Help! Here is my tale of woe... Girlfriend switches on old PC tonight, power light comes on, screen does nothing, HDD doesn't even spin up. Luckily I have a spare PC that I was planning to rebuild so I connect that up, extract the old HDD and pop it into a HDD external case. Now we hit the problem. I am getting the correct volume of data on the drive but a large number of files (most specifically the desktop with all the gfs pictures) are completely missing as far as I can see... HELP!!!! Am I missing something fantastically obvious? I would REALLY appreciate it if someone could offer me a ray of hope. Much thanks in advance, Paul
You took the hdd out of your girls pc and put it in a external to access from your pc yes? The files will not be there because they are within a windows install on her hdd. You will only get the files if you boot from her hdd. unless you have identical setups, don't even try and boot into windows from her hdd, the drivers etc will not be compatable with the components in your pc.
Wrong. As long as the files are in a readable format, Windows will see the file structure and read it. It will list as a 2nd hard drive, should start lettering at F:/. As long as it is NTFS no problems. If not, pop in a linux live CD and a thumb drive in Fat32 format and copy the stuff over.
The desktop files etc are still not accessable though are they? I couldn't find them last i tried this.
as long as you know how the file structure works... ie, files on the desktop under xp <drive letter>:/Documents and Settings/<user name>/Desktop you'll be find... if its windows and your plugging it to windows, you'll be fine..
I'm afraid I still can't see the desktp files at all... and yes I did know where to look! Anybody got any further help?! I'm going to see if a new PSU will fire up the old computer so I can get a boot but I'm not holding out much hope... I reckon the motherboard has died. What else can I do if this fails?! Keep the advice going guys!
Come on SOMEONE must know something about this?!!! Just think of the satisfaction you'll get out of helping a fellow human being
Yes. If, on your gf's computer, she had privacy settings enabled in the User Accounts, i.e. so other users could not see her document folders, then the document folders will be locked and only accessible if the correct user logs on. This applies to the desktop too. The only way to get at those files is to boot up and log on to that windows install using your girlfriend's windows account. This is a right pain in the arse and I found out the hard way too when trying to access my files from an old snapshot backup. The good news here is that if your other machine recognises the hard drive okay and can access the file system at all it means it is likely that the fault is with another piece of hardware in your gf's machine. Replace the faulty component and you should be able to log on as usual and access the files.
If your still having issues with not getting the files, i always use this little utility to recover lost files. Can even get them off if you have deleted them. Its worth running just to see if they have been lost through deletion or damage. Either way, if they are on the disk, this will pull it up. Download here. Good Luck! http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
As you've got a spare PC (ie with all its bits being inherently spare), how about moving its PSU into your girlfriends if that's what you think went wrong with g/f's PC and access her HD & data in situ again ? MKD
