Re: XP SP3 update catastrophe - data recovery possible?


"ToolPackinMama" <philnblanc@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gqg9df$ku2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A friend of mine was downloading/applying SP3 and (I was not present and
don't know the details) something went very wrong. When they rebooted,
their computer still functioned but no drivers were loaded and their
programs and documents were apparently lost.

System restore was no help.

Is there a way to recover their documents?

OK, that makes no sense at all. If you can run system restore, then at
least you can get into windows. Or by saying system restore was no help,
were you saying that your friend couldn't RUN system restore?

If you can run system restore, that right there means that windows is
running OK as an operating system. It might not be doing everything you
want it to do, but you can use windows to access files on your hard
drive(s).

So either the files are still there and your friend simply forgot where he
saved them, OR

Is this some kind of funky installation where the OS is on one hard drive
and the programs and data are on another? I can see that causing an Oh SHIT
moment if say, your SATA drivers got hosed somehow and windows itself is
running off of an IDE drive.

We'd need a lot more information to figure this one out. List the exact
make/model of mainboard and the exact make/model of each and every hard
drive. Also, does windows run at all? (I'm assuming it does). If more
than one hard drive, WHAT, exactly, is on each physical disk? (OS, apps,
data, backup files, etc) -Dave


.

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