All pictures LOST

[Stevo]

Maybe... maybe not. Got home from work yesterday, clicked the computer on... and... it no work. After dorking around with it for hours I finallly get it to do something other than try to start, shutdown after the Windows screen, start... shut down... start... shut down... you get the idea. I got it to dislpay a "KERNEL32.dll not found" message but so far thats it. All is not lost though, a friend from work has loaned me some cool software that will allow me to start the computer, download the contents of the hard drive, then re-install the OS. Wish me luck

[Mluvara]

Re: All pictures LOST

Steve,

Hope you recover them...

I know it's probably running through your mind now, but it's a firm reminder about backing things up. Probably time to invest in something like a portable hard drive or ensure that you archive photos to cd's or some other media after downloading them from your camera.

Michael

[W J Pearce]

Re: All pictures LOST

In my line of work I have had a number of computer failures where the hard drive was okay, but the OS failed and would not boot. Long story short, typically I disconnect the old hard drive and install a fresh one. I would load an OS on that drive. Set the old drive as a slave and then hook it back up in the system. So, the computer will boot off the new drive and see the other drive just as another system disk. You can then get whatever info you want off the old drive and put it on the new one.

This all works well assuming you have a few hard drives and OS disks laying around.

Even if the OS is trash, the data should still be there and therefore recoverable. You might even be able to replace the kernel32.dll file and make it work.

I hope it all works out, but don't wipe the drive until there is absolutely no hope, as in the info is gone.

[Bill@Interstell]

Re: All pictures LOST

Bill pearce's paln is a good one. If you're shy of cash but have access to another PC,you could also try removing your drive from the affected system and mount the disc as a second drive in the other PC. It won't be looking to boot the system off tha effected drive (even though it may only be the one .dll file that is corrupted) and you may be able to recover every thing else. This might also allow you to replace the dll file and try putting the original disc back in your box as well.

Kernal files are pretty important, but don't give it up as lost yet.

[Race 29]

Re: All pictures LOST

BP,
I've done the same thing many times. Although once the hard drive, I've found that I can't recover any of the info from that disk. How do you do that? I really hope you can help. There's info on those disks I'd kill to get back!

Race 29

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: All pictures LOST

BP,
I've done the same thing many times. Although once the hard drive, I've found that I can't recover any of the info from that disk. How do you do that? I really hope you can help. There's info on those disks I'd kill to get back!

Race 29

Two Nine.. I lost a disk once, managed to get back most stuff from it. There's a couple (many more actually) utilities out there that can recover data from formatted disks even. (mine had been)

I can't remember the name of the program I bought, (I'll dig it out for you tho) and it's a bit of a PITA to figure it out but once you do, you'd be amazed at how well it actually digs in and gets stuff back. ALL of my Reno 2000 stuff was once lost and I've got back prolly 90% of it from using that utility...

It's extremely time consuming to find them all, as the file names come up all weird but you can get stuff. I recovered most of my archived emails as well...

PM or better yet, email me and I'll send you more details on it..

Wayne
PS.. all of the above requires that the disk is still spinning and able to run... if it's broken and not running, then you'd have to send it in to one of the facilities that can disassemble it and recover from the actual platters.. not cheap!

[rwflyboy]

Re: All pictures LOST

Your right there Wayne, We had a graphic sign company loose there Hard drive and we sent it off.....$250 to look at it and then 1500 to get all their files off the drive and put on DVD's for them... the bill came to 1750.

But they had not been backing up any client files for the past 10 years.... go figure. Lucky to get them back.

oh yeah, plus our time to load them on the new machine $$$ and reload programs, OS and plotter (printer drivers ) Real expensive by the time it was done. So buy some server space and upload or burn discs guys. I got home from Reno and my C drive was toast... not just OS the drive itself..... lucky I had backed up my stuff... Definitely enough said here.

[W J Pearce]

Re: All pictures LOST

BP,
I've done the same thing many times. Although once the hard drive, I've found that I can't recover any of the info from that disk. How do you do that? I really hope you can help. There's info on those disks I'd kill to get back!

Race 29

My rather barbaric method works when the disk is fine, just the OS will not boot. In my experiences, that is about 80% of the time. If the disk is toast then I think you would have to send it to a data recovery place which is costly. Theoretically, my method works better on DOS machines (not NT, 2000, or XP) because windows is just a program pretending to be the OS and not really the OS. But in NT, 2000, and XP, it is really the OS. I have done it will XP Pro (both disks, the one that would boot and the one that would not) and had no trouble.

As Wayne said, the more corrupt the disk, the more help you would need. The "recoveries" that I did were a matter of convenience to my customers and not something I was required to do. The hardware was ours and they were not supposed to put anything on it (just our program). If I could not recover their info, it was more of a "sorry, you should back up". But I would try to recover info with what I had available; extra HD, boxes, etc.

[Stevo]

Re: All pictures LOST

Thanks for all the info guy's. Looks like I might have everything back and in good shape A guy at work loaned me a disk (something called Windows miniPEČ-XT) that allowed me to download all my photo files to an external hard drive. As far as back-up's, I did one the first day of Reno this year but then I got lazy and didn't do one of the photo's I got the rest of the week... or since. Live and learn