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Old March 25th 21, 03:10 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default O.T. Missing Folder/files

Robert in CA wrote:
I'm back on the 8500, that was a little scary
I was wondering if I would get the 8500
back! Whew!

Here's what I was looking at:

https://postimg.cc/Cd9M2Cfk

I think it was a bad HD. I checked and I have
(2) HD's for the 780 with Win 10 and (1) HD
for the 8500 with Win 10 but I thought we made
more than one HD for the 8500 with Win 7 Pro?

So it means I have to buy some HD's and we have
to make up at least (2) for the 8500 and (1) for the
780 although I may of just mislabeled them. I would
have to put each one in to check for sure but in any case
more Win 7 Pro OS is called for and I still need to buy
a APC surge protector.

btw how do I use CcCleaner? I seem to remember you
can really screw things up with it. Are there allot of checdk
boxes etc?

So at this point, I would rather have an operational 8500
and I can just rebuild the lost folder/files from the bookmarks
I found but there's a couple of other things that have happened.
My mouse seems over sensitive when I click it and I haven't
messed with any of the settings and I've noticed recently
that my backspace key doesn't function. It's weird how they
changed by themselves.

Thanks,
Robert


There's probably nothing wrong with the hard drive, particularly.

Carefully maintain your labeling, so cloned drives are
being plugged into the correct machine.

Your favorite model of new hard drive, may have been supplanted
by a more crappy version. The three platter one you were
using, seemed to be nice. But that may have been
replaced by a two platter one, and some of those are
a bit slower and jerky when loaded up with Windows.

We know you don't like the WDC Black, because they're a bit noisy.

And they keep messing around with the models anyway, and
you have to be careful to not pick something that's taken
a turn for the worse.

*******

Using the Macrium boot CD, you can select "boot repair" while
*only* the defective 8500 drive in in the 8500 tray. And no
other drives, not even connected via USB. Just the one drive.
One of the menus has a "Boot Repair" item, and this will
locate trivially lost items and bolt them back together.

If C: on the emergency 8500 drive had been absolutely
destroyed (which could happen), then Macrium Boot Repair
will not help. The hard drive will remain unbootable
if the C: was trashed.

Using your collection of backup images, your knowledge
of which ones aren't infected, you can put back
a good copy of C: over top. But this generally requires
two drives (one USB connected), so that you have a source
..mrimg file to use to restore the C: that needs repairing.

*******

With regard to what happened to your bookmarks, either
you have the correct collection of bookmarks, or you don't.
You have to decide, whether your recovery was successful
and "the fire is out". I can't tell from here, whether
any more forensic effort is required or not. You make it
sound like this is a misplacement issue (drag and drop with
a sticky mouse button will do that). In which case, you'd
make sure your mouse was fully functional, so it doesn't
happen a second time. I had to open up my Logitech mouse
and do some cleaning up near the buttons on the casing,
to restore decent drag (without dropping). I've on occasion,
dropped a folder in some obscure spot, and yes, Agent Ransack
search finds it for me :-)

As long as you haven't deleted the files or the folder, then
we don't really need to be using Recuva. It's only if
Agent Ransack can't find the correct version, that
tools like Recuva (and the correct discipline while
using the tool) are required.

Try to keep track of your most important materials. If
C: became infected, you can restore it from backup. But if
you overwrote C: with a really old image, then your
bookmarks would take significant damage. You should
keep some sort of Exported copy of Bookmarks.html for
days like that. It should be stored separately somewhere,
and while your regular backups will capture a copy of
the bookmarks, to not lose daily bookmark changes, you'd
need a daily copy of them.

If you absolutely rely on browser-stored password management,
then the browser profile folder could be captured as a backup
item as well. An Agent Ransack search on C: for "Profiles",
will find all sorts of important profiles. Here, I've located
the one for the browser I use, Seamonkey.

C:\... \Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles\1234abcd.default
--------

The Profiles folder for the various software products, has
things like key3.db or key4.db and some other file similar to
that, and that's where persistent password storage is located.
Capturing the named folder, the "1234abcd.default" style folder,
will capture individual files like key4.db . The easily infectable
prefs.js is in there too (the one the adwares like to attack).

To make sure you have the correct Profiles item, you'd
want to make sure there was a key4.db type file in it,
as that indicates it's the correct folder for the job.
That 1234abcd.default folder also has "bookmarkbackups",
which is the browser version of bookmarks. Doing an
Export of Bookmarks, reads the current file from that
collection, and delivers it as an HTML file. The HTML file
is "the one humans use". It's a wee bit more portable.

Paul
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