S
Shirley Worrall
What a nightmare. I got help here this morning with what I thought was
my problem, but now that I'm home and with the PC it turns out to be
even worse than I'd thought :-(
Background
I bought a new PC a month ago. It runs XP home. I'm the only user.
It's networked by a simple cable to my old PC just so that I can
access the data on my old disc. For that reason I have to log in when
I boot up.
As soon as I bought the PC I also bought copies of Partition Magic and
Drive Image. I wanted to set it up so that I had a backup done
automatically on a daily basis while I slept. I partitioned the disc
and created a hidden partition for the backups. I then set up a backup
via Drive Image, and via Windows Scheduled Tasks I set it up to run at
0400 daily. Some messing around was required to get it to work, but it
did appear to work in the end and for the last few weeks I've been
waking up to the login screen, as Drive Image reboots when it's
finished running. Also, I've looked in the Scheduled Tasks thing from
time to time and it's confirmed that it's been running the task.
2 days ago I went to the MS site to check for updates. I found 37
meg's worth, selected them all and d/loaded and installed them. The
first problem I noticed was that my PC was suddenly logging out when I
left it unattended. (I also have up to date AV (NOD32) and firewall
(Zone Alarm Pro) and I'm sure the problem is not the msblast.exe
thing.) I now know - thanks to Kelly this morning - that this log out
problem was caused by the .Net Framework update, which added an extra
user to my system. However, before I knew that I noticed the extra
user in Control Panel/User Accounts and deleted it. After that I
re-booted, and during the re-boot the PC tried to run something to do
with Drive Image. I think that this is where I really messed things up
:-( I assumed that it was simply trying to run because it hadn't been
able to do so last night (as the PC had logged me out before 0400) and
because I wanted to get back to the desktop and check that all was now
well I pressed "cancel". However, on re-boot I was now met with teh
following error messages at a DOS screen.
Err 5: Error finding VFLOPPY. SYS
Err 8: Fake Floppy driver not found
Press any key to boot active partition
I pressed the space key and got back into WinXP. An hour or so after
that I sought help here, and learned that the .Net Framework update
had caused the log out problem. I read around and found that it was
possible to remove that update via Control Panel. I did so, and
re-booted, but the problem was still there. I then went back to teh MS
d/load page and reinstalled the .Net Framework update, as I thought
the problem may have been caused by the way I simply deleted the extra
user via Control Panel/User Accounts. I re-booted but the problem was
still there.
At that stage I looked up "vfloppy.sys" in Google and found that the
two error messages were being generated by Drive Image, not WinXP. I
tried to use the fix shown at
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id4258.cfm but there didn't
appear to be any compressed files in the VFD directory.
By now I was getting really desparate, and it occurred to me that I
should be able to solve the problem by restoring one of the Drive
Image backups that I've been creating at 0400 for the last month.
However, I can't find any files at all on the backup partition! Drive
Image tells me that I should select the image to restore, and that it
should have a .pqi extension, but I can't find a single file with a
..pqi extension on my PC. I thought it might be because the backup
drive was hidden and so I've just "unhidden" it via Partition Magic,
but I still can't find anything there. When I look at it in Explorer
the only thing visible is the "System Volume Information" folder, but
if I do a rightclick and then select Properties it tells em that 65.6
megs have been used.
I don't know what to do now. Where the *****! are the images I thought
I'd been creating for the last month? If they are there, why can I not
find them either via Drive Image/Select Image to REstore or via
Explorer? Does anyone know another way to try to solve the 2 error
messages I mentioned? If necessary I'll happily uninstall Drive Image,
reinstall and start again, if that would solve it.
I'm sorry this is so long and desperate sounding, but I'm really very
fed up. I know knowledgeable people get irritated with clueless
newbies, but I really tried hard here to take responsibility for
making my PC safe, with regular backups, updated AV, updated firewall
etc. I've been getting along fine with Win98SE for several years now
but I feel like a total beginner again with XP. If you can help me,
please do.
