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acpig28
12-12-2000, 12:15 AM
Recently, after putting a cd-rom into my cd-rw drive, the auto-run launched the installer for a program, however it got stuck before it even fully loaded the installer and restarted the computer. On restart, I left the computer, but returned to find Scandisk stuck at 86%. I clicked exit and windows loaded. I was shocked however, to find that everything on my desktop was gone, dozens of folders of documents and files, shortcuts, everything was gone. The only thing left was Outlook, IE, My Computer, My Documents, and the Recycle Bin. Everything in the Desktop folder vanished. All of the documents in "My Documents" and "Personal" were also gone. My favorites list was completely gone and also all of the shortcuts under "Programs." I checked the Scandisk log file which states:

File allocation table

Copy #2 of the FAT was out of date.
ScanDisk successfully updated the duplicate FAT.

Directory entry C:\WINDOWS\WIN386.SWP had an invalid FAT chain.
ScanDisk corrected the FAT chain by truncating it.

Directory entry C:\WINDOWS had an invalid FAT chain.
ScanDisk did not correct the FAT chain.

File system

There were 347,559 lost clusters in 26,467 chains.
ScanDisk did not reclaim the lost clusters.

It says that there is an error in the File Allocation Table....
I tried running scandisk again in Windows, however it told me that scandisk could not continue because the File allocation table was damaged.

I believe that the data that I lost is still on my hard drive, however my computer isn't recognizing it. I have a 6 gig hard drive with about a gig of space left, which means that I should have a total of 5 gigs that is used. By righting clicking on my c: drive and selecting properties, this fact holds true. It shows a pie chart that I have about 1 gig free and 5 gigs used. However, I highlighted every folder and file directly under the C: drive, and select properties. It tells me that I have only over 3 gigs of data, which means about 2 gig of data is missing. This leads me to believe the data is still on my computer. My question now is is there any way that I can recover the data that I have apparently lost? Please help. I have a lot of documents, and files that were lost.

Thank You,
Alex

Paleo Pete
12-12-2000, 01:12 AM
Boot using the [F8] key and choose Command Prompt Only from the boot menu.

Type scanreg_/restore using a space in place of the underscore ( _ ) used here. Pick a registry backup made before the problem occurred, maybe that will do it. Reboot and see if it will run windows.



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Paleo Pete
12-12-2000, 05:54 AM
Forgot to add this...

fdisk_/mbr might help by rewriting the Master Boot Record.

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Soon as I come up with all the answers...they change the questions!!

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