Eeeekkkkkkk: Total Destruction?

Win98SE froze in the middle of defragmenting C drive, which contains the OS. (swap file is on another drive)
There was no choice but to hard boot to get the system going again.

When it came back up, the desktop was essential clean, as in a new install.

Before the crash, I had a desktop full of folders. After the crash, only four.

Looking more closely at "C:\" drive, the Windows folder is there but the profiles are gone.
IE is there but no favorites, history, which makes sence, since there is no user profile. The drivers are gone too.

Essentially, Windows is like a new install.

However, outside the Windows directory I find "c:\Programs," with many of them intact, but either not registered or installed.

A left click of "Start", on the bottom bar, shows a list of only a few programs. Everthing I had added to "Start," including the MS Office template is gone. However, under c:\programs\office I find Office but it won't run--popup says it has to be installed.

A right click on that same "Start" brings up a list of only the options to Open, Explore, Find.

"Explore" give me the typical dual frame window, with the drives & folders on the left and their expansion on the right.

Except, the left frame is empty--greyed out. The title for the window shows as "C:\Windows\Start Menu." It has been automatically expanded in the right frame, but has only two selections: Programs (which takes me to the new, empty, desktop) and a shortcut to "Windows Update."

Essential my Windows folder is empty of all my programs, profiles, anything I may have added to the system.

However, the C:\ is not empty. Most things are still intact. Programs is there, including Office. When I try to run Office, I get a popup that says I have to install the program before it can run.
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***My question: is there any way to get my desktop back, reassociate all--put the system back the way it was before the crash while defragmenting C?

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--I always make complete backup (Ghost) copies of C drive. I have about seven on different logical drives.

Whenever I have had something go wrong on "C" which I couldn't fix, I'd pull up a *.gho and "C" would be restored as expected.

This time however, when I replace C with an pre-made, image (at least ghost says that's what it's doing), C comes up the same--as if it didn't restore at all. (I wouldn't think that all my C drive images, which are on another partition, formated with logical drive would loose C drive in the same way--would they?)

Oh, I tried a scanreg /restore. It restored a working registry, but did nothing to bring back profiles, desktop and so on.

Anyone want to take a shot at this? mbr? anything?

Thanks.
Bob T

suggest going into safe mode >
and scandisk >standard,
or dos mode and do scandisk >thorough,
pending on results,

check free space and swap file size,
redo defrag in safe mode,

try scanreg again to different restore date,
if any others available in backup folder,
...

6B 69 6C 72 6F 79 20 77 61 73 20 68 65 72 65

Thanks Bofra.

I wish I had been here to dialog with you. I had to rush to an appointment, I had forgotten about.

Since all my .gho backups are doing the same thing, I'm wondering if they are actually being restored?

It just doesn't seem possible that defragmenting one "C" drive, would negate/change all my backups files.

I've messed up the registry and C drive so much that it wouldn't even boot, yet pulling in one of the backup C drives has immediately fixed the problem. Of course the date is back to that of the backup.

Any ideas on pursuing that?
BTW all the Ghost programs are run in DOS.

I don't want to run through all my scanreg /restore, since each time the system boots good, it adds that files and deletes an older one (yesterday's would be handy, if I had it and it worked).

Before I kill them all, I need to find where they are located and make copies. do you know their location?

I have Norton-undelete program. I've never used it, don't even know if it would work, since these are "lost" files and not "deleted" ones.

Right now I am looking at each cluster of C, with a file recovery program. It finds the files according to whether they were "lost," or only deleted. It only shows the files and will let me save them. Whereas I think the Norton actively goes onto the drive and makes changes.

This program tells me to do as little as possible to the problem drive. Especially, writting to that disc--since it could over-write a needed, "lost" cluster.

So far, there are a huge # of lost clusters, but I haven't seen any that would be in the C:\Windows folders.

My free space on C is 7 gigs, with 1 gig being used. the swap is file is only 65K bytes, with no limit set on top. Before the crash, I had give the swap a minimum of 200 megs.

Should I take a chance and try Norton's undelete/recover; or try to find lost clusters, copy them to a different disk then replace as I can?

Any more ideas?

The only thing I really don't want to do is start overwriting the lost clusters before I have a chance to copy them. --unless of course the suggestions or Norton will fix the problem.

Hope I can catch you while you are on. We can talk better in real time.

Thanks,
Bob T

Just shows what quality components will do for a system:
My main system, 1.2 gHz AMD Athlon CPU, ECS mobo--that may have been a fatal mistake which burned out & took the CPU, PSU with it--dual 80 g

Please disregard the signature. I had taken it off my computing.net account, but that "set" didn't hold.

not sure,
may be too late to recover some files if booting from drive c:, swap file , ghost, and free space would have been altered from defrag/ crash,

if files on drive are very important,(documents), suggest booting from other drive/partition, and do recovery from there,...

backup registries in sysbckup folder, in windows directory(may be hidden system folder),
listed (000*.reg),~1mb
could also use regedit to backup reg in seperate folder/drive,~5mb,

6B 69 6C 72 6F 79 20 77 61 73 20 68 65 72 65

tried to get back to you yesterday but the system didn't want to cooperate.
& I don't want to do more than I have to to C drive, since as you said, everything I do, alters it.

Scandisk failed, but not where I thought it would.

I have several logicals out on partition 2 (actually 1> 0,1,2,3).
Scandisk found no problems until it got to drive "L."

At that point it said there wasn't enough memory resources to run the program.
I checked "M," which is the final logical and it scanned okay.

Going back to L properties, the size of used RAM was 16 gig, with 4 free--which is correct.

However, when I opened a folder, not all but most showed no files--a blank screen and zero size. That's rather strange--especially with "my computer" properties giving me the correct size for used RAM.

I went to DOS. It wouldn't scan that drive either.

But checking in DOS, all my folders are intact. BTW, the largest files on that drive are *.gho files.

I'm in the process of copying all the info on "L" over to DVD data.

I guess the next step will be to format that drive? That should clear up whatever is stoping scandisk from seeing it
--or could it be a BIOS problem? & I need to reflash?

What about doing a fix mbr?

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A different problem has come up as well. When I try to log in to Yahoo, Hotmail, I get a file not found error.
That though, is secondary to trying to get my desktop and backups to work.

Bob