XP install gone horribly wrong

[NiX]

I was formatting my computer last night cause its been about a year or more since I last did that. Thinking ahead I got all the drivers I'd need and put them on my second HD (not a partition, an actual second HD.) I format and get through the XP install and get into windows just to find that it had killed every drive & partition I had on my system. This is a huge problem because the only ethernet adapter I have is on-board and XP won't recognize it, so now I can't use the internet at home.

I was wondering if there's a way to trick Windows into making the on-board work with other drivers or something like that. Also, is there any way for me to get back what was on the second HD? Data recovery program? Anything. I need a lot of the stuff that was on it.

[stray]

This isn't directly answering your questions, but I think you're better off getting on a friend's machine and downloading new drivers off manufacturer websites.

[Yegolev]

There are plenty of data recovery programs, but I have never used any of them.

[SurfD]

im confused, you moved your drivers (but not the network adaptor ones) to a second harddrive, but somehow when you formatted / reinstalled on drive 1, you wiped out your partitions on drive 1 AND lost ability to access drive 2?  that seems a bit odd.

[Viin]

If it did a reformat you won't be able to use a data recovery app anyways.

Been there, done that. I ended up downloading my drivers at work and burning them to a CD (or finding the original Mobo driver CD).

[NiX]

Shit, any suggestions for programs that do data recovery? Just so I can get more angry than I already am at Windows. Luckily my roomie has a flash drive and he was nice enough to download the drivers for my nForce mobo and put them on said flash drive.

[Trippy]

Shit, any suggestions for programs that do data recovery? Just so I can get more angry than I already am at Windows. Luckily my roomie has a flash drive and he was nice enough to download the drivers for my nForce mobo and put them on said flash drive.

First thing is to not do anything drastic on that second drive. The more you write to it the less chance of being able to recover anything from it. You need to first figure out if the partition got changed from what it was before. E.g. was it originally two different drive letters and now it's just one drive? That sort of thing. If it did get changed you'll need to get something to try and rebuild it back the way it was. Then you'll need something that can "undelete" all the file and folder data that got reformatted. The data is still there -- don't panic! (Yet). It's only if you did something like use a secure unerase program would your data truly be gone. I haven't had a need to recover from a mistaken format before so I'm not sure what programs are good or not. Doing a quick Google I found this company:

http://www.easeus.com/

I have no idea if their products are any good but there are solutions out there so look around, check reviews, etc. until you find something suitable.

[Murgos]

If you had a second drive and you only formatted the first drive then the second one is still there and untouched.  You can only make two drives into one partition in XP from within the OS while it is running, not during install.  If it's not showing up in explorer you have a different problem altogether. 

I'd try moving the second drive to a different terminator or even a different ribbon cable.

[taolurker]

Does the drive show as an empty volume (ie drive letter)? or does it not appear at all in Explorer?

If so then I'd try this:

I'd try moving the second drive to a different terminator or even a different ribbon cable.

Adding that you make sure the jumpers on the drives are correct too, and make the XP drive master, in the Primary slot, and the second drive either slaved to that, or master on the secondary.

I don't know how it would've allowed you to format the old drive, unless you selected to actually do that, but another recommendation is to try removing the XP drive's cables and seeing if possibly it's only that XP isn't reading the drive correctly. Assuming that the other drive had an OS, it's possible that you might still be able to boot from that OS (and once I actually had a 2000 drive not read in XP, but I could switch boot drives via BIOS and magically my 2000 drive would boot).

[NiX]

It sees it, just that it says there's nothing on the drive and that it's 1 partition even though it was 2 partitions before. Using recovery programs all the files I had from before are there. Just a matter of time until I can recover them with this program I got.

[NiX]

Looking for a program to pull files off an iPod with ID tags in tact. Anyone?

[Trippy]

Looking for a program to pull files off an iPod with ID tags in tact. Anyone?

MP3 ID tags are stored in the .mp3 file itself. Are you losing them somehow? Does iTunes strip them out and put them into another iPod-only format?

[Yegolev]

Hey, if you find something that can get music files off of an iPod in any format, send me a note.  Bonus points if it doesn't fuck up anything.

[Trippy]

Holy crap, I had no idea the iPod sync was one way. Way to go Apple!

If you have an older iPod this may still work:

http://www.ephpod.com/

Edit: here's another one but this one costs money:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/

[Yegolev]

So far my wife's iPod has been a terrible technical disaster, with ample assistance from iTunes.

[NiX]

So, turns out I could recover every bit of data on the drive. Thanks Trippy for the "Don't do anything" bit of info in regards to the drive. Not bothering to format or change anything probably made the recovery possible.

Yeah, iTunes or iPod change the music so they're titled funny, but not the ID3 tags. I just wanted a program that would pull them from the iPod under their tag info, not what the iPod had them listed as. Anyway, thanks to all for the help. I ended up using Active File Recovery and it worked great.

[Sky]

Hey, if you find something that can get music files off of an iPod in any format, send me a note.  Bonus points if it doesn't fuck up anything.

http://playlistmag.com/secrets/2006/12/twowaystreet20/index.php

We use some utility for it, I forget the name. My boss bought two licenses and gave us one.

[Yegolev]

Actually my wife already found something, she just didn't tell me.

http://www.purpleghost.com/

[NiX]

I guess while we're on the topic of computer problems..

Recently my motherboard/bios has been acting up in that every time I reboot (not shut down and power back on, just reboot) it hangs right at the first bios screen. The only recent addition is my TV Tuner card (Hauppaugge 250.) I have an A8N-SLI. Any ideas?

[Engels]

I take it the tuner is PCI? Or does it use an AGP slot? Also, try to disable the BIOS splash screen so you can perhaps see what the last component was that processed before it hung. Also, what's your power supply wattage like?

[NiX]

It's PCI. The splash screen is disabled, it goes down the list of drives and when it finishes that it hangs. I believe I have 480W thermaltake. If I power off the computer right after it hangs and turn it back on, no problems.

Also, another problem thats crept up since the format, dialog boxes. When I mouse over stuff in the bottom right of the taskbar the info box that pops up (utorrent) it shows up UNDER the taskbar. Anyone know how to get it to come up over? Aside from making everything go over the taskbar.

[Strazos]

That shit just happens sometimes.


...Reboot? 

[Trippy]

It's PCI. The splash screen is disabled, it goes down the list of drives and when it finishes that it hangs. I believe I have 480W thermaltake. If I power off the computer right after it hangs and turn it back on, no problems.

Do you have an on-board RAID controller? Are you using it? Is it turned off?

Also, another problem thats crept up since the format, dialog boxes. When I mouse over stuff in the bottom right of the taskbar the info box that pops up (utorrent) it shows up UNDER the taskbar. Anyone know how to get it to come up over? Aside from making everything go over the taskbar.

Is your taskbar locked?

[NiX]

It was locked prior to the format and everything came up over it. - Fixed. Just unlocked the taskbar, locked it again and all the dialogs started going over it.

I do have raid, I'll try going into the bios and turning off anything that has to do with it. - Everything is already turned off by default.

[Strazos]

Sorry, I had to.