OT: Computer's...gotta hate 'em.

[Renegade 13]

Of course I knew goddamn well formatting it would wipe the hard drive. As I mentioned, the XP restore disk I had did the formatting ON ITS OWN. I did not tell it to format. There was no menu to select "repair" from. Put the CD in the drive, boots automatically from the drive, starts the formatting automatically, no input from me involved. Nothing I could do once the "Recovery" disk was in...

Not worth recovering the data. As mentioned, it's personal stuff, pictures, shipsets, etc. Can't justify the expense to recover.

I know this was an issue of user error, but there is an aspect of poor design in this. Power failures don't exactly let XP do it's thing upon shutdown. Evidently, a power failure could [censored] things up as well, if what I did was sufficient to do it. It should be designed so the boot files aren't messed around with upon shutdown. I'm no expert (obviously) but it seems like there should be little need to, unless maybe there was a software change.

In this case "I can fix this" did fix it. It wrecked the data I had, but having a functioning computer with no data is better than a [censored] up computer that won't even boot! Sure, the problem was caused by me, but I'll be damned if I'll spend $60 per hour to get someone to fix it for me!

Live and learn. Backup data, have a real XP CD, not some bull**** "Recovery" CD that comes with the computer...

[Fyron]

What kind of "recovery" CD was this? If it was provided by an OEM, it is possible that it has a config file that is set to say yes to some or all of the installation prompts, such as "format the drive and install, even if an install already exists." You'd have to have a pretty stupid OEM to do that, but you never know...

Renegade: You should probably throw the "recovery" CD in the face of the head of the company that made your comp, then demand a real XP CD sans the garbage config file.

OSes shouldn't be managing boot files willy-nilly during the normal shutdown process... The boot files don't need to change unless you change your hardware or kernel files, which certainly doesn't happen every time you are running the OS. That's just asking for trouble, and definitely a Windows flaw if true.

Note that he never said he was turning it off while shutting down, but rather while booting up. Killing the bootup early on isn't an issue, since all its doing is reading data and building up RAM files. Perhaps not good due to mild stress on the drive, but definitely not going to kill Windows at this point.

Don't forget that NTFS is a journalling file system. It doesn't let files be written to the real location until they are completely on the drive...

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, and before you get too far into the reinstallation process;

***Partition your Drive***

Never let windows sit on the same drive letter as your irreplacable stuff.

[Sivran]

Well, the OS is already installed from what I gather. However, all is not lost. He could upgrade to any other version of Windows, or, he could get hold of Partition Logic.

Since I'm plugging Partition Logic, I may as well mention the site where I discovered its existence: The OSSWin project ... lots of F/OSS for windows.

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
Oh, and before you get too far into the reinstallation process;

***Partition your Drive***

Never let windows sit on the same drive letter as your irreplacable stuff.

why?

[Kevin Arisa]

Partitioning is usually the very first thing I ever do to a computer. Personally, I think all computers should be sold with the drives already partitioned, especially since the average user has no clue what it's all about. Three partitions: System, Apps, and Games at the very least. I never understood the logic of having the entire hard drive being one big "bucket" that everything is tossed into. Not only does partitioning protect against most cases of accidental formatting, it even increases the rate at which a computer finds it's files. Instead of searching through the previously mentioned bucket, it is looking through designated compartments. And if the System partition gets corrupted , then you can reformat that compartment without fear of harming anything else. It's a priceless setup that has saved me vast amounts of trouble in the past.

[Renegade 13]

Imperator Fyron said:
What kind of "recovery" CD was this? If it was provided by an OEM, it is possible that it has a config file that is set to say yes to some or all of the installation prompts, such as "format the drive and install, even if an install already exists." You'd have to have a pretty stupid OEM to do that, but you never know...

Renegade: You should probably throw the "recovery" CD in the face of the head of the company that made your comp, then demand a real XP CD sans the garbage config file.

Yep, it was provided by the OEM. I should send 'em the CD and tell them where to stick it...I've reinstalled OS's before, and always just had them reinstall over the existing installation. Easy, no data lost. I (foolishly, it seems) trusted that this recovery CD would allow me to do the same. I think I will be having a little chat the company, and see if I can get a real copy of XP.

Note that he never said he was turning it off while shutting down, but rather while booting up. Killing the bootup early on isn't an issue, since all its doing is reading data and building up RAM files. Perhaps not good due to mild stress on the drive, but definitely not going to kill Windows at this point.

That's exactly what happened. I never shut down during the shutdown procedure, only during the start-up, which I had done before with no ill effects, assuming it would have no ill effects again...

SJ, I will be partitioning the drive into a purely windows drive and an "Everything else" drive. The more safeguards, the better.

Sivran, thanks a lot for the link I'll have to take a look at that program, see what I can do.

It's a good thing I have a bunch of data on another computer. No personal files unfortunately, but things like mods, a few shipset files, that kind of stuff.

[StarShadow]

'Recovery' cd's are evil, they generally don't recover anything, they 'restore' your system to 'like-new' condition (ie. they reformat your HD and re-install the OS, and to hell with whatever else you had installed). As SJ said, it's a good idea to have an OS partition, and an 'everything else' partition. I'm really not impressed in the least by OEM's who give you a 'recovery' cd instead of a proper OS cd, then again I build my systems myself, so that's not really an issue for me lol...

[Fyron]

Make sure to install TweakUI so you can move various system folders (my documents, desktop, possibly program files) off the Windows no fly zone and into the safe zone. Makes it even easier to get back up and running after Windoze reinstalls.

Atrocities said:
why?

Because Windoze needs semi-frequent reinstalls to fix it after it eats itself. Just part of regular system maintenance.

=0=

Even better is to create a disk clone of the Windows partition just after you install it and your base programs, if you have a few gigs on the other partition you want to devote to this. Don't buy any crappy Symantec products for this. Probably a better tool on that site Sivran linked (and some not so good ones, so make sure to do your testing before you get too far along).

=0=

Dunno that I'd want to have to juggle space between apps and games, personally. That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

[StarShadow]

Yes, what I'd suggest, if you have a DVD burner, is to make your system partition about 4 gigs (8 gigs if you use dual-layer), install your OS and preferred base programs, then image the partition to DVD. That way, you only need to restore the image to have a working system again.