"My Documents" saved with reinstall?

[jcandrus]

Need your help all!!

I attempted to partition my 120GB hard drive yesterday with partition magic 7.0 and it gave me an error asking me to reboot. When I did that I got the blue screen of death and keep telling me to reboot and disable antivirus, etc. Unfortunately I can't get the computer to boot normally anymore (same blue screen of death error, can't remember the exact text of message). Basically I want to know if I reinstall windows xp pro will it save everything in the my documents folder? I remember when I had windows 98 that when I reinstalled it, it had saved the contents of my documents. I have pictures and other valuable files in the my documents folder and cannot lose them. My only option other than reinstalling windows xp pro is to take the hard drive to some specialists and hope they can get the information off the hard drive (nothing is corrupted but it'll cost a pretty penny but will do it if I have to). So heres the question if my rambling didnt make it clear, if I reinstall windows xp pro will it erase everything on the hard drive or will it save the stuff in my documents like windows 98 will. Thanks in advance!!!

 

[Kevin]

very good question. heres the deal:

If you do a clean install which is formatting the drive and then reinstall windows, ofcourse you will loose EVERYTHING that was on that particular drive at the time.

If you just install windows over windows, most likely you will NOT be rid of the problem because windows does tend to keep certain files and config.

So, my first question is, have you tried the obvious? Have you tried booting in safe mode? Most of the time it lets you boot unless you have really screwed somethign major up.

Secondly, is there anything in your folders that you have absolutely no way of getting back? If so, try booting in safe mode or atleast get into DOS. If you luckly happen to have a spare even if small, harddrive, i suggest trying to get into DOS somehow and copying certain folders to the spare. If you have some really important smaller files, try copying them to some good ol' floppy disks.

Now if you can't do any of that, your pretty much screwed.

 

[Ray-ACEWeb]

I had the same problem with Partition Magic in the past. What I would do in a situation like this is get a new HDD (if you have one). Set the current drive you have in your computer as slave and the blank HDD as primary. Reinstall Windows on the blank HDD and when you get back in. Copy everything from the old HDD (that is important) over to your new one and you should be fine.

 

[jcandrus]

To answer both of the posts: Yes, I tried booting into safe mode and the "last known good configuration". I think the problem is that partition magic screwed up while it was trying to make another partition and it made them unrecognizable (possible? it may of just screwed up the partition that was there already).

"If you just install windows over windows, most likely you will NOT be rid of the problem because windows does tend to keep certain files and config."
It's not a software problem (other than partition magic) or a certain file that got corrupted to be more exact. It would be fine if windows stayed the way it was as long as I got the partition back. Also, I don't know DOS commands well enough (basically not at all) to try and copy over files from the problem HD to another HD.

I think I learned my lesson on backing up EVERTHING before attempting to use the incredibly touchy partition magic.

I'll go buy a new hard drive soon, it's definitely worth the money since the files I have on the problem hard drive are worth a heck of a lot more than a hundred bucks or so.

 

[Kevin]

ooohhh

Doh, now i undertand a bit better...

Since your using Windows XP, goto:

Control Panel >
Performance & Management >
Administative Tools >
Computer Management >
Disk Management.

Now you SHOULD see all of your partitions and such, simply try deleting or converting that unknown partition, if it happens to not be listed. I'm not to sure what you should do, i'd have to look into it.

Anyway, If its fat16 which it shouldn't be, convert it to fat32 or even NTFS (?). I believe thats what its called, NTFS?

But try that stuff and if still no luck, boot into FDISK, with a floppy of some sort and delete that partition by hand.

Hope it helps

 

[jcandrus]

I can't even get into windows. Every time I boot the machine it gives me the blue screen. I guess I only see two solutions. One would be to buy a new hard drive and install windows on that one and hopefully be able to see the problem hard drive through partition magic or some other program and then after hopefully fixing the partitions I can transfer over the needed files.
Or two, reinstall windows over the windows that is already on the problem hard drive and hope it doesn't erase the things I have in my documents. This, I hope, will fix the whole partition problem.

I hope all this rambling makes sense.

 

[Kevin]

oh yea...duh lol sorry bout that i completely forgot

bah don't waste your money unless you planed on buying a new hd anyway. Just reformat...

Sorry

 

[Kevin]

Have you tried booting up with a boot disk and getting into FDISK in DOS? surely you'll be able to do that.

 

[CrashAbbott]

JUst a thought ,, but you might be able to run the setup cd and choose REPAIR??

might work,, worth trying to save $$$

if not,, I like the second HDD option,,that way you can have functionality of all the drivers,, for cd burning,, and access your files,,

cheers,

 

[Kevin]

good thinkin Crash, yea go try that