Repair Install> Lost Documents and Settings

[Guest]

A friend's computer was not booting into Windows, so I ran chkdsk from the
recovery console, restored NTFS.SYS from the CD. (as it was not found on
startup) Windows got to the end of the startup logo, then rebooted. I
resorted to attempting a Repair Install from the CD, not realizing that there
is a potential for data loss in the Documents and Settings directory. I've
done repair installs on my own systems in the past without any problems.
Everything went smoothly until the system booted up, I logged in, and
discovered that all of the important files I was trying to preserve are gone.
Windows recreated all of the users, but everything inside their home
directories is the installation default. The start menu has also been
reverted to the installation default (obviously as it is in the All Users
directory) Has anyone had experience recovering this data in any way? Help!

Thanks,
Reid

 

[Guest]

A friend's computer was not booting into Windows, so I ran chkdsk from the
recovery console, restored NTFS.SYS from the CD. (as it was not found on
startup) Windows got to the end of the startup logo, then rebooted. I
resorted to attempting a Repair Install from the CD, not realizing that there
is a potential for data loss in the Documents and Settings directory. I've
done repair installs on my own systems in the past without any problems.
Everything went smoothly until the system booted up, I logged in, and
discovered that all of the important files I was trying to preserve are gone.
Windows recreated all of the users, but everything inside their home
directories is the installation default. The start menu has also been
reverted to the installation default (obviously as it is in the All Users
directory) Has anyone had experience recovering this data in any way? Help!

Thanks,
Reid

Wwll chances are unlikely that you will find that data again. When you
create My Documents, it creates them at the start of the HDD table. However,
when your HDD gets filled up, things that you add to My Documents get
scattered later and later on the HDD. But when you fixed Windows, you
probably overwrote the early sections of the HDD, but maybe some of the
later added files, are still there.

What you will need to do is google "Data restoration" there are a million
programs that say that they can restore data. They want big businesses to buy
them. But they sometimes offer trials. When you need to do is get a trial
version, and try and look through your HDD and see what you can find. The
program itself usually is pretty self explinatory.

Next time: DO NOT CREATE MY DOCUMENTS UNDER THE SAME USERNAME AS WHICH YOU
PREVIOUSLY HAD. Instead call it "Name2" In fact usually WindowsXP will rename
the OLD my documents to "Name~" . Think of it this way, if you copy a
readme.txt to a folder which already has readme.txt... what does it ask you?
"Do you want to overwrite readme.txt 132kb with readme.txt 123kb?" Yeah. If
you didnt name everything exactly same as what it used to be, you would have
been fine buddy =p

But yeah
1) DONT COPY ANYTHING NEW TO THAT HDD WICH HAS MY DOCUMENTS ON IT.
2) Google "Data restoration software"
3) Run the application
4) Look for the individual files that USED to be in my documents.

There is no guarantee that its still there. Because as far as windows
thinks, where those files sit on the HDD is free overwritable space. It will
just write ontop of the data which might still be the old files. But if you
dont give it a reason to write over that data, there is a chance that its not
all gone.

Hope that helps

 

[Reid Solberg]

Wwll chances are unlikely that you will find that data again. When you
create My Documents, it creates them at the start of the HDD table. However,
when your HDD gets filled up, things that you add to My Documents get
scattered later and later on the HDD. But when you fixed Windows, you
probably overwrote the early sections of the HDD, but maybe some of the
later added files, are still there.

What you will need to do is google "Data restoration" there are a million
programs that say that they can restore data. They want big businesses to buy
them. But they sometimes offer trials. When you need to do is get a trial
version, and try and look through your HDD and see what you can find. The
program itself usually is pretty self explinatory.

Next time: DO NOT CREATE MY DOCUMENTS UNDER THE SAME USERNAME AS WHICH YOU
PREVIOUSLY HAD. Instead call it "Name2" In fact usually WindowsXP will rename
the OLD my documents to "Name~" . Think of it this way, if you copy a
readme.txt to a folder which already has readme.txt... what does it ask you?
"Do you want to overwrite readme.txt 132kb with readme.txt 123kb?" Yeah. If
you didnt name everything exactly same as what it used to be, you would have
been fine buddy =p

But yeah
1) DONT COPY ANYTHING NEW TO THAT HDD WICH HAS MY DOCUMENTS ON IT.
2) Google "Data restoration software"
3) Run the application
4) Look for the individual files that USED to be in my documents.

There is no guarantee that its still there. Because as far as windows
thinks, where those files sit on the HDD is free overwritable space. It will
just write ontop of the data which might still be the old files. But if you
dont give it a reason to write over that data, there is a chance that its not
all gone.

Hope that helps

Thanks... With a Repair install, there's no option given to create a new
username during installation... In theory, and sometimes in practise,
it retains the users and their documents/settings. I pulled the hard
drive out of that machine, put it another working system (so that I had
somewhere to dump the files and wasn't overwriting everything) and ran
Active@ Undelete on it. It's definitely worth the $39.95. I recovered
the entire Documents and Settings directory, all the users, and
everything in them, except for the Temporary Internet Files and
Favourites. I managed to recover address books and e-mail boxes by
browsing for wab and dbx files.

The moral of the story is read
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q312369,
delete undo_guimode.txt before repairing, back up all of your data to
another system, or just avoid the Repair install all together.

Reid

 

[mr.roboto.ny]

The moral of the story is read

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q312369,
delete undo_guimode.txt before repairing, back up all of your data to
another system, or just avoid the Repair install all together.

I've done many (dozens) of repair re-installs (ie. from the init text
screen: Enter+F8+R) and I've NEVER seen Windows delete anything
outside of the Windows sub-dir. In fact, that's the safest course to
preserve an existing XP installation.

However, based on the probs described above, there was some other
malfunction which probably caused the disappearance of Docs and
Settings. Having said that, I would prepend the following to the
quoted suggestions: make a BartPE CD ASAP ! If you're not familiar,
goto:

http://nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Essentially, BartPE is a bootable Windows on a CD. I imagine someone
must've mentioned it by now, on this newsgroup. I promise you won't
be sorry....Jet