No backup and ... tragedy

Interesting tale. My son & I were playing a game that although did not
"explode" did freeze/lock the drive and had to perform a system restore. Now
my hard drive is full from the restore. Any ideas on how to get rid of files
that were probably "doubled" in the copying process?

"Leythos" wrote:

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 21:46:00 +0200, Frans van Zelm wrote:

Hi there,

This is what happened to a friend of mine (no kidding, not to me).

A music cd 'exploded' in the drive.

That's really hard to believe, but I'll let it stand.

The system halted.

The CD had nothing to do with the Halt.

On reboot (several times):
- all her files were gone
- all programs asked for installation disk (but start if message ignored)
- desktop icons were gone
but
- her husbands (other account) files are still there

If only one users files are missing/corrupt, and the other users programs
still work, including the programs they shared, then you've got a ghost in
the machine.

Even if her profile were trashed, the shared applications, had they been
deleted/corrupted, would not work for the other user.

Question 1:
What happened?
The cd broke, okay. But what happened to the files, desktop icons, ...?

Hard to say, the CD breaking has nothing to do with the fault - it can't
physically hurt the hard drive, and removal of a CD in the middle of
playing, even forcing the drive open, won't damage files on the hard drive.

Question 2:
Is there salvation?
As mentioned in the subject: she has no (recent) backup.
I found a folder Found.004 with files numbered from 0000 to 9999, some
containing fragments of her files.

Found.004 indicates that there were three prior instances where problems
occurred with the drive/system. If the file fragments are numbered 0-9999
then there was a serious corruption of the drive, and it would not just
impact her files, it would be system wide.

At this point you have two problems:

1) You need to replace the CD-Rom drive, if it spun a disk fast enough to
frag it, then it needs replaced. If it damaged a disk in some other means,
enough to frag it, then it still needs replaced.

2) Your drive is filled with found files because CHKDSK is detecting a
data problem, either crashed apps with opened files or bad drive media -
replace the hard drive and start over.

While there are indications that we don't have the full story here, the
corrupt user profile and users files, without touching the other users
files is very suspicious. It's almost like it was done on purpose.


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System Restore cannot "fill up" your hard drive, but if it could, then
undoing the System Restore should correct this.

"eepp" wrote in message
news
Interesting tale. My son & I were playing a game that although did not
"explode" did freeze/lock the drive and had to perform a system restore.
Now
my hard drive is full from the restore. Any ideas on how to get rid of
files
that were probably "doubled" in the copying process?

"Leythos" wrote:

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 21:46:00 +0200, Frans van Zelm wrote:

Hi there,

This is what happened to a friend of mine (no kidding, not to me).

A music cd 'exploded' in the drive.

That's really hard to believe, but I'll let it stand.

The system halted.

The CD had nothing to do with the Halt.

On reboot (several times):
- all her files were gone
- all programs asked for installation disk (but start if message
ignored)
- desktop icons were gone
but
- her husbands (other account) files are still there

If only one users files are missing/corrupt, and the other users
programs
still work, including the programs they shared, then you've got a ghost
in
the machine.

Even if her profile were trashed, the shared applications, had they been
deleted/corrupted, would not work for the other user.

Question 1:
What happened?
The cd broke, okay. But what happened to the files, desktop icons,
....?

Hard to say, the CD breaking has nothing to do with the fault - it can't
physically hurt the hard drive, and removal of a CD in the middle of
playing, even forcing the drive open, won't damage files on the hard
drive.

Question 2:
Is there salvation?
As mentioned in the subject: she has no (recent) backup.
I found a folder Found.004 with files numbered from 0000 to 9999, some
containing fragments of her files.

Found.004 indicates that there were three prior instances where problems
occurred with the drive/system. If the file fragments are numbered
0-9999
then there was a serious corruption of the drive, and it would not just
impact her files, it would be system wide.

At this point you have two problems:

1) You need to replace the CD-Rom drive, if it spun a disk fast enough
to
frag it, then it needs replaced. If it damaged a disk in some other
means,
enough to frag it, then it still needs replaced.

2) Your drive is filled with found files because CHKDSK is detecting a
data problem, either crashed apps with opened files or bad drive media -
replace the hard drive and start over.

While there are indications that we don't have the full story here, the
corrupt user profile and users files, without touching the other users
files is very suspicious. It's almost like it was done on purpose.


--

remove 999 in order to email me