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What to do! Messed up GF's Windoze machine!

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poolin1243

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 7, 2005
301
0
Kansas City,MO/Milwaukee, WI
Hey all-

im looking for a restore app to dig in to the hard drive of a win XP ...

i somehow did something in F8 on startup that wiped everything from the my pictures, docs, music, etc...but somehow the apps are still on the computer..


i need to get the photos, and docs back..i can restore her music from her ipod thank god....


anybody?
 
poolin1243 said:
no no...

like it did some system thing, and went through some utility, restarted itself, and now everything is gone, except for the apps are all still there...nothin else though.
Click to expand...
Restore Utility? You mean Windows System Restore?
It only undoes changes to the computer and does not delete your files.
Make sure you are using the right account, you might be logging onto another account and not hers, and windows accounts get their own documents folder.
Use the search function in explorer to look for her documents, or got to 'My Computer' and look through all the documents folders.
If you did use system restore, her files have to be somewhere.
 
General Rule Of Thumb:

Don't **** with your girlfriends computer. Talk about World War III. Besides, you aren't impressing her by doing it anyway. Help her when she needs it, and make sure you help her to back up pictures and music - they're very, very, very important to women.
 
If you really did delete her files, then you should avoid touching the hard drive. Everything you do will potentially overwrite her deleted files.

My advice: Turn her computer off, and use your Mac to burn a Knoppix CD (http://knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html). Then boot up her computer from the Knoppix CD (most PCs will pop up a boot menu if you hit F12 when the BIOS is running). Use Knoppix to sniff around in the hard drive (should be hda1) and see if you accidentally moved things or messed up her user profile. (User profiles are located in \Documents and Settings\). If you can't find anything at all... then start looking into whether you can do more intense deleted-file-recovery stuff.
 
calebjohnston said:
...make sure you help her to back up pictures and music - they're very, very, very important to women.
Click to expand...

Duh. Where's that 'how many tunes in your collection' dick-measuring thread again? :rolleyes:
 
I think most likely you've accidentally created a second profile for your girlfriend on the machine. Go to the C:\Documents and Settings folder, switch to Detail mode from the View menu and see whether there are now multiple folders with names similar to your girlfriend's user account. The current profile will have an up to date timestamp, but my guess is you will find the missing data under one with an older date stamp. If it's there, cut and Paste the contents into the live profile (you'll have to compare the folder structures to see exactly which folders go where).
 
Why were you hitting F8 before it started anyhow?

Well lets assume that the data actually is gone: Shame on you.

GetDataBack is a program that works wonders.
 
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