A novice here... I hired a computer technician to install DSL on my computer. When he loaded the necessary software, my computer crashed. I can't even get it to open on safe mode; it just names numerous files that have gone missing. Now he wants $250 to reformat, which will wipe out all my files. Is there any way to retrieve any of my data before it's reformatted? Using internet searches on another pc, I found that going to #6, command prompt, & typing "edit system.ini" gives me limited access to some of the directories & files. I was able to save some text files from "my documents" that way, sending them to a floppy disk. This won't work on any .pdf's, .jpg's, .bmp's, etc., though. Any way to save those? How about finding access to the emails I'd saved in my outlook express program?

I found reference to software called "Hard Drive Mechanic Deluxe," which is supposed to help you retrieve files in event of a crash, but from the reviews I can't tell if this is an option at this point or if it's a "plan ahead" program to download on a healthy pc for future disasters. Anyone know?

Another message I'm getting on the computer now is "insufficient memory to initialize Windows." The day before this guy loaded the fatal software, I'd had a friend look over my computer and delete lots of unnecessary programs. There was plenty of memory and it was working great. If it was the DSL software that ate up the memory, wonder if there's any way to delete it? For that matter, there are expendible programs on the system.ini directory that I would happily sacrifice (children's game software) to make more room. Any way to do this given my current situation?

My computer is a Hewlett Packard Pavilion M70 pc.

Hi,

Sounds like you're in a bit of a pickle ! Firstly, find yourself a decent technician ... this guy basically broke your PC and is now trying to charge you over the odds to reinstall it. You can probably put the hard disk from your machine into another machine and just copy the files off, but you need a friendly person who knows what they're doing or a respectable technician to help you there. You could also copy the files to floppy disk from the black DOS window using the COPY command (type COPY /? to see how it works). It would take too long to go through all the options here, but there must be a reputable guy near you who won't charge nearly that much for a basic reinstall with a bit of data copied too.

Andrew

You can use Linux on a CD and recover your files with it. Knoppix is a Linux distribution that runs entirely from a CDROM.
If you can get to another computer, download Knoppix (knoppix.org). The file will be an iso image that you can create a bootable CD from.

So, then boot from the CD. Knoppix will start and you'll get a very nice graphical interface (KDE). It'll detect your existing windows partitions and you'll be able to copy your files to some other location using the Linux file manager. I've fixed lots of windows computers this way.

In the future you should create a separate partition to store your files on...you know, a C AND D drive. That way when your OS craps itself, you can just reinstall and not worry about losing your data. I have all my systems here set up that way, and the users are in the habit of putting their data on the D drive. I've had their OS's screw up, but they've never lost data.

OK, do you have a bootable Win98 CD, or floppy Win98 boot disk?
If so, boot the machine into Dos with cd support;
at the command line change to the cd drive letter, type the following:
cd tools\sysrec Then hit return
type 'pcrestor' (without the quotes) follow the on-screen instructions.
This will restore your system to more or less factory settings, while preserving your user settings.

Good luck.

Have some person, or teenager ;), you know that knows about computers take your hard drive out of the crashed computer and put it as secondary on another computer. You can then copy the files onto the second computer's hard drive, then format your first hard drive, then move the files back onto it and install Windows.

KDog849

PS: Your technician is dishonest and greedy. >:(