Best,
my problem, but now that I'm home and with the PC it turns out to be
even worse than I'd thought :-(
Background
I bought a new PC a month ago. It runs XP home. I'm the only user.
It's networked by a simple cable to my old PC just so that I can
access the data on my old disc. For that reason I have to log in when
I boot up.
As soon as I bought the PC I also bought copies of Partition Magic and
Drive Image. I wanted to set it up so that I had a backup done
automatically on a daily basis while I slept. I partitioned the disc
and created a hidden partition for the backups. I then set up a backup
via Drive Image, and via Windows Scheduled Tasks I set it up to run at
0400 daily. Some messing around was required to get it to work, but it
did appear to work in the end and for the last few weeks I've been
waking up to the login screen, as Drive Image reboots when it's
finished running. Also, I've looked in the Scheduled Tasks thing from
time to time and it's confirmed that it's been running the task.
2 days ago I went to the MS site to check for updates. I found 37
meg's worth, selected them all and d/loaded and installed them. The
first problem I noticed was that my PC was suddenly logging out when I
left it unattended. (I also have up to date AV (NOD32) and firewall
(Zone Alarm Pro) and I'm sure the problem is not the msblast.exe
thing.) I now know - thanks to Kelly this morning - that this log out
problem was caused by the .Net Framework update, which added an extra
user to my system. However, before I knew that I noticed the extra
user in Control Panel/User Accounts and deleted it. After that I
re-booted, and during the re-boot the PC tried to run something to do
with Drive Image. I think that this is where I really messed things up
:-( I assumed that it was simply trying to run because it hadn't been
able to do so last night (as the PC had logged me out before 0400) and
because I wanted to get back to the desktop and check that all was now
well I pressed "cancel". However, on re-boot I was now met with teh
following error messages at a DOS screen.
Err 5: Error finding VFLOPPY. SYS
Err 8: Fake Floppy driver not found
Press any key to boot active partition
I pressed the space key and got back into WinXP. An hour or so after
that I sought help here, and learned that the .Net Framework update
had caused the log out problem. I read around and found that it was
possible to remove that update via Control Panel. I did so, and
re-booted, but the problem was still there. I then went back to teh MS
d/load page and reinstalled the .Net Framework update, as I thought
the problem may have been caused by the way I simply deleted the extra
user via Control Panel/User Accounts. I re-booted but the problem was
still there.
At that stage I looked up "vfloppy.sys" in Google and found that the
two error messages were being generated by Drive Image, not WinXP. I
tried to use the fix shown at
http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id4258.cfm but there didn't
appear to be any compressed files in the VFD directory.
By now I was getting really desparate, and it occurred to me that I
should be able to solve the problem by restoring one of the Drive
Image backups that I've been creating at 0400 for the last month.
However, I can't find any files at all on the backup partition! Drive
Image tells me that I should select the image to restore, and that it
should have a .pqi extension, but I can't find a single file with a
..pqi extension on my PC. I thought it might be because the backup
drive was hidden and so I've just "unhidden" it via Partition Magic,
but I still can't find anything there. When I look at it in Explorer
the only thing visible is the "System Volume Information" folder, but
if I do a rightclick and then select Properties it tells em that 65.6
megs have been used.
I don't know what to do now. Where the *****! are the images I thought
I'd been creating for the last month? If they are there, why can I not
find them either via Drive Image/Select Image to REstore or via
Explorer? Does anyone know another way to try to solve the 2 error
messages I mentioned? If necessary I'll happily uninstall Drive Image,
reinstall and start again, if that would solve it.
I'm sorry this is so long and desperate sounding, but I'm really very
fed up. I know knowledgeable people get irritated with clueless
newbies, but I really tried hard here to take responsibility for
making my PC safe, with regular backups, updated AV, updated firewall
etc. I've been getting along fine with Win98SE for several years now
but I feel like a total beginner again with XP. If you can help me,
please do.
Best,