I think I fata'd my computer...PLEASE help!

[hmmhmmcamo]

My computer was doing an update this morning, and after it was done I couldn't connect to the intenet so I did a restart.

Everything shut down ok, but when it came back on it stayed at the black screen for several minutes ( I had left the room). I turned the computer off and back on 30 seconds later.

A repair screen came up and prompted me to use the system restore to fix any problems, and that none of my personal files or data would be touched.

Ya right....it's all gone.

Please tell me a computer magician somewhere will be able to retrieve everything from the hard drive....pretty please!!!

[Buff]

There is a computer magician out there somewhere who can restore your files. It will cost you a pretty penny.

[Yellefan]

Did it move all of your stuff to a windows.old folder? I had windows do that to me once.

[Rathji]

Unless you somehow managed to format your computer, your files probably were not deleted, but simply are not where you expect them to be. You could try manually searching the drive to see if you can find the files, or run a program like Tree Size Free and see if you can find them.


Now on to the real advice. Any any random time, every single piece of data you have could potentially become irretrievable without a several thousand dollar bill. Use this as a wake up call and go spend $50-100 on an external hard drive and make yourself a backup.

[GoinAllTheWay]

/\/\/\

Exactly. It still shocks me how many people put all their eggs in one basket.

[hmmhmmcamo]

All I looked at was the documents folder and it was empty.....yeah I freaked out like a little girl and came running to CP for help

I've done a little research and combined with the few posts above found that it's probably not all lost, and probably not all that hard to get back (knock on wood). I'm going to play around with it this afternoon and I'll report back.

I will also be getting an external hard drive set up asap....something I've been meaning to do for awhile now.

[hmmhmmcamo]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

/\/\/\

Exactly. It still shocks me how many people put all their eggs in one basket.

No kidding....who does that?

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by hmmhmmcamo

No kidding....who does that?

Heh. Reporting in as a member of the club! I still have files I downloaded in 2001 on my current hard drive. I guess I should consider myself fortunate. I would really hate to lose the 100GB of music I have.

[mykalberta]

XP or 7?

If its Windows 7 look at the C:\users directory - XP is C:\documents and settings - if you see something like hmmhmmcamo and hmmhmmcamo1 then look in both folders and see if the files are in one of them.

Its most likely that your profile became corrupt and you are logging on with a new one or a temporary one.

If you create a blank folder on the desktop and then restart the computer is the folder still here?

[yads]

Send a PM to Grunt. He does data recovery and his prices are pretty reasonable from my understanding.

[hmmhmmcamo]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Unless you somehow managed to format your computer, your files probably were not deleted, but simply are not where you expect them to be. You could try manually searching the drive to see if you can find the files, or run a program like Tree Size Free and see if you can find them.

I've downloaded the Tree Size Free program you suggested and found everything pretty much right away. Thanks for that.

One problem I'm having is I can't get the computer to boot up normally. When I turn it on, it stops loading after a few seconds and stays at a black screen. I can start is in safe mode with networking. Any ideas what this is about?

Edit: after having it running in safe mode with networking, I tried a reboot and it came to the Startup repair screen again. It asked if I wanted to do a system restore again and I said no. Now its 'attempting repairs' .....it's been going on for 15 min or so now. When I clicked cancel, it said the attemped repair process can't be stopped...