drive running now with XP home (SATA) and the old hard drive with the information I want is disconnected because it too is a SATA drive and my CD rom is a SATA and I only have 2 SATA connections on my MB.
Can anyone help!?!? I really need the pictures off my old disk as they are all of the pictures of my 9 month old child and I’d hate to lose them. I tried calling a “professional” service but he didn’t even know about a LIVE OS cd so I am skeptical to spend $300 for them to say it’s fried. I am looking for software of some idea of how to get my information back and then I will re-format the drive. Thanks and I know it’s a long post but I would really appreciate any input.
