troubled student said:
It is as if Windows has for no apparent reason has disappeared from my
computer. The icon is still there, but cannot find the files. I had
Windows
XP professional with Excel, etc. I did a system restore, but didn't bring
it
back. Also, my computer doesn't remember it has a cd and dvd drive, so I
cannot re-install it with the disks because it cannot read them. HELP. I
have a hp pavilion.
Sorry, but your post isn't very clear.
What icon are you referring to? Windows doesn't rely on an icon to run; do
you mean the system boots but the desktop is blank, or something else?
What files do you mean, and why do you say it (whatever it actually is)
can't find them?
What kind of restore do you mean - from a set of restore disks or partition,
or Windows System Restore? Note that some kinds of restore start with a
format, which means your data is basically gone unless you take some extreme
(and possibly expensive) measures. If that's the case, stop using the
system NOW, shut it down and do not restart it until you have removed the
hard drive and put a new one in. However, if you relied on a recovery
partition, this won't help you as you will have nothing to reinstall XP
from. Recovery partitions are a fatally flawed recovery strategy; when the
drive dies, there's no way to recover, you have to buy a new copy of XP to
reinstall.
But it's hard to tell what actually happened or what was done, from your
post.
Press whatever key to get into the BIOS on your system at power-on, often
DEL or F2, and check if the optical drives appear there. If they don't,
clearing the CMOS might help. You can do this by unplugging the sytstem,
locating the battery, which will look like a nickel or quarter, removing it,
and waiting half an hour or more. If there's a CMOS CLEAR jumper on the
motherboard, use that; move the jumper, move it back. Put the battery
back in and restart the system. Go back into the BIOS and check the system
date - if it isn't wrong by several years, the CMOS didn't clear and you
need to repeat the process, waiting several hours. If it is wrong, look
for the drives. If they aren't there, check the cabling, and if that
doesn't help, there are likely hardware problems that have nothing to do
with XP.
I will say that if you are concerned about your data, particularly
otherwise-not-backed-up data, there's an easy and pretty quick way to
recover this if it wasn't overwritten during the restore. You may need
the help of a friend with another working XP system that has enough space.
Simply shut down both systems, remove the drive from yours and attach it to
theirs. You may need to adjust jumper settings. If there's an available
USB drive case handy, use that, and you don't have to shut down their
system.
With your drive attached to the other system, simply use Explorer to locate
the files (normally under "C:\Documents and settings\account name\My
Documents" (which may appear as "account name's documents) and copy them.
You may need to Take Ownership if you get "access denied" messages, and this
page will tell you how to get past that:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
In any case, more details - and more precise details - are needed to go much
further.
Note that if you decide to take the system somewhere for service - many
service shops will assume, often wrongly, that your data is backed up and
therefore the drive can be wiped. So, be sure that you DID back it up!
HTH
-pk
