Got a 2nd-hand scanner through the post yesterday. took me half an hour to install the damn thing (no hardware ever installs correctly first time and dont pretend it does!)

asks me to reboot, which i do. then it doesnt load windows at all. in fact straight away it says "cannot find NTLDR". so i uses my recovery disk to do a non-destructive reinstall xp, doesnt work first time. do it again and it recovers. loads up xp, then gets a blue screen saying system halted. anyway to cut a long story short i recovered for the third time, after getting weird "delayed write fail" messages and now i've lost EVERYTHING on my hard drive! all ive got is a basic windows xp :rant: :rant: :rant: :cry:

just managed to install my broadband software so i could at least get on the net.

the good news is that ive got a second hard drive to which i run fairly regular backups (phew) and that is still safe. i just need to download the software to be able to restore all that.

i just cant believe how much that scanner fooked up my system. its been absolutely fine for years then that happens. im off to pc world tomorrow to buy a brand spanker anyway. can anyone recommend any software that might let me recover files from the main hard drive?

is your machine new, and how old is the scanner. some old scanners still use USB as opposed to USB2 and they dont like talking to each other beleive it or not.

 

The reason they sold it was because it fooked their machine up.

cannot find NTLDR

 

usually means you've left a floppy in the drive when rebooting...HTH

 

usually means you've left a floppy in the drive when rebooting...HTH

 

Sounds painful!! :rofl:

 

 

 

Hope you get it sorted Dave! :D

Sounds painful!! :rofl:

 

 

 

Hope you get it sorted Dave! :D

 

yeah does sound a bit odd.... :D

 

as to the original question i would have thought most new new pc's come with 2 hard drives today so for security you can select a setting like mirrorring/shadowing or auto back up of your files on to the 2nd hard drive...

If he finds it was just a floppy he'll be P*ssed!! I did that with a deployable network on a ship in Norway last year. I was the only one there running the system and all eyes and pressure was on me to drop the satellite link in and get the email working. I'd rebooted after installing some software and got the same message. Absolutely sh*t myself because for a moment I thought the system had died. Then one of the blokes checked the floppy and pulled the disc out!! phew everything back to normal and running sweet.

Got a 2nd-hand scanner through the post yesterday. took me half an hour to install the damn thing (no hardware ever installs correctly first time and dont pretend it does!)

asks me to reboot, which i do. then it doesnt load windows at all. in fact straight away it says "cannot find NTLDR". so i uses my recovery disk to do a non-destructive reinstall xp, doesnt work first time. do it again and it recovers. loads up xp, then gets a blue screen saying system halted. anyway to cut a long story short i recovered for the third time, after getting weird "delayed write fail" messages and now i've lost EVERYTHING on my hard drive! all ive got is a basic windows xp :rant: :rant: :rant: :cry:

just managed to install my broadband software so i could at least get on the net.

the good news is that ive got a second hard drive to which i run fairly regular backups (phew) and that is still safe. i just need to download the software to be able to restore all that.

i just cant believe how much that scanner fooked up my system. its been absolutely fine for years then that happens. im off to pc world tomorrow to buy a brand spanker anyway. can anyone recommend any software that might let me recover files from the main hard drive?

I never have problems installing hardware :tongue: But i'd send it back mate, with a snotty letter!

ok bit more information: 2 year old pc (2.2ghz P4). not sure about scanner age but seems reasonably new. it scans pretty quick which tells me its probably USB2. ive just installed the scanner (on whats left of my pc) and it works now, but thats not really much consolation for what its done to my pc.

 

im sure the missing file's called NTLDR or something (as in Windows NT Loader or Starter or something) although im running XP Home, and not had any problems since ive had it.

 

and no floppy disk hiding in the drive unfortunately :p

great, ive just gone to check out some of my backups and the stupid f00kin program (named and shamed below) has only backed up a handful of files :mad:

that means ive lost all of my photos of friends, girlfriend, pets, cars, places, everything... all my vid clips are gone. all this was supposedly backed up. im currently running a couple of HDD recovery programs but i dont hold much hope for them. :(

 

 

SIMPLY (un) SAFE BACKUP slogan: "Do not use me cos i'll pretend ive backed up your files but i'll only backup 10% of them!"

great, ive just gone to check out some of my backups and the stupid f00kin program (named and shamed below) has only backed up a handful of files :mad:

that means ive lost all of my photos of friends, girlfriend, pets, cars, places, everything... all my vid clips are gone. all this was supposedly backed up. im currently running a couple of HDD recovery programs but i dont hold much hope for them. :(

 

 

SIMPLY (un) SAFE BACKUP slogan: "Do not use me cos i'll pretend ive backed up your files but i'll only backup 10% of them!"

Sounds to me mate like you need to rid yourself of this scanner. As far as recovering data, it is possible, unfortnately you may have to pay throught the nose for it :(

well there's at least some good news to all this. downloaded four different file recovery programs and found "Recover My Files" to be the best by far. through it i've managed to recover about 90% of my lost stuff :bow: although unfortunately most of them dont have filenames and are just called "recovered_file_5773.mp3" etc. the trial version searched my drive and showed previews of stuff i thought id never see again but you need to register (about £40) to actually save them onto your drive (a second drive obviously so as not to overwrite other 'lost' stuff), which i though was quite reasonable. at least i knew the software had worked before i forked out my cash. you can register online and they send you an unlock code straight away which you just paste into the trial version to unlock it so you can keep using it without having to rescan your drive :bow:

 

today's messages:

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* backup your important files to a second hard drive or onto other media regularly

* use Recover My Files when everything goes balls-up

There are others...NTUndelete etc that work ok. I have a good copy of this if it helps...

There are others...NTUndelete etc that work ok. I have a good copy of this if it helps...

 

thanks for the offer buddy but I think ive managed to grab everything I wanted. it even dug up some stuff id deleted months ago... [cough]