Win7 died most files disappeared... Panic!!!

[zalle]

Hi guys,

So here's the score:

iMac 27" i5 with win7 on Bootcamp.

I had 8Gb RAM, but recently I bought some cheap extra 8gb, so I'm using 16gb now.

I noticed that sometimes hibernation was not functioning properly after the upgrade, but I don't remember if it happened before.

I had it hibernated and tried to bring it back to life. It wouldn't so I switched it off. Starting up again, it asked me if I wanted to go back to the hibernated session, I said yes.

Windows started, but I got some error boxes, so I decided I better restart the beast, which I did. It took ages to turn off, so I just pressed the button for a couple of seconds and it went off.

Tried to turn it on and it said there was no bootmanager, and it won't start.

Started it with OSX and when I try to see my windows files, most of them are gone! But the system says the disk has 200gb free, which it had before, so apparently no files are gone, but they are not there... Or at least I can not see them with OSX...

All my work is in the windows system.

I do have backup external disks of my most important stuff, but I would really like to recover my system.

Do you think the cheap memory is to blame? Or could it be something else?

Thanks for your help!!!

 

[Quackers]

You could try removing the new ram and see if it boots then.
Failing that you could make a Live cd/usb of something like Ubuntu and boot from that to the live desktop and then copy any available files in Windows to a new device.

 

[zalle]

Hi,

I accessed BOOTCAMP with OS X, and saved some files, but lots were corrupted. I could see them with the terminal but could not see them with finder. I copied some but others gave errors.

Since I had backups of the most important files, I decided to just reformat the HD with OS X and take it from there.

I'm thinking if I should install Bootcamp again or just use parallels for the few windows only software I use.

 

[Stooby Mcdoobie]

Download and run memtest in single user mode. This will test the integrity of your RAM. Ideally, you should test one stick at a time.

 

[zalle]

So that you know what happened next:

I recovered what I could and started using OSX, which was already on my iMac.

Deleted windows partition and now I'm just using OSX. I like it!!!