windows 98, xp, and Hewlett Packard

[Max Rich]

How's it going all? I run a Restaurant, and recently lost
all files. I know that they are still there, but can't get
them,I cant get windows to open them. Talking to Hp did
not do no good, nor visiting their website countless
times.It all seemed to have started around the time when
my pay clock went down. Then shortly after I could not
open up anything on my computer. I assumed that I would be
able to go into restore, if anything happened, and backed
up religiously, but only on that hard drive. I know. It
won't happen again. This has been one of the worst times
in my life, everything I seemed to try screwed up on me. I
now have 3 computers in my office. One is an old Dell,
that helped me out alot, the other is my micron, that has
helped. Well the Dell is gone now, not by choice, but I
had to decide which one of them, plus mine would I be
trying to salvage. Out of desperation, I stuck window 98
in the Hew, it is an pavillion 750-n, in hopes of getting
in.It screwed me worse. So I bought an uprade windows xp,
(after using xp for awhile, 98 just dont cut it)from Sams,
and tried that, it didnt work. However I did see that all
of my files are still there, by the gigs on the hard drive
that were taken up. There is also the xp that hewlett
packard placed in there untouchable part of the hard
drive. I would like some kind advice, I know that I didnt
do things exactly right, but Jeez, I was desperate, and
half blind from reading so much. I still havent been able
to upgrade my computer yet, but think that I will be able
to in a couple of days. I could sure save a lot of work,
if anyone can help me out of this mess. Remeber though, I
cant do anything but turn it on, and I can get into the
bios setting. Thats it. Thanks for reading, thanks even
more for helping.

[Crusty \(-: Old Bastard :-\)]

If you have business records/account information, that just "MUST" be saved,
I highly suggest you go to www.ontrack.com. Either utilize their send in
service (you mail them the hard drive - very expensive), or purchase their
excellent program, EasyRecovery Professional (expensive).

If you buy the program and fail to recover the files, you can still send
them the drive. They will deduct the cost of the program you have already
purchased, from their service charge.


"Max Rich" > wrote in message
...
> How's it going all? I run a Restaurant, and recently lost
> all files. I know that they are still there, but can't get
> them,I cant get windows to open them. Talking to Hp did
> not do no good, nor visiting their website countless
> times.It all seemed to have started around the time when
> my pay clock went down. Then shortly after I could not
> open up anything on my computer. I assumed that I would be
> able to go into restore, if anything happened, and backed
> up religiously, but only on that hard drive. I know. It
> won't happen again. This has been one of the worst times
> in my life, everything I seemed to try screwed up on me. I
> now have 3 computers in my office. One is an old Dell,
> that helped me out alot, the other is my micron, that has
> helped. Well the Dell is gone now, not by choice, but I
> had to decide which one of them, plus mine would I be
> trying to salvage. Out of desperation, I stuck window 98
> in the Hew, it is an pavillion 750-n, in hopes of getting
> in.It screwed me worse. So I bought an uprade windows xp,
> (after using xp for awhile, 98 just dont cut it)from Sams,
> and tried that, it didnt work. However I did see that all
> of my files are still there, by the gigs on the hard drive
> that were taken up. There is also the xp that hewlett
> packard placed in there untouchable part of the hard
> drive. I would like some kind advice, I know that I didnt
> do things exactly right, but Jeez, I was desperate, and
> half blind from reading so much. I still havent been able
> to upgrade my computer yet, but think that I will be able
> to in a couple of days. I could sure save a lot of work,
> if anyone can help me out of this mess. Remeber though, I
> cant do anything but turn it on, and I can get into the
> bios setting. Thats it. Thanks for reading, thanks even
> more for helping.

[Dr Robin Bignall]

On Sun, 11 May 2003 09:17:47 -0700, "Max Rich" > wrote:

>How's it going all? I run a Restaurant, and recently lost
>all files. I know that they are still there, but can't get
>them,I cant get windows to open them. Talking to Hp did
>not do no good, nor visiting their website countless
>times.It all seemed to have started around the time when
>my pay clock went down. Then shortly after I could not
>open up anything on my computer. I assumed that I would be
>able to go into restore, if anything happened, and backed
>up religiously, but only on that hard drive. I know. It
>won't happen again. This has been one of the worst times
>in my life, everything I seemed to try screwed up on me. I
>now have 3 computers in my office. One is an old Dell,
>that helped me out alot, the other is my micron, that has
>helped. Well the Dell is gone now, not by choice, but I
>had to decide which one of them, plus mine would I be
>trying to salvage. Out of desperation, I stuck window 98
>in the Hew, it is an pavillion 750-n, in hopes of getting
>in.It screwed me worse. So I bought an uprade windows xp,
>(after using xp for awhile, 98 just dont cut it)from Sams,
>and tried that, it didnt work. However I did see that all
>of my files are still there, by the gigs on the hard drive
>that were taken up. There is also the xp that hewlett
>packard placed in there untouchable part of the hard
>drive. I would like some kind advice, I know that I didnt
>do things exactly right, but Jeez, I was desperate, and
>half blind from reading so much. I still havent been able
>to upgrade my computer yet, but think that I will be able
>to in a couple of days. I could sure save a lot of work,
>if anyone can help me out of this mess. Remeber though, I
>cant do anything but turn it on, and I can get into the
>bios setting. Thats it. Thanks for reading, thanks even
>more for helping.

I don't know the hardware at all, and have had so much trouble with a
scanner and printer from HP that I will never buy anything from them again.

Having said that, what I would do is:
- take the hard drive out of the system.
- buy a new hard drive - say a 40 gig. They are not too expensive these
days.
- do a clean install of XP on this new drive. You can do that with the
upgrade. It will ask you to mount your Win 98 CD at some stage to prove
that you have a qualifying product.
- install whatever software you have purchased, downloading the latest XP
versions from the manufacturer if they have such, and using the keys that
you already have to activate them.
- mount the disk that carries your precious data as a slave if it's on the
same IDE channel as the new one.
- now see if your new XP can see the data on your old disk.
- if it can, then either leave it in place and very carefully delete all of
the old XP files and folders on your old disk that you no longer need, or
copy it over to c: where your new system is.
- if there are no XP versions of your software, install the W98 versions if
you can, and run them in compatibility mode.
- this way of doing it *should*, if you do not do any deleting, leave your
old disk in an unchanged state, so that if this does not work, you can take
it to a professional, as the previous poster advised.

--

wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall

Remote Hertfordshire
England

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/docrobin/homepage.htm