BSOD & possibly recovery

[michaelharris1333]

I'm now in my 3rd frustrating day of computer purgatory. Here's a
little background on my situation: Computer is a Dell 4700 bought in
January, 2005.

While out of town last week, computer got the blue screen of death.
Not sure if it was a power outage, or what the circumstances were.
Anyway, while booting up, it makes it to the Windows XP screen and
after about 5 or 10 seconds, kicks over to the BSOD. (I'm at work, so I
can't remember the exact screen details, but this is close). fatal
error c000021A (0x00000000 0x00000000)

I've tried the safe modes, recovery option, but no luck. I went thru
the Charlie White steps as well, but at the end of step 1, I still get
the same message.

My big concern was that I had several files that I hadn't backed
up(including Microsoft Money files), I know this is everyone's same
issue....disc crash, idiots didn't back up data. As a side note, this
has been a superb lesson is backing up important data files.

Anyway, I'm still holding out hope that my data is still there. I
bought a new hard drive and hooked it up as the primary drive. I left
my original drive in as a secondary. Upon booting up, I went to
Windows explorer to my old drive with a new drive letter, and found
that most of the files were still there(yee-ha). Upon further
examination, 2 of the other users had their folders, but my folder and
the SHARED FOLDER were both missing. I've done a search for some of
the files and can't find them.

Since I can access the drive, I'm assuming that it's not bad. Are my
files corrupted, missing, hidden? When reading the Charlie White
article, I looked for the restore file near the date of crash. I found
the restore file for the day before the big crash. Since I can't boot
to my old drive, I'm not sure what to do with the RP Files. If I can't
get this old drive to boot up, are these files useless, even if the
drive is apparently working?

A couple of questions:
1)Will restoring to the point before my crash get back my files?

2)Am I obviously overlooking something easy?

3)I'm not opposed to completely reloading XP, but I want to get the old
files, or at least attempt to restore to the point before it crashed?

4)Any idea as to why the Charlie White method didn't work for me?

I know this is long and rambling, but I'm truly desperate and would
appreciate any helpful suggestions.(other than frequent back-ups, I'm a
believer now)

Michael

 

[MCR]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

On to the questions..

A couple of questions:
1)Will restoring to the point before my crash get back my files?

No. But it should bring back the system back from the dead *providing*
it is a software issue and not a hardware fault. I dont think your data
has been wiped, it sounds like either a driver got corrupted or a piece
of hardware inside your machine has gone faulty. Another possibility is
spyware that has been installed and corrupted your machine.

2)Am I obviously overlooking something easy?

Try running antispyware on the drive to see if it has been compromised
(from another PC), but do not fix it as you could make things worse.
This way you can fault find.

3)I'm not opposed to completely reloading XP, but I want to get the old
files, or at least attempt to restore to the point before it crashed?

Whenever I have re-installed XP (and not formatted) my data was safe. I
cant give you a 100% guarantee it will work (it will fail if it is a
hardware fault for example), but it is worth trying.

4)Any idea as to why the Charlie White method didn't work for me?

I know this is long and rambling, but I'm truly desperate and would
appreciate any helpful suggestions.(other than frequent back-ups, I'm a
believer now)

Open the PC and make sure all the fans are turning, and this isnt a
overheating problem (with fan failure) or that the memory hasnt become
dislodged somehow.