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Thread ID: 56337 2005-04-02 06:44:00 Restoring programs after windows reinstall Lizard (2409) Press F1
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340681 2005-04-02 06:44:00 Hi everyone,

after a problem, where the computer wouldn't boot from the hard drive (read/write error), and exhausting all my options, I elected to reinstall windows. Now I face the daunting task of restoring everything to how it was before (no backup - stupid me).

Prior to the crash though, I had the hard drive split into partitions, meaning when I reinstalled XP to the c: drive, the rest of my hard-drive was unaffected. I had most of my programs installed to one of the other partitions, but with the reinstall of windows, they won't work properly. Is there any way to get these programs back up and running without having to reinstall them all over again?

Cheers

Lizard

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AMD 64 2800+
MSI K8N Neo Platinum Nforce3 250GB
512 MB Transcend JetRam
160GB WD S-ATA HDD
GeCube Radeon 9800Pro 128MB
Lizard (2409)
340682 2005-04-02 06:51:00 Learn to use ghost , Norton ghost or others, to take an image of it , then restoring to previous time is easy. lightfoot (39)
340683 2005-04-02 07:00:00 Thanks for the advice, but that doesn't really help me at the moment, does it? Lizard (2409)
340684 2005-04-02 07:01:00 Around 90ish% of programmes will put dll and other files into your C:\Windows directory when they install (even although the programme itself is on your D:\ or wherever).
When you reformatted, you would have lost all those files.
Unfortunately I think you will be reinstalling those programmes.
Myth (110)
340685 2005-04-02 07:04:00 It is a hard lesson to learn. Back up drivers, use program to back it up, take an image. Other than that one has to install it all again. lightfoot (39)
340686 2005-04-02 07:10:00 it would be good if there is a free imaging program out there.... Prescott (11)
340687 2005-04-02 07:20:00 I had Outlook installed on the D drive (at least, that's where Microsoft Office was installed to) prior to the crash and reinstall. Before reinstalling Office (and Outlook), I copied the original Office folder from D to E - any ideas on whether I could rescue the emails and contacts from that old folder, and import them into the reinstalled version of Outlook? Lizard (2409)
340688 2005-04-02 08:02:00 Normally, you should be able to find them at:
Documents and Settings/Administrator/Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook. The emails are in a .pst file.

If that is still the case whether Outlook is on another drive, sorry but I think you lost those too.
Best thing, go to search, in the search window type this: *.pst
Then search all drives including hidden files/folders.
Myth (110)
340689 2005-04-02 08:25:00 Lizard - there's some good advice above, but I know none of it really gets your data back. I agree, in part, that you have lost your data.

However - depending how desperate you are, if you have money to spare there is this : www.runtime.org

All I can say is, it worked for me. You may wish to consider this or similar. Do some reading on these apps.

Good luck
thepom (7654)
340690 2005-04-02 12:36:00 Thanks for everyone's advice - my initial thoughts that the data would be lost have been confirmed, and while that's a pain, it's not unexpected. Always the optimist, I guess...

Another little problem, someone might be able to help with - checkdisk is running everytime when I restart, and wants to check drives d through to g (the rest of the hard drive apart from c). Is there a way to turn this off? It's not finding any errors...

Cheers

Lizard
Lizard (2409)
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