Major systems change and XP

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Guest

Hi all. My first time on here. I have a problem and I guess I need to explain it all

I have a home-built system. It was our main computer for quite a while. I used a Gigabyte motherboard and the AMD 1700XP processor in it.

We have purchased a new Dell on line and so now we have two computers. The Dell will be our main "communications" computer and the home-built will be almost strictly for video editing and some other "productivity" uses

My Gigabyte motherboard was limiting the speed of my processors. In video editing, the faster the processor, the more productive you can be. So I purchased an Asus motherboard with all kinds of possibiities in my processes of upgrading. I pulled the Gigabyte motherboard and installed the Asus motherboard, turned it on and got the error that there is a major system change and asked if I wanted to boot from CD. Well, a quick call to my retailer and I was saying "duh".... Oh yeah, the newer MS OS won't let you just open up your old system without telling it who you are and resetting everything. And this is where my problems are right now

I allowed the system to read the XP Pro CD and reinstalled it. Woops! There went my "my documents" files. Woops! There went all of our emails and address book and tax files and lots of other stuff. So now it is a "double-duh" on me

My question(s): 1. Can I recover any of those "lost" files without going back to original Gigabyte motherboard? 2. If I have to go back to the Gigabyte motherboard, will I be able to recover those files even though I told the new installation to overwrite those files? 3. How the heck do I do it

Thank you.
 
a1/ You say you chose to overwrite the files during the reinstall- The files are gone
a2/ Going back to the Gigabyte board will make no difference - the hard drive has been overwritten this is the crucial factor, end of story
a3/ You simply cannot recover the files, in IT circles paranoia is a great thing BACKUP everything before you do anything and check it's backed up, verify the media you have backed up to is readable before attempting to proceed. Thats the best advice I can give you.
 
PaulT said:
Hi all. My first time on here. I have a problem and I guess I need
to explain it all.

I have a home-built system. It was our main computer for quite a
while. I used a Gigabyte motherboard and the AMD 1700XP processor in
it.

We have purchased a new Dell on line and so now we have two
computers. The Dell will be our main "communications" computer and
the home-built will be almost strictly for video editing and some
other "productivity" uses.

My Gigabyte motherboard was limiting the speed of my processors. In
video editing, the faster the processor, the more productive you can
be. So I purchased an Asus motherboard with all kinds of
possibiities in my processes of upgrading. I pulled the Gigabyte
motherboard and installed the Asus motherboard, turned it on and got
the error that there is a major system change and asked if I wanted
to boot from CD. Well, a quick call to my retailer and I was saying
"duh".... Oh yeah, the newer MS OS won't let you just open up your
old system without telling it who you are and resetting everything.
And this is where my problems are right now.

I allowed the system to read the XP Pro CD and reinstalled it.
Woops! There went my "my documents" files. Woops! There went all
of our emails and address book and tax files and lots of other stuff.
So now it is a "double-duh" on me.

My question(s): 1. Can I recover any of those "lost" files without
going back to original Gigabyte motherboard? 2. If I have to go
back to the Gigabyte motherboard, will I be able to recover those
files even though I told the new installation to overwrite those
files? 3. How the heck do I do it?
Click to expand...

Assuming you didn't format the drive concerned (if you did format the drive
then you might as well stop reading now, and consider if the data is
valuable enough to speak to a professional data recovery firm) then:

Each time you install windows, you create a new Windows installation ("Duh!"
I hear you cry, but stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this). These
different installations are unique, and so are the accounts that you create
on them. I currently have, for example, a guest account on this machine
called "Visitor" that I give to any visitors who wish to use the internet or
whatever while they are visiting me.

If I re-install Windows on the machine I'm using right now and then create
an account named "Visitor" then this account will not be the same as the
original account created, even though the name is the same.

Because each account is unique, two things happen if you install a new copy
of windows on top of an old copy:
1) The newly installed machine's accounts get the name [your username.new
machine name] in the documents and settings folder, so as to avoid
overwriting your old install's account data.

e.g. in my example above of visitor, when i create the account "visitor" on
my new install of windows onto my machine named "Homer", Windows goes to
create a folder for it in 'documents and settings' and finds a folder named
'visitor' already there. Rather than mess with this, it will create a folder
called 'visitor.homer'.

2) If you are using NTFS security then you may need to 'take ownership' of
the old account folders

So..
* Open up "Documents and Settings"
* Examine the list of accounts. You may, if you are lucky, see old account
names listed along side the accounts you are using now.
* Try to open the old folders. If you get access denied errors then use the
computer's help to walk you through the process of taking ownership of files
and folders.
* Hopefully inside each user's old folder, you should be able to find the
old account's documents file, desktop, and in the hidden local settings type
folders you should find the old mail data too (the exact location where for
mail, and the best process for getting this mail back into your new accounts
varies depending on what mail package you use).


--
--
Rob Moir, Microsoft MVP for servers & security
Website - http://www.robertmoir.co.uk
Virtual PC 2004 FAQ - http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/VirtualPC2004FAQ.html

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