XP-Secondary HD- HELP!

[Guest]

I haven't posted here before but I've lost connection to the hard drive that
all my data is on and I would really appreciate some expert advice. I need to
fix this fast. (I'm praying it can be fixed! with no loss of data) Bear with
this long post because I am going to mention almost everything I did in case
it has bearing on the problem.

I have XP Home Ed; version 2002 Service Pack 2 on a 1GHz AMD with 640MB ram.
I have used 2 internal hard drives - C for operating system and
applications- D for Data and scratch disk for Photoshop; operating
successfully for over a year.

Last night I downloaded Windows Defender to get rid of an 'App failed to
initialize 0x800106ba' prompt that would appear at startup. That solved that.
While that was downloading, I heard the cd drive that had a Epson Printer
install disk in it start to spin and removed that disk. After that I got a
Windows prompt that said "The disk in Drive D is not formatted. Do you want
to format it now?" I thought it was strange since E is my cd drive - (wrote
prompt down verbatum just in case) and hit cancel. There was no disk in the
cd drive and it came up a few times more and I just hit cancel.

After Defender had done its thing and udated itself, scanned my computer and
found nothing, I used Norton Speed disk to optimize my D drive overnight. I
had optimized C the night before.

Woke up this morning, selected the analyse button to check the D's
optimization - 1.1% fragmented - LOTS of clear wide open spaces for the
scratch I run for Photoshop. Closed Norton. Got a Norton Prompt that my
software expired last night and I was no longer protected etc. I hadn't
decided it I wanted to renew so I selected 'remind me in a day.'

In an optimizing mode I went to my start up files and unchecked the ones
that creep in there and slow things down. I got the prompt about start up
changes and I needed to return it to normal etc. and it brought me back to
it, so being impatient at this point I just selected the normal start up
option and rebooted.

When I went to reboot, the prompt above about the "disk in Drive D" not
being formatted came up again and I canceled out of it again. Restarted the
machine to see if Windows Defender prompt was gone. It was.

NOW the MAJOR MESS was detected -

I'm on a deadline and went to work in Photoshop. It froze. Ended task
through Task Manager. May have rebooted. Started PS again, it came up but
very slowly but did load. Checked under the hood and noticed scratch was gone
(I work with large files and had a secondary scratch set to D drive which
worked beautifully) No D drive selection was present to reset it.

Went to open file from D drive and got data missing or something to that
effect. Went to Device Manager and saw both drives - no indication of
problems with either at first glance. (Both there; Working properly etc.)

Went back to Norton Speed Disk and although it had been there before reboot
this morning - only the C drive now showed.

I don't think I rebooted the machine since I saw the 'Disk in the D drive
not formatted' prompt and it was after I rebooted (to my best memory) that
the D drive disappeared from access. Best case scenario everything is sitting
on the D drive waiting - when I did the analyse D in Speed disk before
rebooting (I think) it analysed the data and showed it all still there.

Thank you in advance for any timely help, advice, insight you could give me.

 

[Guest]

You will probably be able to see the drive from Recovery Console. From there
you can do a
CHKDSK D:
where D: is the drive letter.

Booting to the XP setup CD and choosing 'install' gives tu a prompt for
"Press 'R' for repair", which puts you at the recovery console prompt

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your lightening reply Mark. I don't know my way around XP very
well and have no idea what the recovery console is or what to expect when I
do a chkdsk. Can you tailor some insight/instruction to a newbie? Messing
under the hood too much when I don't know what I'm doing might do more harm.
Then again it might be easy and I'm just not familiar with the procedure.
thanks again!!

 

[You Know Who ~]

Hi
I think that messing under the hood is what got you in trouble to begin
with.... sounds like with norton and defender that you are making two
messes for every one you are trying to solve, but anyway.
go into your computer's bios and set the computer to boot from the CD Drive.
Put the windows disc in there (assuming you have one) and boot to it.
Follow directions as given by mark.

 

[Guest]

You asked for expert advice. You will have to decide for yourself on taking
it. I really don't see how the instructions could be made any clearer. Good
Luck.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Mark,

I appreciate your advice and the time you took to give it. For now the
shorthand is too short for me and I'll research it a little more before
launching in to anything else. I agree with ykw (thank you for your post ykw)
- that messing under the hood got me here. Though I've used Norton for years
to optimize everything without a problem, Windows Defender is something I
inherited with my installation of XP - which I had done professionally. I
know nothing about it and having the Epson installation disk in the cd drive
when I started downloading was just dead tired sloppy.

So I'll read up on the Recovery console and go from there.

Thank you again!

 

[You Know Who ~]

It sounds to me like you use norton way to often (I wouldn't have it on my
system) and you interrupted the install of defender. One thing you might
try: disconnect the d drive. reboot, shut down, re-connect it and then
reboot. It's possible windows will see it as a new drive (of course, don't
format it if it asks to do that).