The Back Alley Archives

Fuck.

Windows user profile corrupted. Happened about 6 AM as I was grading some papers.

I have a working machine, but it's like brand new, meaning that ALL of my documents are invisible. Apparently they are still on the machine -- C drive lists itself as approx 90% full -- but I cannot find them. They are not indexed. I used to keep a lot of stuff on the desktop. All gone. (Desktop has recycle bin and Acrobat -- 2 items -- now.) Everything in My Documents -- invisible.

Toothy's "my documents" folder -- off-the-shelf empty. If I go to C:\Documents and Settings\Toothy, it says "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

Tried 4 different system restore points. No dice.

Now, I have a good percentage of stuff backed up. No problem. But I still, you know, would like to have my computer back the way it was yesterday.

BTW, computer will not access my Norton Internet Security program. Other software, like for example Word, seems to work fine.

How does one recover data once the indexing is corrupt? Can I do it? Or do I have to hire someone?

Thanks to anyone who has help on this. Let's move this to tech support in a day -- I have this up here 'cause I'm freaking the fuck out.

Toothy

Hopefully Todd can help. You can Google to find an answer? If you type in the exact error message you have or what exactly is happening, sometimes you can find an answer. Again, I hope Todd sees this!

Your hard drive is very possibly going bad. There are many utilities you can use to try and recover your data.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

How old is the PC?

Hey, Mom7 and Todd, thanks. I'm mostly back up and running. At work now.

I ran MalwareBytes and it found 127 instances of trojan horse-infected files. Clearly I brought something in that shouldn't have been there. I ran its standard quick scan, deleted the bad files, and restarted. Windows (I have a 2004(?) Dell laptop running XP) ran for like 15 minutes on startup restoring orphan files -- just an endless stream of data down the screen.

When it came back up, the setup is different -- I suspect my user prefs, like desktop and maybe bookmarks, etc., are corrupted and maybe unrecoverable -- but I was able to find my files again. Didn't have time to check Norton Internet Security. Nota bene, though: Norton sure as hell didn't stop whatever got in.

I am not subscribed to MalwareBytes -- I am running the free program w/o updates -- but it has saved me twice, from an earlier nuisance problem and from this major system freakout. I recommend it as a free download to anyone else who needs an antivirus utility.

I concur that I may have bad sectors. Perhaps that, combined with the trojan issue.

I was mostly backed up before, and tonight I'll run a few gigs of CD-ROM backups so that if the little bastard dies, I'm safe. I have put the little Dell through hell -- I treat my electronics like shit. The case is all cracked; I don't regularly update; it's beat up. Yet it's given me 5 mostly trouble-free years and with a recent RAM upgrade, it's running pretty quickly. Thus I cannot say bad things about Dell's laptops, at least of that vintage: they have been pretty reliable workhorses in my family.

Thanks again for the help.

Getting a replacement HD for that machine could probably buy you a couple more years for under 100 bucks.

DocZ, this can go in Tech Support whenever. Thanks.

Hey, Todd, how easy is it to transfer the disk image up to the new HD so I don't have to screw around with piecemealing it?

It's a good idea, because all I got is 20 gigs, and I damn sure could use some headroom.

I know our IT guy recommended to Bill to get a bigger HD and we did for his computer. Bill noticed a bit of a difference...not dramatic but he also has a Dell laptop that overall has been working well. We've had a couple of virus problems that we got resolved with help from this guy and just researching a bit (with his help too).

Good luck!

There are a couple ways you could proceed. You could use imaging software to make an image of your HD and then transfer that image to the new drive. I don't know how much a CompUSA or BestBuy would charge for this but it might be worth it if you don't want to go through the process of reloading your system on a new HD.

Careful going to CompUSA or BestBuy. When they "backed up" my parents' computer prior to doing some work on it, they just backed up the "My Documents" folder. My mother lost a shitload of genealogy research, which was stored by default somewhere else. Thankfully, she had a hard copy so she could reproduce it, but their backup service does not image the drive.

Yeah, I would imagine that their 'backup' service would leave a little to be desired. I was just thinking they could image the new drive from the old drive and you'd end up with a 20Gig partition for C and whatever left for D.

Realized today that this computer needs to go anyhow. Case is cracking around the back hinges. It's gonna fall apart. So I'm gonna probably end up ditching it.

get a fucking mac you cheap bastid.

buy him one Daddy Warbucks

as a teacher, he gets a discount on MAC's

and there ya have it.

not a $1000 discount though. he could get a good Windows laptop (with an upgrade to the awesome Windows 7 included) for $600-700. Still can't touch a MAC for anywhere near that.

Windows 7 is awesome?

yep..but im a geek