Internet Fixes Question Of The Week! 

IF01122                   57 Vista Run Commands

Q.  My computer, running XP Home , exhibited no problems until one day when I booted it as usual, and it refused to boot into XP. I installed a new HD and loaded XP Home on it. Then rebooted with the old HD in the secondary master position. Any attempt to access files on the old HD shows a message that the HD is not formatted. Other utility programs(Norton) show the HD has no partition. What happened and what can I do to retrieve my files, favorites, and Thunderbird E-mails?? Thank You for any advise or suggestions.

A.  You should first change the troubled hard drive to where it is a slave in the computer.  If the computer doesn’t recognize it reboot the computer and enter the Bios to make sure it is recognized there.  (Pressing F8 as the computer starts.)

After the computer recognizes the drive do the following:

Hard Drive Diagnostics.
You can download and run diagnostics from the drive manufacturer to test the drive.

Samsung http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/support/utilities/utilities_index.html
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
Maxtor/Quantum http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/products/index.htm
Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/download/
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
Fujitsu/Seimens http://www.fcpa.fujitsu.com/download/hard-drives/#diagnostic
IBM/Hitachi http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Download and try out the following.  I have always had good luck with this program.

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems.

The current version 4.x replaces the previous version 3.x, which is now over 6 years old.

Features in PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery 4.x
• Finds partitions automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged
• Recovers files with the original time and date stamp
• Supports the saving of recovered files on network drives
• Recovers files, even when a header entry is no longer available. Competition products cannot recover such files.

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

Install the program on your C drive and run it on the drive you are having problems with.

Let me know if you need anything else.

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